Instantly,
some progress is being to close this grap, and to unravel The Mysteries Of The
Living Brain (see, e.g, 4, 64)
But
even as scientists begin to write ethnografies for robots and to explore
mathematically , biologikathe structure of “memory” (61, 64, 79)-of internal
models of reality-many facet of mind resist formal represrntation.
Interestingly, it is not the high intelletive logical functions of mind, but
the evolutionarily old, unconscious, “automatic” functions that resist analysis.
That
suggests that there may be some fundamental obstacles, perhaps more
evolutionary than Godelian”, to our laying bare in any formal way what humans
“know” that enables them to do what they do, George miller’s warnings vividly
suggest the dilemma ;
Given
that we can knoe rules that have not yet been formulated [as in our implict
knowledge of grammatical rules], couldwe know rules that govern the operations
of the human mind that the human mind, given its present level of inteligence
an symsolic machinery, cannot make implicit? (58, pp.192)
The
point is not to digres about artificial intellgence researh,but to warn that despite a vast concentration of
brainpower, the possibility of analyzing a cultural system in any omplete sense
and discoveringfand describewng its stucture remainsa far on the horizon-and
may forever remain so. To abstractout a levelof “cultural symbols”in theway
Shnedier proposes seems tp me to offer aspurious sense of escape from this
dilemm. That the anthropologist’s mind can invent such a “level” attests to
remarkable powers that make humans human: but it does little to clarify how
they perceive, think, and act.
It
is partly Geertz realization that the cultural grammars of the “ new
ethnographers” are so impossible to achieve in the face of what humans know
about their world-the subtle shading of understanding and mood and meaning that
defy representation in formal algorithms-that leads him to explaination. I
disagree with him if that means abandoning cyberneticians the task of
progressively tilling in those segment and sectors that yieldto understanding
they will do so less well wihtout our collaboration than they would if we
shared wiht them our insights into the varying patterns and richness of
cultural exprecience. But i agree withj him that at those enterprises real
humans in real settings.
6.
A final urgent argument for embedding an ideational conceptual of culture in
the real social and ecological world is that “culture”like other heuristic
concepts of social science, should be potentially self-exthinguishing like the
linguists notion of competence, it may in the longr run turn out to be a
scaffolding that needs to be dismantled when more solid and enduring structure
can be built.
It
remains an open question to what degree human action actually is guided by a
general conceptual code, a theory of the world and the game of social life that
an be disentangled from the particularities and immediacies of each
individula’s unique experience and life space. John haviland’s recent study of
gossip in Zinacantan from cognitive perspective poses important doubts:
We
ordinarily have thought of one’s cultural competence composed of codes . . .
.the conceptual schemata have, we assume, an indepedent existence prior to any
particular configuration of animals, any set of actual kin, any actual
political operation . . . but in the gossip the . . . contingencies determine
the general principle-for they are all there is. In gossip, the world becomes
more than ideal schemea and codes . . . much of an actor’s cultural competence
rest on a vast knowledge contingent
fact, raw unconnected trivia . .
.
Wacthing
people operate on their cultural rules through gossip also shows us folly of
our belief that culture providessets
of ideal rules which apply to particular configurration of poeple, places,
things, and events. The contingencies of life themselves restructur the rules,
even change them in time . . . in gossip
. . . . one’s whole understanding of the cultural code depends on the
particular setting, on the configuration of past experince and knowledge, which
is suddenl relevant to the application of rules and standart to the fact in
question (43, pp, 279-280)
Do human actors conceptualize”the system” in
some systematic way an use this generalized model to guide action and
understanding in concret situations? If not. A generalized composite model of
cultural competence will in the long run serve us badly in understanding
performence in the concret settings of real life. We do not yet know.
Haviland
reaches a conclusion similar to Geertz : that at least for the present. We can
best aspire to understanding and interpretation. Not to prediction and
explanation (Gossip. At once text and native commentary on texts. Offers
particularly rih insight) moreover, it may be precisely in exploring the
phenomenological world of the familiar and immediate, the everyday and mundane,
that we stand to gain the most crucial knowledge of how humans perceive,
understand, and act.
CONCLUSION
We
need to work, i think, on many fronts. Interpreting cockfight in Bali and
Gossip in Zinacantan illuminates the human condition from one important
perspective, even though-or pershap because- what makes it possible for
anthropologists and participants cannot be neatly codified. Studies of ritual
and ecological adaption in new guinea illuminate another side, an
interconnectedness we would, wiht less broad view of the systematic complexity
of nature, have missed. At the same time, attempts to map cultures as
ideational systems in the light of an emerging understanding of mind and brain
should enable clearer insightinto organization of experience and the nature and
depth of variation in te thought worlds of men.
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