Transmissions 1: Monologics
Multiple, aligned inferential views that have not been conversationalized to shared views. They are the E Pluribus without the unum.
Since I have now written—fairly quickly, for me—five longish articles on what I have been calling The Transmission Model as a kind of rollback update to what I have been variably calling 'student-centered' or 'constructivist' viewpoints on speaking-teaching and listening-learning, I have taken on the technical debt—in an effort to quickly wireframe the arguments—of too many puzzy, private meanings scattered amongst any that actually landed. So, I should attempt to correct this—at least as a first pass.
The way I want to do this (let's see if it holds up) will be to work backward through the articles chronologically, and then, in each, from the end to the beginning, making notes as I go.
I'll name these (hopefully short) posts "Transmissions."
An Adversarial System
The law is a useful analogy, indeed, since it reminds us that we live under an adversarial system. The products of those adversarial encounters, in law, are legal meanings. In life, the products of conversation are, inevitably, as far as we can ever see, cultural meanings . . . The joint-representational plane is built to contain the mutually agreed-upon yet evolving impressions of conversations, not monologics of any kind—neither tyrannical nor swarm.
The "adversarial system," when applied to the judicial branch of American government means that federal courts settle disputes between parties (Cases or Controversies)—they do not offer advisory opinions or 'previews' before an actual case is presented in front of them, as some courts in other countries do. Where there is not a "meeting of the minds," as it were (to crib from another term from contract law), there is no case, no record. Similarly, for humans behaving as non-judges, nothing 'happens' culturally without this meeting of at least two minds. We do not have to wait for 'disputes' to arise, as judges do, but some meeting of the minds is required to register a 'cultural event'—a dispute, an agreement, and all things in between.
The interactional product of pointing at an object and saying 'ball' to another person is a good example of a primitive cultural event. The pointing initiates joint attention on, hopefully, the ball (all communication events are noisy), and the uttered "ball" is a proposal for an agreement, even if one of the people is an adult and the other a toddler. To the extent that there is an agreement on the speaker's intent (that we will call objects of this kind 'ball' and the listener agrees), then an event has happened that is now recorded between them. If the speaker is 100% effective in his attempt (rare), then both speaker and listener share mostly the same view of this object now, which is jointly called 'ball.' The shared view 'hangs between them,' in some sense. They both still have private views about 'ball,' but now they have a shared one (mostly). This shared cultural event, this agreement, is the object that now resides on their joint-representational plane. It does not look like either person's private view of it, but each has a hand in it and, importantly, on it.
Monologics
A monologic is an agreement with oneself. Monologics are produced by extrapolatively inferring from a speaker's (or idea's) intent and then agreeing with that inference. The speaker and listener may have nearly identical views after the exchange, but there are still two views, not a single shared one.
Monologic representations are perfectly natural in domains of knowledge transmission that don't involve mutuality among people. A primitive natural scientist (and a sophisticated one) may study the behavior of an animal and produce a number of 'fake agreements' about that animal. Supposing that the animal's behavior 'speaks' to him like a human speaker, the scientist must 'listen,' infer, and then agree with their own inference: "yes, you build dams." So, it has the form of an agreement. Mathematicians, too, are essentially inference machines. A pattern speaks to them, they observe it, infer some properties from it, and then agree with their inference: "yes, there are infinitely many primes." In each of these domains, however, we have stopped short in our description of the 'conversationalizing' step. In science, one can take the initial hypothesis (monologic representation) 'beavers build dams,' put it to the test in experiments, and then send the results around for conversation. In mathematics, one can take the initial theorem 'there are infinitely many primes,' subject it to a proof, and then distribute that proof for checking. No one has to do these things with their inferences—but they do if they want those inferences to turn into dialogic agreements, which is all that the joint-representational plane will hold.
With people, monologic representations are culturally destructive (setting aside individually destructive for the moment), because they are independent, aligned, unconversationalized inferences—a group of extrapolative inferences that all seem to affiliatively align with each other. They are multiple, aligned inferential views that have not been conversationalized to cultural knowledge, or shared views. It is the E Pluribus without the unum.
Like in the view of the jigsaw puzzle at the top of this article, monologics produce spaces between the pieces that have all been placed at their locations by inferences. In these spaces are naked emperors, the bystander effect, IYGIYGI, and you never say I love you.
We'll have to come back to monologics later. A quote from the late Justice Antonin Scalia shows how monologics, as I call them, may be controlled by norms, even at the highest levels of intellectual work ('translation' following is mine):
Let us consider this hypothesis: that courts are authorized to give a different meaning to the Constitution not as perceivers of what the people want but as the wise dispensers of judgments about social changes required in the fullness of time. Is there any basis whatever for believing that that is what the Framers, and those who ratified the Constitution, understood? No. The Amendment Clause, Article V, prescribes a rigorous and cumbersome method for amending the document; it is implausible that the design was for this to be short-circuited by simply persuading the Supreme Court that interpretive reform is a good idea. "What a court is to do," wrote the celebrated 19th-century jurist Thomas M. Cooley, "is to declare the law as written, leaving it to the people themselves to make such changes as new circumstances may require."
Let us consider this hypothesis: that persons are authorized to infer a different meaning to a presented idea not as perceivers of what the speaker wants, or idea means, but as the wise dispensers of judgments. Is there any basis whatever for believing that that is how we agreed to govern ourselves in our everyday lives? No. There is a sometimes rigorous and cumbersome method for amending or emending any shared view—it is called conversation; it is implausible that the design was for this social arrangement to be short-circuited by simply allowing listeners to infer from others whatever they think is a good idea. "What a person is to do," wrote the celebrated 19th-century jurist Thomas M. Cooley along with this author, "is to either declare the joint-representation as is, reject it, or take one's turn as speaker and propose such changes to it as new circumstances may require."
Scalia's comments (well, my Scalia's comments) point to the necessity of order of some kind in social life. It is interesting to consider whether norms around conversation may have developed in response to the problems presented by monologics.
