40 Being in the world

When considering the good life, we should note that life is being in the world, with ‘being’ as a verb, not a noun, a process, not a thing. Not spectator theory: the self is not pre-established, looking at the world from outside, but is constituted by action in the world. This view was propounded, in particular, by Martin Heidegger (in his Being and time, with much obfuscation in weird terminology), and together with other work (e.g. of Nietzsche) formed a basis for existentialism.

This is, I think, the ultimate philosophical basis for pragmatism and my view of knowledge as presented in previous items of this blog (23, 26, 28). At any moment we act from ideas, views, normative assumptions and goals that we have, but we adjust them depending on what we encounter in problems and new opportunities.

Going back to the discussion of meaning, and in particular hermeneutics, in item 36, I note that Hans Georg Gadamer, with my preferred brand of hermeneutics, was inspired by this view of Heidegger. He adds that when we interpret texts or actions, we do so from the perspective of prejudice or unconscious presumptions or horizons, as that literature calls it, which are embodied in our language, in an accumulation of shared experience in the past.

However, as I discussed previously, language and the meaning of words are not monolithic but vary between people, in the repertoires of associations they connect with words, in sense making, tapping from their life experience.

The term ‘prejudice’ is mostly experienced in a negative sense, but prejudices are inevitable. They are enabling constraints: enabling and thereby constraining interpretation. See my discussion of practical prejudice in item 34.

Thus there is no single, objective, correct interpretation of a text. This does not yield unmitigated subjectivism, with different subjective interpretations existing apart from each other, beyond debate, but yields a basis for debate in which people with different perspectives may revise their interpretations. Interpretation is dialogical, a matter of dialogue between alternative interpretative frames. Here I refer back to my discussion of cognitive distance in item 55.

While from experience and debate prejudice can be corrected, the outcome remains imperfect: imperfection on the move (see item 19). And as I also discussed previously (in item 29), our thought and language may be bound tenaciously to prejudice that is difficult to correct.

Another implication is that a text has a much wider range of possible meanings than the author intended. I think many if not all authors have experienced this: surprise, sometimes, at how one’s texts are interpreted. At first, this upset me, with a feeling that ‘my’ text was violated, but later I became intrigued and tried to learn from surprising interpretations. That lends much greater scope to one’s text, and leaves a longer trace of novel interpretations. I hope that this will happen also to this blog, and that readers will tell me.

39. The good life

Morality is, or should be, subordinate to ethics, to what the good life is. What is happiness? It is customary to classify ethics into three kinds: virtue ethics (e.g. Plato and Aristotle), consequentialist ethics concerning the effects of actions, such as utility, and deontology or duty ethics (e.g. Kant).

My preference is for virtue ethics, following Aristotle. Virtues have no other goals than themselves, forming a broad notion of happiness. One can enjoy virtue, though that is not its purpose. There is no universal moral duty rooted in absolute, transcendent reality, as with Christianity, or in rationality, as with Kant. Happiness is not only a feeling or psychological state but lies especially in action. Deeds not only have an extrinsic, instrumental value but also intrinsic value.

There is no overarching measure, no guaranteed commensurability, of what is good; not all good things can be reduced to a single measure such as pleasure or utility. One cannot add up happiness in love, attending a concert, sympathy for others, etc.

Overarching virtues for Aristotle were prudence, moderation, courage and justice. Material conditions, pleasure and enjoyment are part of the good life, but in moderation. Virtues can also conflict with each other. Insoluble dilemmas occur regularly. For the human being the highest good is the realisation of the potential he/she has by nature, in human flourishing. According to many Greek and enlightenment philosophers (e.g. Spinoza) the highest potential is that of the intellect. However, for Aristotle also feeling and emotion are part of practical wisdom (phronesis).

Next to realisation of potential my preference goes to virtues of benevolence, reasonableness, extending the benefit of the doubt to people, openness, sincerity, commitment, moral courage and justice. That comes close to old Greek virtues.

It is a long tradition in philosophy, with some ancient Greeks and Romans, and later especially with Schopenhauer, to seek happiness first of all in invulnerability and peace of mind, in avoidance of pain, danger, risk, and emotion. That leads to what Schopenhauer himself called ‘the half life’. The only achievable happiness lies in the avoidance of danger and dependence on others. The ideal is autarky: liberation from what is foreign and different, from what comes from outside. The blind person is happy because he/she is not bothered by all there is to see. One should treat others as if they are objects: without mind and immutable, or as children: don’t spoil them with friendliness or openness. Suspicion is better than trust. There is freedom only in lonesomeness.

But that is the freedom of a prison into which one has locked oneself. I turn it around: we need the foreign, the different, the other, from outside, to free ourselves from incarceration in the self. The other does not revolve around us, we revolve around others.

There is no life without risk. Ambition and creation carry risk of failure and danger, but also an opportunity for new possibilities and insights, and also suffering is a ground for learning. We find this also in Nietzsche.

38. Morality

With this item I start a long series on morality and ethics: good conduct, the good life, justice, tolerance, freedom, and power. That will be followed by a long series about self and other and collaboration, in which I will discuss Nietzsche and Levinas, and finally I will give a series on trust.


Morality is about rules for good conduct. Where does that come from? For Plato, and for Christendom, there is a moral duty anchored in an absolute, transcendent reality. For Christians morality is the expression of the divine in the human being. I cannot go along with that; I cannot grasp what it is about.

Philosophers of especially the moderate Enlightenment assumed that people had a sense of good conduct (a ‘moral sense’) on the basis of tradition and habit, or from experience in social intercourse, or in a God-given feeling, or combinations of those. Rousseau assumed that the human being has a natural feeling for it, but that it is corrupted by society.

Philosophers of the radical Enlightenment held that the only enduring moral principle is that of self-interest, inherent in human nature, in the rational pursuit of well-being and deliverance from pain. However, they were convinced that rational self-interest is enlightened and takes into account the interest of others and public interest. The role of laws is to mobilize the rational insight of enlightened interest so that the interests of others are indeed taken into account.


The philosophers of the radical Enlightenment underestimated how also politicians, judges, and public servants are moved by human drives of vanity, self-interest, prejudice, conformism, and mutual rivalry. They were also extremely naive concerning the supposed harmony of interests of self and others. Later in this blog I will discuss the irrationality and immorality of groups. In that suspicion of societal dynamics, my analysis resembles that of Rousseau. In moral decisions people are subject to collective pressures. The individual can try to escape and follow his/her own conviction, but often at a high price.

According to the philosopher Kant morality is not a matter of any natural moral sense or striving for well-being, or of education, socialisation, or habit, but is determined purely rationally, on the basis of universal principles such as, in particular, the categorical imperative that some maxim of behaviour is morally acceptable only if one would want to make it a universal rule. Earlier in this blog (item 17) I indicated my suspicion of such universals.

I think that moral dispositions emerge from partly instinctive predilections towards both self-interest and solidarity to others in a group. With Rousseau I think that next to an instinct for defending its self-interest for the sake of survival, and an instinct to manifest itself and to develop its potential (called thymos in ancient Greek philosophy, which Nietzsche called will to power), the human being by nature has an instinct for good behaviour and for solidarity. For this, there are arguments from evolution that I will discuss later in this blog.

My conclusion from that analysis, however, is that the instinct to altruism and solidarity is mostly directed towards groups to which one feels to belong (organization, profession, neighbourhood, region, nation, culture) and tends to be accompanied by distrust of outsiders. Culture is needed to curtail the instinct towards suspicion and discrimination of outsiders.

37. Meaning change

Here I end the series on meaning with an analysis of the change of meaning, for which I combine some points from previous items.
Ferdinand de Saussure made a distinction between langue, the shared, common order of meaning in language at a certain moment (synchronically) and parole, individual, creative language use that shifts language over time (diachronically). He next focused more on the order than on change, and it is the second that concerns me here. How does meaning change?

In search for an answer I return for a moment to the earlier discussion of universals and individuals. Universals, kept in semantic memory, arise from abstraction from specific individuals in specific situations, which are kept in episodic memory. I claimed earlier that universals are subject to change. How does that work?

Abstraction has several functions. One is the reduction of a complex of features to a few simple, most characteristic and most relevant ones (for a certain purpose). That furthers economy of thought and speed of interpretation and action. A second function is to cut ourselves loose from specific, familiar circumstances where no longer anything new happens, to move to novel conditions where we can still learn something new. Here universals function as steps we stand on to step away to novelty. We use universals to try and fit a novel situation into known frameworks that we carry along from previous experience.


This brings me back to the Cycle of invention that I discussed earlier, in items 31 and 35. That yields a ‘logic’ of change of knowledge, practice, technology, product, etc. I propose that it is also applicable here, to the change of meaning.

The connection is as follows. Both the hermeneutic circle, discussed in the preceding item of this blog, and the cycle of invention indicate that a change of content (knowledge, meaning) arises because known content is applied to a novel context and by adaptation to that and inspiration from it new content arises.

The cycle adds a few elements. In the beginning new content is ambiguous, diffuse, ill understood, and disordered, with gaps, overlaps, incongruities, or straight contradiction. In the course of experiments with the novelty more order arises by the solving of puzzles, elimination of redundant, irrelevant or extraneous elements, in consolidation. That also is economic, in offering simplification. That is the process of constructing universals. The loosening from the peculiarities of a specific context makes it possible to carry over experience to a novel context, in generaliszation.
The cycle shows that adaptation to a novel context can happen proximately, by making other choices from existing repertoires of practices/meanings, in differentiation. When that fails, in more distant adaptation we adopt novel connotations (sense) from foreign concepts or practices that we encounter in the novel context, in reciprocation. This is my proposal for how parole works.

In communication we put the content of our concepts into the novel contexts of what others think, say and do, and with that we may shift the content of our views. That is making sense.

36. Hermeneutics

In hermeneutics (theory of interpretation), mostly attributed to Hans-Georg Gadamer, one finds the notion of a hermeneutic circle that is spanned by a paradigmatic and perpendicular to it a syntagmatic axis. Paradigm refers to a concept with an existing meaning, and syntagm refers to expressions in which concepts are used (e.g. a sentence). As Frege proposed, the meaning of an expression is a (grammatical) function of the meanings of the words in it. However, the meaning of a word also depends on the expression it is in. The shift of a word from one expression and context to another alters its meaning. That is the hermeneutic circle.

The connection with the notions of reference and sense discussed before (in item 32) is as follows. Associated with a concept is a set of characteristics used for identifying something as belonging to the concept (sense), in a repertoire of partly personal associations (connotations), and the whole of that is the paradigm.

Thus the paradigm is partly personal. We identify and categorize individual things always in the context of specific conditions, such as an expression in a certain setting, and that is the syntagm. There, from all possible features those are selected that fit the context, and from that context novel elements may be added.

Here one can think again of the scripts that were discussed earlier (in item 34). Thus we may, for example, find that intelligence appears to have a novel aspect (social intelligence perhaps) that was not previously recognized. And that may then start to belong to the public extension and sense of the concept.

This process is not unlike the scientific method of testing hypotheses in specific conditions and revising them when needed. It also implements pragmatism, in which from application, in different contexts, one arrives at new ideas.

There is some indication that paradigm and syntagm arise in different areas of the brain; that sentence construction and verbs, which are closely associated, constituting the syntagm, occur in the so-called Broca region, and nouns, which refer to concepts, constituting the paradigm, occur in the Wernicke area, as I learned from Pinker.

There is a connection with literature. It is characteristic of it to operate in this fashion, in an ‘de- and re-conceptualisation of known elements’ in a ‘negation of generally accepted assumptions concerning reality’, as Reckwitz formulated it in his Humanism and the literary imagination (2009). Literature employs individuality to confuse, upset and reconstruct universals by forcing upon them the richness, the finesse, of specific people in specific circumstances. As Roland Barthes said: ‘Science is crude, life is subtle, and it is in the bridging of that gap that the importance of literature lies’.

35. The scripture of invention

The notion of scripts can be used to elaborate on the theory of invention discussed earlier (item 31). When self-service restaurants emerged, compared to service restaurants the order of nodes, and details of their functioning, were changed into entry, selection, paying, seating, eating, and leaving. If one does not know the script, and one enters and sits one will not get food. The altered sequence of activities has implications for the nodes. Selection is no longer done from a menu but by picking up items on display.

In the item on invention I employed a cycle of generalization, differentiation, reciprocation, accommodation and consolidation. They can each be clarified in terms of scripts. In generalization, i.e. application in a novel environment, an existing script is fed into a new superscript. In differentiation, script structure and nodes are preserved but in one or more nodes a different selection of subscripts is made from existing repertoires. In reciprocation one borrows subscripts or entire nodes from other, outside scripts observed in the novel environment. In accommodation, one tries to eliminate obstacles in existing script structure for realizing the potential or efficient use of new nodes, by changing the order of nodes or the nature of their connections. When in this way a new script emerges many secondary changes are needed, in modification of nodes and their repertoires of subscripts, in the process of consolidation.      

The logic also indicates hat there are different levels of novelty: a new selection of subscripts from an existing repertoire, or addition to the repertoire, or a whole new node with its repertoire, or architectural change of network structure. In invention one should also look at the superscript of the user into which the invention has to fit. What changes of that script would the user have to make? The more radical that change, the more difficult it will be to have the innovation accepted.

Cognitively, scripts may be embodied in neural networks. Gerald Edelman’s ‘neural Darwinism’ seems a viable view of how embodied cognition could work, in terms of neural networks. They arise more or less by chance, in diverse, parallel and sometimes rival networks that compete (hence ‘Darwinism’) for reinforcement, according to the frequency, speed and continuity with which they are triggered, yielding easier passage of the thresholds (synapses) between neurons and a greater density of connections with other neuronal groups. New groups can arise from combinations between existing ones. The simultaneous ‘firing’ of neurons can lead to novel connections: ‘firing yields wiring’.

In sum, scripts serve to identify and make sense of perception but are also affected by it, in ‘novel combinations’, yielding novel concepts. I don’t think this process is well characterized by the empiricist phrasing of ‘elementary sense data used as building blocks in the construction of ideas’. All this is hardly described adequately by the phrase that ‘sense data build ideas’. However, the process of assimilating perceptions into scripts does contribute to the change, transformation or breakdown of scripts.

34. Practical prejudice

Often, categorization is more than a simple comparison with a prototypical feature. Following Shank and Abelson, I employ the notion of a script to model categories, including types of actions. A script is a network of connected nodes that represent component activities (in case of a practice) or notions (in case of a concept). In an activity a connection between components may indicate a sequence in time, one-sided or mutual dependence, the use of pooled resources, a relation of authority (supervision, control), etc. In a concept or theory it may indicate logical implication, conditionals, etc.

The classic example is that of a restaurant, which can be seen as a simple sequence of nodes of entry, seating, selecting, ordering, eating, paying and leaving. Each component activity in turn has subscripts for different ways of performing the component activity. For example, in the payment node one may pay cash, by cheque, credit card, or debit card, and each has its own script. There is also a superscript, in which the restaurant is part of a wider script of location, traffic, parking, energy supply, etc.

If something happens but one does not have the appropriate script to absorb it, as part of a culture, one is at a loss about what to do. This is part of the problem of integration of foreigners: they cannot properly ‘read’ events.

In the brain, scripts are embodied in networks of neuronal connections and patterns of neuronal firing. In perception, one subconsciously tries to assimilate sense impressions into existing scripts, and when a fit occurs, the script is ‘triggered’, unless no scripts are detected in which it ‘fits’, in which case it is ignored or there fails to be perception. Scripts can also be triggered internally, without perception, as in dreams or thought.

This entails that perception is always already an interpretation, modelled here as assimilation into one or more scripts. When a slot is found in a script for the perception to fit in, the whole of the script is tentatively attributed to what is perceived, even when not all is perceived. In philosophy and psychology this is known as Gestalt. This greatly helps identification and fast and coherent response to perception, which serves survival of the self.

It also entails prejudice, invalid attribution. A gesture towards a pocket is falsely interpreted as the reach for a gun. Scripts serve to identify an individual as having a place in one or more scripts. When a perception entails simultaneous activation of several scripts, this can lead to tentative connections between them that are strengthened or weakened in subsequent perception and action. I propose that the process models the sense making discussed in the preceding items of this blog: something is recognized as belonging to a category by trying to fit features of it into a script.

Can one call a script embodied in the brain a ‘mental representation’? Perhaps, but it is not a simple ‘reflection’ but part of an active process of mental construction.

33. Prototypes

When we look whether an individual belongs to a category, what do we compare its features with? What ‘represents’ the category? Earlier, I denied that there always is an essence, or necessary and sufficient features that something must have to be assigned to a category. So how does it work? Several proposals have been made for this.

Hilary Putnam proposed a linguistic division of labour, where specialists know the ‘real’ meaning, such as, for water, its chemical composition (H₂O). Ordinary people can refer to the specialists in case of doubt, but for everyday activity they use what Putnam recognized as a stereotype, such as water being clear, potable, boiling at 100 degrees Celsius, freezing at 0 degrees, subject to expansion when freezing (causing water ducts to burst). In fact these features do not always apply (stereotypes often fail): under pressure the boiling point is higher and the freezing point is lower. At greater heights air pressure is lower hence boiling point is lower. One goes beyond the stereotype when conditions require it. However, specialists also can be wrong, and new scientific discoveries can shift ‘real’ meaning, even though that seems unlikely before it happens.

Johnson-Laird used the notion of default to clarify how conventional criteria for meaning could work. In a default, features are assumed until there is contrary evidence. This fits with philosophical pragmatism: we assume something as given until we run into misfits or novel openings. In other words: all ideas are defaults. The stereotype serves as a default. 

Wittgenstein offered the idea of typical cases that form a norm and one handles boundary cases in comparison to the norm. Different cases, individuals of a universal, may not have any universally shared feature but a chain of family resemblance. Proximate members of a family have common features while distant members don’t. X is in the same class as Y not because they have something in common but because there is an intermediate Z that has one feature in common with X and another with Y.

Eleanor Rosch proposed the idea of a prototype, which is a salient exemplar of a class that connects others in the class. Class membership is decided on the basis of resemblance to a salient case, or a typical case, which serves as a prototype. The prototype depends on culture and natural conditions. For example, apparently for the Dutch the prototype of a bird is a sparrow, and for the British it is a robin.

The idea of comparison with a salient case or prototype is an ancient one. It goes back to the old notion of a paradigm, used by Socrates, as an exemplary case to mimic. Aristotle recognized the exemplary cause in his multiple causality: the prototype that a carpenter imitates in constructing a chair.

There is wisdom in this notion. One can see management as imposing strict, universal rules, or as setting an example to be imitated, or a ‘role model’, with some leeway for interpretation according to circumstances.  

32. Meaning

Here I start a series of items on language and meaning. In particular, I will consider meaning change. 

What is meaning? It can mean different things. It may mean the purpose or importance of something, as in ‘the meaning of life'. The phrase ‘It means nothing to me’ can mean ‘I can’t grasp it’ or ‘I am indifferent to it’. Earlier in this blog I mentioned Austin’s distinction between locutionary statements that are intended to say something about the world, and illocutionary expressions that are intended to affect someone or his/her conduct, as in a request. Here I want to discuss something different. In philosophy a distinction has been maintained between semantics, as the logic of meaning apart from the practice of language, and pragmatics, as the theory of language use. I think that the separation cannot be maintained. But let me start with established semantics.  

A founding father of semantics, Gottlob Frege, made the distinction between reference (or denotation, or extension) and sense (or connotation, or intension). Reference is what an expression refers to. A name refers to the corresponding individual, a general concept, say ‘chair’, refers to the collection of all chairs. For a proposition, reference is its truth-value: true or false. Frege characterizes sense as ‘The manner in which it (reference) is given’. The usual interpretation is ‘manner of presentation’. I make something else of it: ‘the way in which we identify something as belonging to a class or being true’.

Now two things are important. First, in language use the features we use to recognize something are often highly personal, idiosyncratic. Second, what features are picked out depends on the context. Meaning is context dependent. Some of the tings I associate with a chair are: a professorial chair, the picture I once saw of someone ‘sitting in his (stuffed) cow’, and granddad’s chair with blue velvet upholstery and dark, polished, curved armrests. General concepts are assigned according to a particular feature, triggered by the context. An advertisement for an academic function triggers the professorial chair. I will not give the full argument here but I claim that this means that pragmatics trumps semantics: one cannot meaningfully discuss meaning without regarding language use.

Sense helps not only in identification but also in the process of dissemination of meaning. By showing how something can be recognized as belonging to a category one contributes to the spread of that category. If I am to attach any meaning to the ‘Higgs particle’, someone will have to tell me how it is identified. Sense connects cognition and reference.

In communication the ‘receiver’ tries to assimilate an expression in the totality of concepts and corresponding senses that form his/her ‘absorptive capacity’. In that, senses that are associated with the expression, and corresponding connections with other concepts, will never be identical to those of the ‘sender’. In fact, the terminology of ‘receiver’ and ‘sender’ is unfortunate because it suggests that in communication meaning remains unchanged, like an object that is transmitted along a ‘communication channel’. This is part of the ‘object bias’ in our thought that I discussed earlier.

31. Invention

How does pragmatism work? How do ideas arise and change, from action? In an earlier work Learning and innovation in organizations and economies (2000), I proposed a ‘cycle of discovery’. The basic idea, which accords perfectly with pragmatism, is that knowledge develops by applying existing knowledge to new areas. That yields challenges and insights for change.

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In a nutshell, the cycle is as follows. In generalization an existing mental scheme or practice is applied to novel contexts. Generalisation is needed for four reasons. First, to escape from the existing order in the present area of practice. Second, to obtain fresh insights into the limitations of existing practice. Third, to create pressure for change for the sake of survival. Fourth, to obtain insight into alternatives. Generalisation can be real, as in a new market for an existing product, a new field of application of a technology, or virtual, as in a computer simulation, laboratory experiment, or a thought experiment.

To survive in the new conditions the scheme is differentiated in an attempt to deal with them. For this one taps from existing repertoires of possibilities and capabilities learned from previous experience. If that does not yield survival, one tries to adopt elements of local practices that appear to be successful where one’s own practice fails, in reciprocation. This yields hybrids that allow experimentation with novel elements to explore their potential, while maintaining the basic logic or design principles of the old practice. One next obtains insight into the obstacles from the old architecture that prevent the full utilization of the potential that novel elements have now shown. This yields indications for more fundamental changes in the architecture, in accommodation. Next, the new architecture, with old and new elements, is still tentative, requiring much experimentation and subsidiary changes, and elimination of redundancies and inappropriate leftovers from old practice, in a process of consolidation. There is often competition between alternative designs, which mostly results in a dominant design. And next, to get away from that one again needs generalization, and the circle is closed.

One illustration is the following. Before in the car direction indicators with flashing lights were invented, direction was indicated by waving a hand, as on a bike. From signs at railways one learned that it could be done better with a mechanical hand, without needing an open top or window. In fact, those indicators at first did have the stylised shape of a little hand. The mechanical hand has all the disadvantages of moving parts: in getting stuck, breakage, stalling, rusting, and maintenance. But when also electrical light was inserted the leap was made to using a flashing light instead of moving parts. To distinguish it from basic lighting it had to flash.

Another illustration is that when in the construction of bridges the move was made from wood to iron, use was at first still made of ‘swallow tail’ connections that make sense for wood but not for iron, which can be welded.