Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

Much of the body of philosophical thought down through the ages has been an account of thinking men attempting to define the relationship between their thoughts and the world around them. They question the nature of reality and whether absolute truth can even exist. Since philosophy is largely the effort to explain the world, and because words perform such a critical role in creating those explanations, philosophers often confuse the role of language in the process of perception and awareness.

In its most basic sense philosophy provides an explanation of the world around us, defines how we relate to our environment, and provides the world view through which we interpret our perceptions of reality. Everyone sufficiently intellectually evolved to be aware that they are alive must adopt some sort of philosophy of life. Philosophy has played a critical role in the lives of those lacking the language skills of professional philosophers. This indicates that sufficient language skills to express a philosophy to others is not absolutely necessary for the individual to formulate a personal philosophy of life within his own mind.

In an ideal world, as mankind added to its accumulated knowledge and improved the technology base of its civilizations, the philosophical foundations of mankind's cultures should have similarly evolved to better explain man's evolving understanding and relationship with the real world. Given exposure to the same physical reality, disparate philosophies should also evolve toward a convergence as they each improve their accuracy.

If philosophy were solely the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct, it could be expected to evolve and mature as science and human cultures evolved and matured. But this has not been the universal case. Many philosophers continue to defend a human-centric perspective that places humanity at the center of a metaphysical universe even as science has frustrated man's ego driven desire to see himself as the center of the physical universe. There must be other motivations involved other than just the desire to find the most appropriate accommodation to the world around us. The key is that individuals tend to favor philosophies that validate their own situation and ambitions, and most positively explain their experiences. They are also only able to comprehend those philosophies that their personal level of intellectual maturity can accommodate.

Those who claim expertise in philosophical matters, having spent far too many years immersed in the vast accumulated wisdom of brilliant thinkers intermingled with the ravings of lunatics that constitutes classical philosophy, like to believe that philosophy is an extraordinarily complex and difficult discipline beyond the capacity of anyone but the most dedicated student. Couched in the lingua-obscura of the "professionals", otherwise simple and obvious concepts can certainly be turned into obscure abstractions that appear beyond the grasp of the common man. But philosophy has always played a role in the everyday lives of people - even for those who consider philosophy to be something for stuffed-shirt intellectuals, and believe what goes on in their own minds must be something else altogether.

One of the most pervasive characteristics of humans is the need to understand the world around them. However, our understanding hasn't always been very accurate. In fact, history indicates that for nearly all of the time we've inhabited the earth, just having an explanation has been far more important than its accuracy. Lacking the scientific capability to establish accurate explanations, our ancestors were nonetheless driven to create some sort of explanation even when the truth was unavailable.

In short, when faced with phenomena that we can't explain, we're driven to make something up by our basic need to believe we know what's going on. That we have always been able to perceive phenomena that our accumulated knowledge and language skills are unable to explain indicates that the ability of our brains to perceive is to some extent independent of our brain's language skills to accurately describe and explain that perception.

Research on epilepsy patients who have had the communication between the hemispheres of their brains surgically severed indicates that while the right brain handles the task of spatial perceptions - seeing the three dimensional world around it - the left brain handles the task of fabricating explanations for what the right brain is seeing.

When the hemispheres are no longer able to communicate through the surgically severed corpus callosum, the right brain is still capable of reacting to its perceptions even though it is unable to verbalize its perceptions or its reactions. Meanwhile, the left brain is still driven to fabricate explanations for what the right brain is doing - even when it has no way to actually knowing what's going on and its "explanations" become absurd stretches of imagination with no basis in reality.

This obsessive need to fabricate explanations even when faced with a total lack of valid information, would appear to explain the source of the many contradictory and too often absurd philosophies competing for control over the minds of their believers.

On the other hand, there are also indications that the nature of the first language a child learns can have a profound influence on the physical structure and function of that child's brain. Consider the state of the global computer software industry. As a low capital investment/low environmental impact/high return industry, software development is one of the most desirable businesses in the information age. Japan in particular has made gaining a dominant position in the industry a national priority. But unlike nearly every other industry the Japanese have targeted, software remains almost entirely the domain of those whose first language was Latin based - especially English.

India has never been a primary global competitor in the industrial age. Something about Indian society, geographic location, religion, etc. have kept it largely noncompetitive in traditional industrial industries. Certainly when compared to the similarly overpopulated resource hungry Japan, India's industrial industries have not been a success. However, when it comes to computer programming, India is rapidly becoming a world leader.

Anyone can be taught the terms and syntax of computer programming languages just like anyone can be taught to mix paints and hold a paint brush. But just like painting, computer programming requires more than just the basic ability to manipulate the tools of the trade. In order to write effective software the programmer must be able to think in the same structured logical way that computers operate, and then express those structured logical concepts using the terms and syntax of computer languages.

Industry leaders in India explain the success of their computer programming business relative to that of Japan as being due to the influence of language on the structure of the brain. As a language, English largely deals with concepts by assembling sentences out of smaller components that each carry some meaning but which are each insufficient for the overall intent. How the building blocks of language can be used is controlled by syntactic rules that also contribute to the function and meaning of the terms and components within a sentence. Multiple sentences combine to become paragraphs with paragraphs supplying a higher function than their component sentences, but which are still only parts of the whole.

A work written in English then becomes a complete whole composed of layers of assembled components that are themselves composed of smaller logical units, all of which are manipulated according to an at least partly logical syntax. This concept of language maps very well onto the current concepts of structured computer programming where operations are built out of high level functions that are themselves are built out of layers of ever more limited functions - ultimately working down to the basic level of on-off switching at which all digital hardware operates.

The pictograph languages of Asia, while obviously capable of expressing a wide range of complex concepts and perceptions, tend to address ideas as more completely self-contained symbols. A work written in a pictograph based language is much less a multilayered logical structure built up from smaller components than a work written in a Latin based language like English. As such the brains of those who learn a pictograph based language as their first language develop an internal organization that works fine for their "human" language but which is not particularly well adopted to deal with the far more simplistic and limited logic of the current state of computer technology.

Which brings me to the conclusion that while language is not necessary for the right brain to perceive the world around it, the type and functionality of the language skills of the individual do critically impact both the manner in which his left brain attempts to interpret his right brain perceptions, and his ability to express those interpretations outside of his own skull. Since each side of the brain receives the input from sensors on the other side of the individual, each side of the brain is capable of achieving some level of understanding/interpretation of the world independent of the other side. It's therefore possible to achieve some level of knowledge of the world without language, but language becomes necessary when attempting to explain that knowledge to our left brains. The knowledge that the right brain is capable of understanding but which is outside of the limitations of language to express also becomes outside of the ability of the left brain to understand.

How we think and what we have thought before profoundly influence what we are capable of thinking in the future, and how we will attempt to explain our perceptions to ourselves and others. This self-contained dichotomy within each of us, coupled with the structural influences of different human languages on the internal organization of the brains of those using them, would appear to at least partly explain the marked differences between what we commonly label eastern and western philosophical views on the nature of reality.

Since the nature of language can have such a profound effect on the thought processes of the user, it would follow that language is similarly important to the nature and functioning of societies. Just as in the dynamics any human group, societies composed of citizens who share similar perspectives and expectations tend to be more peaceful, stable, and efficient than those composed of individuals with dissimilar visions of what their society should be. To the degree that language impacts not only the means of expression but even the nature and content of what an individual can think, a common language would seem an increasingly important communication tool as a society grows in size and direct personal interactions decline as the glue that holds that society together.

The effects of language on individuals and societies would seem to explain why societies that share a common language tend to be more peaceful, stable, and efficient even when composed of racially mixed populations, while genetically similar populations artificially divided by language tend to suffer endless conflict. This also explains why groups with an interest in creating a perception of separation from society at large, or trying to differentiate themselves from other groups, commonly invent their own secret languages. Language can be both a factor that draws individuals together or drives them apart.

It's hardly possible that reality itself is different in the East and West. Nor do the sensory receptors of different races function in fundamentally different ways. This would seem to explain why we find similarities in nonverbal right brain perceptions across cultural lines. However, once the left brain gets involved in trying to explain biologically similar perceptions, we find substantial cultural differences. This would seem to indicate that the very different ways that Eastern and Western philosophies attempt to explain the world must be due more to the efforts of these different cultures to defend their existing prejudices and confirm their current situations than any intent or ability to more accurately explain reality. Fortunately for the long term prospects of the universe, reality continues to exist outside of the continuing difficulties of humans to accurately perceive and understand it.