Perception, Cognition and Thought: Part II Symbolic Processing and Language

“I, I in the widest meaning of the word, that is to say every conscious mind that has ever said or felt ‘I’, am the person, if any, who controls the ‘motion of the atoms’ according to the Laws of Nature”

- Erwin Schrodinger

Perception is largely determined by the inherited structure of the visual system with the infant paying more attention to stimuli that differ from those of past experience totally or partially ignoring completely familiar or completely novel objects as the nervous system matures. The infant gradually develops concepts of objects, space, time, causality culminatig in the development of thought. During the first year, the connection between cause-and-effect stimulates the infant to replicate those results and begins to use abbreviated behavior patterns indicating that the infant is beginning to classify familiar objects (1). Eventually, the infant establishes visual anticipation of an objects future position, tactile search and the recognition of objects even if only shown a part. The infant then begins secondary schemes often developed in another situation when blocked from the original. The scheme may be disconnected from its origin demonstrating that the object doesn’t change even if the visual impression does. Finally, the child acts directly on the environment and tries to give meaning and use words to refer to objects not immediately present. This frees the child from the initial sensory experience in order to participate in a symbolic world of past and future events. The symbolic activity achieved enables the development of mental activity internally not immediately present. Disorders of symbolic processes, such as neuroses or psychoses, do not occur in the human infant before symbolic functioning begins (2).

Although we know that the number and spacing of impulses represent coded information, there are likely many other more elaborate coding mechanisms such as the variance of intervals about a mean, the shape of the distribution of intervals, the presence of autocorrelation of successive intervals, and potentially systemic temporal patterns. How all of this detailed processing occurs is largely unknown, but amply demonstrates the amount of sensory processing that occurs before the information ever reaches the cognitive regions of the brain undergoing many additional transformations at each level of neural complexity before effects in observable behavior are evident. While the cerebral cortex is considered the highest level of evolutionary development with almost infinite complexity and patterning, it is composed of individual nerve cells firing in an all-or-none fashion. Each of these cells receives information from hundreds of other nerve cells and, in turn, branches to innervate hundreds more. Communication between the neurons is predominantly accomplished by synaptic chemical transmission and the intermingling of excitatory and inhibitory synapses seems to provide the intricate control seen in the CNS. Many synchronous synaptic excitatory impulses are generally necessary for any cell to generate an impulse. As Eccles has put it: ‘This tremendous complication of neuronal activity in my brain is required before a sensory input is perceived by me even in the rawest form; and responses involving comparison, value, judgment, correlations with remembered experiences, aesthetic evaluations, undoubtedly take much longer, with the consequence that there must be quite fantastic complexities of neuronal operation in the spatiotemporal patterns woven in the “enchanted loom.” (3)

We have seen that a sign is an act or activity representing a perceptual image that can be considered as context-free characteristic of a particular situation while a symbol derives its meaning from the context in which it occurs (4). Pattern recognition and sign discrimination involve both imaging and memory while symbols, are produced when activity acts on feelings or emotions. Much of social and emotional behavior is context-dependent (5). Images are generally very complex and detailed allowing only certain samples or attributes, e.g., color, shape, etc to be considered at a given time. Pattern or feature detectors distinguish objects by “wired-in” preprocessing of input signals before other neural operations act on them. Importantly, the mechanisms of identification must be capable of change through experience. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish between imaging which is a perceptual process, and recognition which is a conceptual process. Signs attain meaning by attending to specific aspects of the images they represent, while symbols gain meaning within a context within which emotions and interests become organized. Signs represent characteristics of the external environment while symbols represent events and situations within the individual by indicating what has been gained from experience and how responsive one is to changes in social context. Therefore, symbols refer to events within ourselves and are the result of the memory of the result of an activity and thus take meaning from the history of their use as well as the present situation (5).

It is important to note that there is an intimate relationship between language and cognitive and symbolic processes. A language represents the capacity to recognize and use new words (name concepts), the ability to understand and generate meaningful statements (sentences) and the ability to use language to learn more language (6). While it is estimated that there are over 5000 languages in the world, certain universal properties are evident in all languages. The fundamental premise is the connection between symbol and meaning which represents the study of semantics. However, intrinsic to a language is the systematic and coordinated arrangement of these symbols into meaningful units representing syntax. Finally, a universal feature of languages is a set of rules for generating meaningful word structures and arrangements, i.e., grammar. Languages are not limited to human social communication but are seen at every level of complex hierarchal systems. Like the semantics and syntax associated with the evolution of any language, new concepts are formed by logical and integrated combinations of previously learned concepts. These concepts can be seen to get more abstract until the original cause-and-effect relationship becomes a concept-symbol relationship. A word must be understood in the total context of the preceding words. As noted previously, signs represent stimuli that are part of the external world while symbols have an internal functional value as opposed to the physical or substantial value of signs. The transition from the use of signs to the use of symbols or words appears to be crucial in distinguishing other primates and men and the learning child from the thinking child (7). To understand human language, the child must realize that symbols are more than mere representations but have meaning in a complex system that allows them to be altered and manipulated producing meaningful changes. Symbols are therefore abstract in that they are separable from a particular concrete event.

Children extract the rules of grammar from the sentences they hear. This ability seems to parallel the development of their general cognitive ability to reconstruct experiences with their environment (8). Children can analyze regularities in their experience and language into component parts and understand these parts in new combinations. The structure of sentences is indicative of a cognitive view of the world broken into separate units which can be manipulated mentally so as to form coherent and meaningful groupings. Thus, language appears to display outwardly what the mind is doing privately by dividing observations and thoughts into component parts or concepts which can be manipulated and derive their meaning not from themselves but in their relationship to the whole. In Bronowski’s words: “the logic by which the child unravels the sentences he/she hears and experiences with the environment …expresses a deeper human capacity for analyzing and manipulating the environment in the mind by dividing it into units that persist when they are moved from one mental context to another…. So in human language, words and grammatical structure form an interlocking whole, from which nonsense words and ill-formed sentences are equally excluded. We cannot distinguish between the naming of concepts and the constraints that govern their meaningful or permissible arrangements as they form an interlocking whole” (8).

Both the world and language are broken up by a child into parts - both concepts and words and logical and grammatical rules. Creativity arises when these are put together into new, yet meaningful organizations. Sentences and our worldview are not assembled from parts that have an independent existence. Human language is an example of the expression of the human ability to analyze experiences with the environment which is a general ability of the human mind (8).

Erwin Schrodinger has stated that the fundamental question is how upper-level constraints, known broadly as cognitive processes, arise and subsequently control the behavior of the human organism in all its complexity (9). Pattee, in recognizing the inseparable features of language structures and control hierarchies, notes a number of universal properties of hierarchal systems that are similar to the universal properties of language previously discussed (10,11). Fundamentally, a control hierarchy imposes constraints on the elements of a complex system such that they act in a coherent or uniform manner. For such a hierarchal system to be autonomous, rules or constraints must arise within the collection. Pattee notes that basic to the understanding of such systems is that of a measurement process in which we have an irreversible record of a reversible deterministic process (10). Such records or descriptions are needed at each level of the hierarchy. By the selective loss of detailed information, a hierarchal control system imposes a unified action that is simpler than the individual movements of the individual elements. The analog of the measurement process with that of conceptualization should be noted. We can define conceptualization as the constrained selection of specific details to treat as significant and other details to be ignored by the coherent behavior of the system.

Pattee draws attention to the specific example of the enzyme molecule (11). The measurement process is basically one of classification of degrees of freedom into those crucial for the system's coherent behavior and those to be ignored. Hierarchal constraints thus impose a selective loss of detail on the underlying dynamical system including both the constraining mechanism and the particular choice of those parameters that are relevant versus those largely arbitrary. He notes the problem that emerges when there is no human observer is that of how these arbitrary but definite choices are made. In the case of the nervous system, the initial choice is built into the neural circuitry, and this may be varied by subsequent learning and logical processes. New constraints in the hierarchal system can appear at upper levels without negating or destroying those already present at lower levels. This has been seen in the development of the child’s concepts and language as well as the phylogenetic evolution of these properties.

Both natural languages and hierarchal control systems in general must be formed from and supported by underlying physical structures which act as coherent collections of constraints. Grammar is a code or a system of rules that create order or organization out of a disordered random collection of elements. The resultant ordered structure is functionally coherent and can be thus manipulated as an element at a higher level of the hierarchy. Obviously, either a concept or an enzyme requires a symbol system that not only transmits information in time but exerts integrated control over complex spatiotemporal processes leaving the former elements free to interact with the environment. This gives the system coherent significance or ‘meaning’. Much of a child’s early perceptual/conceptual behavior is biological and genetic in nature but later learning and language processes provide critical feedback loops that select out socially favorable concepts and language structures.

However, many questions remain to be fully understood. 1) How do these rules or coordinated constraints arise from an initially uncoordinated set of elements? 2) At what level or threshold do these rules begin to function as a grammar or coordinated set of constraints? 3 How do these coordinated controls govern the structural or sequential organization of the elements allowing them to perform specialized functions? If we define a constraint as any alternative description that simplifies the detailed environment, then the constraints of the nervous system have freed our responses from time-limited scales at the molecular in order to respond to the environment more efficiently (11,12). A new concept should then be considered a simpler way of looking at the underlying details. In Pattee’s words, “Some form of classification of variables is a most general requirement for any process of pattern recognition, feature extraction or functional description.” (12)

What does all of this tell us about the basis of thought processes? We can consider a concept as a neuronal-based constraint that executes a controlled action in its encounter with the environment. It is only by such mechanisms that a memory or storage process can occur. A concept is a simplified description of a more detailed set of circumstances. Memory appears to be a mapping by the conceptualization process which requires a code or internal set of rules that governs the coherent integration of concepts. For memory to transmit its information beyond the individual, a language is necessary with complete grammar so that the recipient of the coded information can understand it and make it a part of one’s own memory structure. Obviously, the significance of this new mechanism of memory over the hereditary mechanism of learning is the rapidity of feedback.

Pattee considers the problem of the symbolic behavior of matter as the most crucial question before science (12). Schrodinger also saw this as a fundamental problem of science and argued that it is fundamentally related to the quantum measurement problem (9). He saw the ability to ignore the vast array of impinging stimuli rather than becoming hopelessly confused as a prerequisite for cognitive functioning. He saw the brain as a measurement device consisting of an enormous number of atoms capable of ignoring atomic and molecular fluctuations yet capable of the most profound thought. He notes that physical laws are based primarily on atomic statistics and are, by nature, only approximations. Their accuracy, he argues, must be based on the large number of atoms involved. An organism must have this large atomic structure in order to take advantage of accurate natural laws and prevent isolated perturbations at the atomic level from becoming significant. The paradox, however, is that, at the molecular level, both life and thought exhibit almost exact statistical properties with a relatively limited number of atoms which govern the ordered and controlled behavior of the organism. Schrodinger points out that the large number of atoms in a gene or in a memory trace are still far too small to exhibit orderly and lawful activity by statistical physics (9). He argues that this small number of atoms in the gene display nearly a miraculous durability or permanence. “Life seems to be orderly and lawful behavior of matter, not based exclusively on its tendency to go over from order to disorder but based partly on existing order that is kept up.” He proposes that the structure and function of living matter cannot be reduced to the ordinary laws of physics and chemistry. “We witness the event that existing order displays the power of maintaining itself and of producing orderly events.” (9)

Polanyi has gone so far as to state every living system, like every informational system, is under dual control by restricting and organizing elements for the purpose of transmitting information that would otherwise be left as random behavior. Control information creates boundary conditions independent of the physical and chemical laws in order to control the mechanism we call ‘living’. He sees life as well as cognitive processes, as forming a hierarchy whose functioning at each level depends on that of the levels beneath while not being reducible to them (13). He notes that we can focus on the words on a page without attention to their meaning while we can also direct our attention at the meaning conveyed almost ignore the words themselves. He likens the ability of a boundary condition to control the elements at a lower level for the purposes of the higher level to that of establishing a semantic relationship between the two levels. Reducing cognitive processes to their elemental components risks losing what is significant in them (13). In Polanyi’s view, the mind controls and, in a sense, harnesses the lower neurological apparatus and it cannot be determined by it. The mind is free to act, to choose, to make decisions while still being based physically in the body. The human mind itself can be considered a hierarchy where each new level allows higher activities and principles by harnessing the activities of the lower levels but without being reducible to them. Perhaps our biggest challenge moving forward is to truly understand how additional laws relate to and perhaps explain the spontaneous and progressive generation of constraints characteristic of life and all thinking systems. As we have seen, it is impossible to separate the nature of cognitive and symbolic systems from their origin and evolution over time. Conceptualization is a measurement or coding process that extends to that of observation, thought, problem-solving, decision-making and creativity. Clearly, many of man’s highest qualities relate to the development of symbolic systems including culture, purposiveness, idealism, and trust while, at the same time, retaining or further developing our recognition that we are an integral part of the whole and an active participant in the creation of our world.

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