Why The "Scientific" Model Of The Mind Is Problematic

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 602-3):

In the last chapter we reviewed the "scientific" model of the mind that informs cognitive science, looking at it from our point of view of construing experience through meaning. We showed that 'mind' is a construct of the ideation base, owing much to the commonsense picture of the world that is embodied in everyday grammar; but problematic because it draws on this account one-sidedly. 

The scientific model takes off from the grammar of mental processes (seeing, feeling, thinking), but ignores verbal processes (saying) — although the two are both processes of consciousness, are closely related grammatically, and share the critical feature of being able to create meaning by projection. 

It takes off from the ideational metafunction, but ignores the interpersonal — although our folk perception of consciousness derives from both. 

Our sense of ourselves as conscious beings comes as much from the fact that we talk as from the fact that we think and feel; and owes as much to the nature of meaning as social action as it does to the nature of meaning as individual reflection.

The Value Of The Folk Model For Cognitive Science

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 601):

Both of these paths leading beyond the figures of sensing embodied in the folk model, beyond the ideational domain of sensing, are of fundamental importance to our conception of the individual mind and hence of the domain of cognitive science. By implication, cognitive science should not only be 'cognitive', it should also be semiotic, because it is the notion of meaning that enables us to see the connection between sensing and saying, and between theory and enactment of consciousness. 

The folk model — developed unconsciously and collectively out of shared experience over hundreds of generations — construes and enacts the complexity of being a person by bringing to it a multiplicity of perspectives. It extends the 'mind' by refracting it through language, the resource that makes the "cognitive operations" possible and by the same token ensures that they are not subjective but intersubjective.

Absent From The Cognitive Science Modelling Of Mind

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 600):

Both these perspectives — that of the construal of processes other than the mental (saying and symbolising), and that of meaning as enacting as well as meaning as construing — are absent from the cognitive science modelling of mind; and in our view they could with advantage be brought into the picture when we try to understand these complex and central areas of human experience. To do so would both enrich the cognitive model and steer it away from obsessions with information, with knowledge as a separate 'thing' divorced from meaning, and with mind as the exclusive property of an individual organism bounded by its skin.

Complementary Perspectives On Consciousness In the Grammar Of English

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 599-600):

At the same time the 'scientific' models of the mind fail to extend consciousness in the way it is extended by the grammar of English. There are, in fact, two complementary perspectives embodied in the semantic and grammatical systems of English; and together they point towards an alternative interpretation both of 'information' as constructed in cognitive science and of the individualised 'mind' that is its object of study. 

(i) Ideational: Sensers and Sayers. The ideational resources of language are primarily a theory of experience, so they are reflected fairly directly in consciously designed theories such as those of cognitive science. If we stay within the ideational metafunction, where mental processes are construed, we also find other processes that are complementary to these: those of saying (verbal processes) and those of symbolising (a type of relational process). 

(ii) Interpersonal: interactants. If we move outside the ideational metafunction to the interpersonal, the resource through which we interact with other people, we find that here we are acting out our conscious selves — "modelling" consciousness not by construing it but by enacting it. Since this kind of meaning is non-referential it is not taken account of in scientific theories at all.

Folk Model Of Sensing vs The "Scientific" Model

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 598):

Here a contrast is construed in the grammar between the congruent we think, we believe, we know and the metaphorical the mind's operations. This contrast represents the conflict between our everyday experience of ourselves seeing, feeling, thinking, remembering, and so on, and the "scientific" model of cognitive science. Indeed, Dennett (1988) makes the generalisation that "every cognitivist theory currently defended or envisaged ... is a theory of the sub-personal level". Given this orientation, it would thus seem that the unified senser existing as a person who "senses" is an illusion construed by the grammar as part of a folk theory of our own sense of conscious processing.

The Effacement Of Sensers In The Mainstream Cognitive Science Model

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 598):

The mainstream cognitive science model is thus basically derived from a variety of the commonsense model. It creates a metaphorical distance from experience as construed in our congruent grammar, so that the conscious processing that we experience can be reconstrued as a 'subconscious' domain that we do not have access to — an abstract space where figures of doing & happening and of being & having are the ones that operate, rather than figures of sensing. This would seem to be at one remove (at least) from the folk model, which might reasonably be seen as one of experientialist cognition in Lakoffs (1988) sense — one that is in direct contact with the everyday, embodied experience of Sensers. 

Thus, the metaphorical reconstrual of mental processes effaces the Sensers involved in these processes — the conscious beings, prototypically human, who are thinking, knowing, believing, remembering and so on. 

This effacement of the Sensers is of course not accidental: in fact, one central feature of the way in which cognitivists reconstrue mental processing in metaphorical terms is that the grammatical metaphor makes it possible to distance the account from our everyday experience.

The 'Scientific Model' Of Sensing In Cognitive Science And Formal Semantics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 596, 596n):

The 'scientific model' in mainstream cognitive science is centrally concerned with information located in the individual's mind.⁶ This information is organised in some way as a conceptual system.

⁶ Alongside this cognitivist approach, there is a material one embodied in formal approaches to semantics, where the 'aboutness' of linguistic expressions is taken as central and these expressions are interpreted in terms of models of possible worlds. However, in this respect there is a formal-cognitivist alliance: meaning is interpreted not as something in its own right but as something outside language, either a mental construct (concepts, ideas etc.) or a material one (referents in the real world or a formal model of a possible world).

The Central Motif In The Metaphorical Reconstrual Of Sensing

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 596, 597):

Figure 14-10 represents the central motif in the metaphorical reconstrual of sensing: sensing is 'extracted' from figures of sensing as a domain, and reified to become one of a variety of participants that take on roles in figures of being & having and doing & happening, taking place in the mind construed as a container.

Cognitive Science As An Elaboration Of The Folk Model: The Loss Of The Interpersonal

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 596):

Since Sensers are effaced, and projection is lost as a feature of the Senser/sensing complementarity, the gateway to the interpersonal realm — where Sensers are enacted as interactants in dialogic exchange — is closed, and the interpersonal element in the ideational/interpersonal complementarity is lost.

Cognitive Science As An Elaboration Of The Folk Model: The Loss Of Senser/Sensing Complementarity And Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 595):

Since figures of sensing are reified as participants, the processes of sensing are likewise turned into things, and the participants in sensing, the Sensers, are typically effaced. The Senser/sensing complementarity of the folk model is thus lost, as is the feature of Sensers projecting ideas into existence.

Cognitive Science As An Elaboration Of The Folk Model: The Domain Of Sensing Reified As The "Mind"

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 595):

Since it is not taken over as a theory, the fundamental insights of the folk theory are ignored: figures of "Sensers sensing (that ...)" are re-construed through grammatical metaphor as participants. In particular, the domain of sensing is reified as the "mind", so that instead of somebody perceiving things happening, or somebody thinking that the moon was a balloon, the model of cognitive science has perception, vision, cognition, learning, memory, ... .

Cognitive Science As An Elaboration Of The Folk Model: Sensing As The Object Of Study

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 595):

The congruent ideational system separates out consciousness from the rest of our experience and construes it as a domain of sensing, embodying a Medium + Process complementarity where conscious beings (Medium) perceive, think, want, feel (Process). Sensing is thus 'mediated' through the Senser; and this process may project ideas into semiotic existence. This domain of Sensers sensing (that...), which is construed in the congruent system, is taken over in cognitive science. However, it is not taken over as being itself a theory of conscious processing; instead, it is treated as a phenomenon — that is, sensing is turned into the object of study.

The Model Of Sensing In Mainstream Cognitive Science

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 594, 595):

… the object of study of cognitive study is constructed by ideational metaphor, as reified sensing (perceiving, thinking) or as names of sensing (the mind, mental phenomena). 

… while the domain of scientific theorising about cognition is determined by the grammar of processes of sensing, the model is depersonalised, and sensing is construed metaphorically in terms of abstract "things" such as knowledge, memory, concepts. This suggests that mainstream cognitive science is basically an elaborated variety of a folk model, rather than a different scientific alternative …

Folk vs Scientific Construals Of Sensing

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 593):

What Is Lost In The Scientific Model Of Consciousness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 588-9):

The scientific model is metaphorical; and it stands as a metaphor for the congruent folk model. As [Figure 14-9] makes explicit, there is a considerable loss of ideational information as one moves from the congruent mode to the metaphorical mode: grammatically, a clause complex is compressed into a clause, and the clauses that are combined in the clause complex are compressed into nominal groups. As a result, the subtle distinction between the cognitive projection of ideas (sb believing that....) and the perceptive sensing of acts (sb seeing sth happen) is lost, and participants can be left implicit. … 

The possibility of leaving participants implicit means in practice that Sensers are effaced in the scientific model and, as a result, the consciousness we experience in the living of life is also construed out of the picture, being replaced with unconscious processes not accessible to our experience.

The Nature Of The Move From Folk To Scientific Model

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 586-7, 588):

What is the nature of the move from our everyday construal of the experience of consciousness — our folk theory of Sensers sensing phenomena or projecting ideas — to the way cognitive scientists construe that experience? We can see the essential nature of this move when the folk theory is reconstrued as if it was a scientific one. …

The two modes of construing our experience of consciousness ate compared in grammatical terms in Figure 14-9.

The Verbal Externalisation Of Consciousness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 584):

The everyday grammar's contribution to the construal of sensing is thus both rich and varied. Some features of it are particularly significant to the uncommonsense model of mainstream cognitive science. The grammar separates out consciousness from the rest of our experience in the form of mental processes, capable of projecting ideas; but in addition, consciousness may also be 'externalised' in the form of verbal processes, capable of projecting locutions.

The Ideational And Interpersonal Modes Of Constructing The Self

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 583-4):

A projection mental clause such as I (don't) think, since ideationally it realises a figure of sensing, construes the speaker as 'Senser at the time of speaking' (it occurs metaphorically only in simple present tense); at the same time, it enacts the speaker's own 'intrusion' into the dialogue — his or her judgment about how much validity can be attached to the proposition contained in the projected clause. 

Interpersonal metaphor is thus the hinge between the ideational and the interpersonal modes of constructing the self. In the ideational mode we construe ourselves as conscious Sensers, while in the interpersonal mode we enact ourselves as speakers interacting with addressees; the metaphor brings the two together in such a way that the ideational construal stands for the interpersonal enactment (see Figure 14-6).

The grammar of everyday discourse thus clearly points to the significance of interpersonal meaning in the way that we construct ourselves — the self is not only construed but it is also enacted. Cognitive scientists, however, have derived their object of study, and their model of this object from the ideational perspective alone, failing to take the interpersonal perspective — that of enacting — into account.

Whorf's Cryptotypes

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 569):

It is only in more recent times that the more covert areas of grammar have been systematically studied — those that, following Whorf, we have referred to as "cryptogrammar". Whorf (1956) distinguished between overt and covert categories and pointed out that covert categories were often also "cryptotypes" — categories whose meanings were complex and difficult to access. Many aspects of clause grammar, and of the grammar of clause complexes, are essentially cryptotypic. It is the analysis of some of these more covert features embodied in the everyday grammar, in particular the theory of mental processes, that throws light on the domain of cognitive science.

The Domain Of Cognitive Science As A Metaphorical Extension Of The Folk Model

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 565):

We shall examine this variation [on the cline from folk to scientific theories] with particular reference to those phenomena to which we are offering the ideation base as a conceptual alternative: the mind, knowledge, cognition — as the concerns of cognitive science. We shall suggest that the domain of cognitive science is construed ideationally within the folk model; but that this model is extended metaphorically in cognitive science itself, and this extension in fact invites the interpretation of knowledge as meaning. … Cognitive science operates with a scientific model of the individual mind; but, we shall suggest, it is one that is based fairly uncritically on certain aspects of a folk model, in particular in its selection of, and perspective on, its own domain of enquiry.