eJournals Kodikas/Code 39/1-2

Kodikas/Code
0171-0834
2941-0835
Narr Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
In this paper I offer a semiotic perspective on the contested relationship between science and culture, and propose a model of integration which is the inverse of Wilson's (1998) consilience project. I first define two key terms: culture and sign. Then I proceed to put forth an argument in three parts: First I explain how the tension between life and language is endemic to the sign; second I demonstrate how folk/cultural categories are integrated signs that has the capacity to bridge the gap between life and language; third, I explore the possibilities for an integration of science and culture in psychology.
2016
391-2

Science and Culture in Psychology

2016
Louise Sundararajan
K O D I K A S / C O D E Volume 39 (2016) · No. 1 - 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Science and Culture in Psychology Consilience in the Crucibles of the Sign Louise Sundararajan (Rochester, NY) In this paper I offer a semiotic perspective on the contested relationship between science and culture, and propose a model of integration which is the inverse of Wilson ’ s (1998) consilience project. I first define two key terms: culture and sign. Then I proceed to put forth an argument in three parts: First I explain how the tension between life and language is endemic to the sign; second I demonstrate how folk/ cultural categories are integrated signs that has the capacity to bridge the gap between life and language; third, I explore the possibilities for an integration of science and culture in psychology. What is Culture? Culture can be differentiated from civilization, accordingly to Scruton (2007). What is generally understood to be culture in psychology should more properly be referred to as civilization, which is defined by Scruton (2007: 2) as “ a social entity that manifests religious, political, legal, and customary uniformity over an extended period, and which confers on its members the benefits of socially accumulated knowledge ” . Culture, by contrast, is more narrowly defined by Scruton (2007: 2) in terms of “ high culture ” which is “ the accumulation of art, literature, and humane reflection that has stood the ‘ test of time ’ and established continuing tradition of reference and allusion among educated people ” . Or as Matthew Arnold put it succinctly, “ The best that has been thought and said ” (cited in Scruton 2007: 44). Scruton (2007: 2) claims that it is through its culture that a civilization “ rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world ” . This emphasis on high culture is in accordance with Kuo-shu Yang ’ s (1997) insistence for Chinese indigenous psychology to base research squarely upon the Chinese intellectual traditions. It is also consistent with Shweder ’ s (1990: 13) vision for cultural psychology to “ seek mind where it is mindful ” . Scruton ’ s (2007) definition of high culture also resonates with what is referred to by Sapir (1924) as genuine culture, which consists of traditional ideals of a good and proper life willfully pursued. What is a Sign? At the risk of over simplification, the Peircean notion of the sign may be understood as a matrix of inference making (Deacon 1997) that has three anchor points: object, the sign proper, and interpretant. The object has to do with lived experience or life for short (Fox 2005); the sign refers to language broadly defined as signifier; the interpretant is the mind that interprets the sign. From this matrix of sign relations emerge two essential attributes of the sign - tension and translation. Tension refers to the fact that the sign is a site of contradictory and conflicting forces characteristic of what Bakhtin (1981/ 1935) refers to as heteroglossia. Translation underscores the importance of heteroglossia which has room for difference, or the other, without which there is no translation possible. In the following sections, I first examine how the internal tension within the sign system is a reflection of the tenuous link between life and language, and how a well integrated sign, such as categories of high culture, helps to enhance this link. Then I argue that both scientific and cultural categories are needed in order to make translation possible, and how a psychological discourse that grounds science in culture, rather than reducing the categories of the latter to that of the former as suggested by Wilson ’ s consilience (1998), helps to strengthen the link between language and life. Sign as a crucible of conflicting forces The sign system consists of two inerlocking vectors, or as Peirce puts it: “ two infinite series, the one back toward the object, the other forward toward the interpretant ” (cited in Parmentier, 1994: 10). According to Lee (1997: 131 - 132), the feeding forward vector constitutes an “ upshifting ” movement to a symbolic, experience distant mode of representation; the feeding back loop otherwise known as the “ reflexive undertow ” (Wiley 1994), a “ downshifting ” movement to an experience near mode of representation. Together, these two vectors constitute a triadic circuitry of the sign as represented in Figure 1: Object -------------- Sign ------------------- Intrepretant ---------- ---------------------------------------------- Object ------ ---------- Fig. 1: The Triadic Circuitry of the Sign The hallmark of an integrated sign is its completion of the triadic circuitry (Fisch 1982, Hoopes 1991, Colapietro 1989, Wiley 1994) which requires mutual constraint of these two movements of the sign, a task which can be aborted when one movement overpowers the other. For instance, the upshifting movement may generate an increasingly experience distant interpretations, unconstrained by the reflexive movement back to life and experience. 6 Louise Sundararajan (Rochester, NY) Categories of high culture as integrated signs The prototype of an integrated sign is the sunflower, in which there is an intimate connection between the sign and its object: “ If a sunflower, in turning towards the sun [object], becomes by that very act fully capable [. . .] of reproducing a sunflower which turns in precisely corresponding ways toward the sun, and of doing so with the same reproductive power, the sunflower would become a Representamen [proto-sign] of the sun ” (Peirce 1961: 1: 274). Since Peirce prefers dialogue to perception as the metaphor for sign relations (Archer 2000), I have adopted the Bakhtin-informed process model of Fox (2005) in my interpretation of the sunflower scenario and beyond. Cast in the framework of dialogue, the sunflower story goes something like this: The sun (the object) calls, and one particular organism answers with a sunflower (the sign), an answer that constitutes a particular relationship between the sign and the object, i. e., the sunflower will always turn toward the sun. In order to answer life ’ s call not just once, but to generate future answers, the sign needs the interpretant (the interpretation generating process), which in the case of the sunflower is the genetic code and its interpretation, which is capable of reproducing another sunflower that perpetuates the original relationship between the first sunflower and the sun. However, the sunflower is not a bona fide sign which requires the mind, not simply biology, to run. A slight modification of the sunflower scenario, replacing DNA with the mind, and we arrive at a bona fide sign, that of high culture: When experience (object) called, a young woman answered with a smile (sign). When this answer was reproduced through the artist ’ s mind (interpretant), it gave rise to another sign (sign1) which is known as the painting of Mona Lisa. The object of representation for sign1 is object1, which perpetuates the original relationship between the young woman ’ s experience (object) and her smile (sign). As a reproduction of the original relationship between experience and smile, object1 may be understood as the aesthetics of smile. This matrix of meaning making can be represented in Figure 2. Put in more general terms, categories of high culture are integrated signs where language, mind, and life meet. As the case of Mona Lisa suggests, language, which initially starts out as a non-verbal sign, needs to take a detour through the mind (interpretant) in order to better answer life ’ s (object) call. What is the significance of this detour through the mind (interpretant)? A Bakhtin-informed interpretation of Peirce (Fox 2005) would say something to this effect: Without taking this detour via the interpretant, the relationship between language (sign) and life (object) lacks a common space for all minds to share meaning. It is through the common space of the mind - such as that shared by the artist and Sign------- Interpretant ----------- Sign1 Object 1 --------------------- Object Fig. 2: Two vectors of the sign and their integration note: upward arrow: upshifting to interpretation; downward arrows: downshifting to experience; Object1: approximation of the original relationship between sign and its object. Science and Culture in Psychology 7 the audience - that signs (such as a smile) are guaranteed their future answers (such as the aesthetics of smile) to life. The compelling power of the object and its vicissitudes To the extent that a sign is a motivated system according to Peirce (Lee 1997), the distinction made by Frijda (2007) between two motivation systems - push and pull - can shed some light on the relationship between the sign and its object. In the push system, characteristic of simple organisms, action sequence is elicited by stimulus in the environment. By contrast, the pull system, characteristic of higher organisms, is capable of goal pursuits that are independent of the environment. Consistent with the observation that the object underpins Peircean semiotics as the primary motivator of the sign (Fox 2005), the humble sunflower may serve as an example of the push system, in which there is a transmission of equal force — to be pushed/ compelled and to push/ compel in turn: The sun (object) compels the sunflower to turn toward it; the sunflower (sign proper) in turn compels the interpretant (the genetic code) to produce another sign (sunflower) which will not only turn toward the sun but also perpetuate this orientation through future signs. A token of high culture, the painting of Mona Lisa, seems to work very much the same way: The object (life or experience) compelled a response from a young woman, generating a sign (facial expressions) which in turn compelled the interpretant (the artist ’ s mind) to produce another sign (the painting of the smile) that has the power to solicit in the audience an orientation toward the original object (life or experience) that is comparable to the original relationship of call and response between life and La Gioconda. The compelling power of the object (life) and its sign becomes attenuated in the pull system, such as science, which has a tendency to leave the phenomena behind in its pursuit of the essence of things. Thus Geertz (1973: 5) claims that the analysis of culture should not be “ an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning ” . That the quest for universal laws - with its need for abstraction, and its metaphysics of presence — poses a challenge to the intimate connection between life (object) and language (sign) can be elucidated with the phenomenology (Wertz 2011) of concealment. As Heidegger points out, science shares with metaphysics a preoccupation with presence and a corresponding difficulty in “ thinking absence ” (Bernasconi 1985: 83). Art, by contrast, makes possible the welcoming acceptance of absence: “ It is art that endows things with something like a façade, ” writes Levinas (1969: 192). Levinas (1969: 193) goes on to say that “ By the façade the thing which keeps its secret [. . .] gleams like a splendor but does not deliver itself. It captivates by its grace as by magic, but does not reveal itself ” . Recall the smile of Mona Lisa, and we know exactly what he means. Levinas points out further that only aesthetics sees the façade - the gaze of “ observation ” sees the behavior, but not the facade; the insight of the analyst sees defenses and denials, but not the façade. Instead of the façade, psychology is invested in getting at the “ essence ” behind the phenomena. For instance, standardized coding of facial musculature can reveal the universality of facial expressions of emotion (Ekman 1973). Equipped with such powerful tools of penetration, the scientist can get at the hidden intention behind a façade, thus 8 Louise Sundararajan (Rochester, NY) catching liars (Ekman 1985). Between the lived experience and the codification of emotions through muscle groups spans the widening gap between life and (scientific) language (for another critique of psychological science from the semiotic perspective, see Sundararajan 2008). To bridge the widening gap between life and language, we do well to counterbalance the hegemony of scientific categories by empowering folk/ cultural categories. An inverted model of Consilience: Grounding Science in Culture In the final analysis, the problem between science and culture/ the humanities is that of translation. Translation, according to O ’ Malley and Soyer (2012), is not simply a matter of knowledge moving from context A to context B, but of systems of inquiry making transformative shifts between research domains thereby opening up new possibilities for old problems. Extending the Peircean notion of the interpretant, Wallner and Jandl (2006) claim that interpretation requires translation, and that translation is a necessary condition for true knowledge. Given that scientific and cultural categories are each the other to the other, translation from one to the other is essential to knowledge creation. But not all translations are created equal. The translation between science and culture can go either way - one may use cultural categories as resources for science; or the other way around, to use science as resource for indigenous categories. The former is the agenda of both consilience and the conventional psychology of culture, which says in essence, “ this is your mind/ brain on culture. ” Here culture is an independent variable, interchangeable with other independent variables such as drug, sex, music, and what-have-you. This approach to culture is manifest in the haphazard comparisons prevalent in cross cultural psychology, in which high dimensional cultural categories tend to be inappropriately mapped onto the one dimensional framework of population surveys (see Sundararajan 2014, Sundararajan & Raina 2015). The task of my inverted model of consilience, in contrast, is to ground science in culture. The difference between these two agendas may be illustrated with the science of wine reported in an article in Science News (Christensen 2000). Chemical analysis of flavors can get at the essence of all wines, rendering it cost effective to mass produce generic wines. But generic wines are not much in demand — people want their wines to come with an indelible trace of culture. Many wine experts, especially in Europe, claim that the most significant aspect of a wine is its terroir, which refers to “ a vineyard ’ s particular combination of soil, rock, and geography ” (ibid. 12). The appreciation of terroir is responsible for the new science of wine, which uses chemical analyses, not to make generic wines, but instead to authenticate where a wine was made and pin down the elusive nature of terroir. A wine expert points out that while “ the [tested] elements may or may not be responsible for the special characters of the wines from a given region, creating an effective [chemical] ‘ fingerprint ’ will ensure that the production is from the region listed on the wine label ” (ibid. 12). This is an example of science serving culture. Likewise, applying the coding of muscle groups to Mona Lisa ’ s smile can reveal the subtle incongruence in emotional expressions between the young woman ’ s eyes and her mouth (Livingstone 2000). But Mona Lisa ’ s charm can be appreciated only provided that we stay within the framework of the notion of façade — a category endemic to aesthetics. Grounding Science and Culture in Psychology 9 science in this cultural category has a twofold advantage: First, it helps us to avoid asking the wrong questions, such as whether La Gioconda is lying. Second, it contributes to the creation of true knowledge, which, according to William James (1907/ 1955: 49), a close friend of Charles Peirce, stems from the integration of ideas and experience, or in a larger context, language and life: “ [. . .] ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience ” . Bibliography Archer, M. S. 2000: Being human: the problem of agency, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press Bakhtin, M. M. 1981/ 1935: The dialogical imagination: Four essays (trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist), Austin: University of Texas Press Bernasconi, R. 1985: The question of language in Heidegger's history of Being, New York: Humanities Bond, M. H. (ed.) 1997: Working at the interface of culture: Twenty lives in social science, London: Routledge Christensen, D. 2000: “ The world of wine ” , in: Science News, 157 (1): 12 - 13 Colapietro, V. M. 1989: Peirce ’ s approach to the self/ A semiotic perspective on human subjectivity. Albany, NY: SUNY Press Deacon, T.W. 1997: The symbolic species, New York: W.W. Norton Ekman, P. 1973: Darwin and facial expression: a century of research in review, New York: Academic Press Ekman, P. 1985: Telling Lies: Clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage, New York: Norton Fisch, M. H. (ed.) 1982: Writings of Charles S. Peirce: a chronological edition (5 Vols), Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press Fox, J. 2005: Peirce and Bakhtin: Object Relations and the Unfinalizability of Consciousness. Paper presented at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy 32nd Annual Meeting, Bakersfield, CA. http: / / www.american-philosophy.org/ archives/ past_conference_ programs/ pc2005/ fox.htm#1 [accessed 05. 07. 15] Frijda, N. H. 2007: The laws of emotion, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Geertz, C. (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books Hoopes, J. (ed.) 1991: Peirce on signs, Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press James, W. 1955: Pragmatism, Cleveland: World Publishing Co. Kim, Y., Yang, K. S. & Hwang, K. K. (eds.) 2006: Indigenous and cultural psychology, New York: Springer Lee, B. 1997: Talking heads/ Language, metalanguage, and the semiotics of Subjectivity, Durham, NC: Duke University Press Levinas, E. 1969: Totality and infinity (A. Lingis, Trans.), Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Livingstone, M. S. 2000: “ Is it warm? Is it real? Or just low spatial frequency? ” , in: Science, 290: 1299 O ’ Malley, M. A., & Soyer, O. S. 2012: “ The roles of integration in molecular systems biology ” , in: Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 43: 58 - 68 Parmentier, R. J. 1994: Signs in society/ Studies in semiotic anthropology, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press Peirce, C. S. 1961: The collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (7 Vols, edited by C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss), Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Sapir, E. 1924: “ Culture: Genuine and spurious ” , in: American Journal of Sociology, 29, 401 - 429 Scruton, R. 2007: Culture counts. New York: Encounter Books 10 Louise Sundararajan (Rochester, NY) Shweder, R. A. 1990: “ Cultural Psychology - What Is it? ” , in: Stigler et al. (eds.) 1990: 1 - 43 Stigler, J., Shweder, R. A. & Herdt, G. (eds.) 1990: Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development, New York: Cambridge University Press Sundararajan, L. 2014: “ Indigenous psychology: Grounding science in culture, why and how? ” , in: The Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, special issue on Indigenous Psychology 45, 63 - 80, DOI: 10.1111/ jtsb.12054 Sundararajan, L. 2008: “ It ’ s turtles all the way down: A semiotic perspective on the basic emotions debate ” , in: Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 28: 430 - 443 Sundararajan, L., & Raina, M. K. [2015]: “ Revolutionary creativity, East and West: A critique from indigenous psychology ” , in: Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 35, 3 - 19, doi: 10.1037/ a0037506 Wallner, F. G., & Jandl, M. J. 2006: “ The importance of constructive realism for the indigenous psychologies approach ” , in: Kim et al. (eds.) 2006: 49 - 71 Wertz, F. J. 2011: “ The Qualitative Revolution and Psychology: Science, Politics, and Ethics ” , in: The Humanistic Psychologist, 39: 77 - 104 Wiley, N. 1994: The semiotic self, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press Wilson, E. O. 1998: Consilience: The unity of knowledge, New York: Knoph Yang, K. 1997: “ Indigenizing westernized Chinese psychology", in: Bond (ed.) 1997: Working at the interface. Science and Culture in Psychology 11