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.

Extensions Of Sensing In Scientific vs Folk Models

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 600-1):

The two extensions of scientific and folk models are contrasted in Figure 14-11.

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.

Two 'Scientific' Developments Of The Folk Model: Academic Psychology And Psychoanalysis

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 599):

These two models move away from the folk model in two directions. 

(i) They reinterpret figures of sensing as figures of doing or being-&-having; that is, they interpret mental phenomena in material terms. With the growth of cognitive psychology, this situation has changed, of course; it is no longer disallowed to talk about mental processes.

(ii) They emphasise motivation as an important unconscious psychological factor; thus they introduce unconsciousness in the account of the workings of the human mind. In the systems of process types in the grammar, there is no 'unconscious' type of sensing distinct from the conscious ones that can project ideas.

In a way, the two directions away from sensing … in the unconscious folk model — material reinterpretation and 'unconsciousness' — are opposites: the first reconstrues sensing in terms that are more readily observable by scientific method (i.e., method other than introspection), while the other introduces a factor that is even less readily observable than conscious sensing: unconscious motivation. But they share the characteristic that they construct the 'mind' as remote from our everyday experience with sensing.

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 '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: A Scientific Taxonomy Of Sensing

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 596):

Since figures of sensing are reined as participants, the path is opened up to the taxonomic interpretation of sensing, in the form of scientific taxonomy: memory —long-term/short-term memory, sensory memory, semantic memory; recall — free recall; learning — associative learning/cognitive learning/classical conditioning;....

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 Reification Of Experience In Scientific Models

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 575-6):

The most central aspect of the various changes that took place [in the move from folk to scientific models] was the reification of experience — the grammatical metaphor whereby processes were reconstrued as things. In the language of everyday commonsense, A attracts B, so B moves — a complex of two clauses; in the language of science, attraction causes (or is the cause of) movement — where the everyday clause complex, the sequence of two processes of action, has been 'compressed' into one clause with two nominalised elements, and a single process of being (cause 'be causally', or be). 

When they are reconstrued as things, processes lose their location in time and often also their participants; for instance, A attracts B is likely to be reconstrued simply as attraction. Attraction, repulsion, motion, gravity, acceleration, etc. can then be taxonomised in the same way as ordinary things such as plants and animals; they become part of an explicit taxonomy of metaphorical things. These basic resources were already in place in ordinary language — the nominal group for representing things and for organising them into taxonomies, nominalising suffixes for reconstruing non-things as things, and so on; but their potential was being exploited to a greater extent and in significantly different ways. 

This change in the grammar entailed a change in world view, towards a static, reified world — so much so that Bohm (1979) complains that language makes it hard to represent the kind of flux that modem physics likes to deal with. Bohm's dissatisfaction is directed at language in general; but bis real target is — or should be — the language of science. The everyday language of casual speech is, by and large, a language of flux, construing experience in much the way that Bohm seems to demand (see Halliday, 1987).

Folk And Scientific Models As Co-existing Varieties

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 573-4):

As we also noted above, we can interpret folk models and scientific ones as co-existing varieties of the same basic system within the ideation base. In the first instance, we will, of course, be aware of them as differing in particular domains — e.g. as operating with different lexical semantic organisations; but they also tend to construe experience differently in general terms — scientific models tend to rely on grammatical metaphor and thus embody a metaphorical construal of experience: see Figure 14-3.

Fig. 14-3: Folk and scientific models within the ideation base

Folk Models As Evolved And Everyday, Scientific Models As Designed And Restricted

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 573):

As we noted above, folk models are part of the unconscious background of thinking in everyday situation types; they have evolved without any conscious design and are not associated with academic contexts. Folk models can also be more conscious, of course — these are the models that people talk about, that they believe they believe. Scientific models are consciously designed in more restricted situation types, usually within academic institutions, to serve as resources in reasoning about the world.

The Shift From Folk To Scientific Models

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 572-3):

The shift from folk models to scientific ones thus takes place over a long period of time; it typically involves several factors: see Figure 14-2.

Folk Models Co-existing Alongside Scientific Models

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 572):

As designed semiotic systems emerge, both the registers of everyday language and the original specialist registers continue to exist and to develop; folk models of the world will co-exist alongside the scientific ones. A certain degree of intertranslatablity is likely to be maintained — linguistic renderings of logical or mathematical formulas, for instance; and this constitutes one of the contexts in which ordinary language is brought into explicit contact with more scientific varieties. 

There will always be some complementarity of function between the more designed varieties and those that are naturally evolving. They may be allocated to different spheres of activity: for example, the language of bird-watchers vs. the language of ornithologists. 

But in other cases the two are closely integrated as submotifs within a single sphere: for example, the use of both natural language and mathematical expressions side by side in the learning and practice of mathematics. This kind of interpenetration still entails a semiotic complementarity, but of a very sensitive kind, requiring a delicate interpretation of the context in order to bring it out.

The Emergence Of Scientific Registers In The West

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 569-70):

In the early scientific period in the West, new registers evolved as part of the ongoing reconstruction of experience in the form of systematic knowledge and experimental science. Perhaps the earliest to evolve in these new contexts were those registers associated with the exploration, storage and dissemination of new knowledge about plants and herbs in the 16th and 17th centuries. These new contexts put pressure on the linguistic resources, and the meaning-creating power of these resources correspondingly increased. We can hypothesise a gradual evolution from the registers of ordinary language, with their folk models of the world, including folk taxonomies of plants and herbs, to more specialised scientific ones. It was at this point, as people became aware of the rapid development of new knowledge and the need for processing and storing it, that conscious design of language began, with nomenclatures and taxonomies being explicitly discussed and fixed. At the same time — but in this case without conscious design — new ways of meaning evolved in the construction of figures and sequences.

Unequal Awareness Of The Metafunctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 569):

In addition to the different degrees of their awareness of different grammatical units, such as words and clauses, people are also not equally aware of the different kinds of functions in which the resources of language are organised. In particular, in constructing and reasoning about more conscious models, people are readily aware of those linguistic resources whose function it is to interpret and represent experience, those of the ideational metafunction; but they are much less aware of those of the other two metafunctions, the interpersonal and the textual — no doubt because these do not embody representations of experience but reflect our engagement with the world in different ways. However, although they tend to be overlooked when one comes to build a 'scientific' model of language and the mind, these other metafunctions are no less important than the ideational.

Models At Different Levels Of Awareness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 568):

There is thus a range of variation from our everyday folk models to scientific models, with expert models somewhere coming in between (Linde, 1987). Such models vary considerably in the degree to which we are consciously aware of them as models (cf. Whorf s, 1956, notion of critical consciousness). We are more aware of models that 'stand out' as belonging a particular subculture than of those that are pan of our everyday repertoire; and we are more aware of scientific models than of folk models. 

Whatever the scope and sophistication of a model, however, we are likely to be more aware of a model as a cultural construct than as a linguistic construct, since language is typically further from our conscious attention.