Making Sense of the World – Four Modes of Human Rationality
by David Little
Table of Contents
Sensemaking
At this social moment, characterised as it is by such extraordinary change,
we should not be surprised to find that our understandings of how persons,
communities, organizations, and societal institutions make sense of their
lives is also undergoing dramatic change. Social scientists and those
working in the humanities are re-examining the connection between thinking
and acting in search of a more robust understanding of sensemaking congruent
with the chaotic times in which we now live. We will explore four distinct
but not separate types of intelligence employed by human beings as over
their lifespan they become members of numerous communities of practice
located in various organizations and societal institutions and participate
in activities situated within them. On the view of Communicative Action
presented here human beings are portrayed as intentional actors who continually
enter historical ongoing plays, develop the capacity to enact established
social roles, and, in conjunction with others critique the play as they
enact their parts. They are thought to employ four modes of human rationality
as they do so.
Types of Sensemaking
To this point in time, the historical process of human development is
thought to have spawned four forms of human rationality. First, some forty
to fifty million years ago, we were genetically programmed nonhuman primates
who possessed somatic intelligence. Then some fifty thousand years ago,
we evolved into human primates possessing language and the capacity to
make sense of our lives through storytelling, narrative intelligence.
As recently as the seventeenth century, we developed the capacity to isolate
a few aspects of a story and, through experimental protocols, explain,
predict and control them, scientific intelligence. Eventually in the mid
sixties we found ourselves in environmental and social jeopardy, and developed
the capacity to interrogate our intentions and actions by examining our
use of language in such a way as to reveal any over or under use of somatic,
narrative and scientific forms of thought and action, linguistic intelligence.
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Nonhuman primates feel, attend, perceive, remember and think in much the same way we do. Except that these capacities are automatically controlled by genetic imperatives. Nonhuman primates are unable to split themselves and as we do, from a distance, observe how they are feeling, attending, perceiving, remembering and thinking. Instead their "consciousness" is informed by a primordial rationality that guides the perpetuation of species. When aroused, our nonhuman primate ancestors have an automatic thought and action pattern, within which feeling and thinking is fused, that guides their mental, physical and social activity. Although as human primates we no longer have an automatic thought and action pattern where feeling, thinking and acting is fused, as human primates we still retain a quintessential initial biological or somatic reaction that over time has become somewhat devalued by contemporary western cultures. |
The principle to be understood regarding the use of primordial
or somatic intelligence by human beings is that we have an initial somatic
or "emotional" reaction to a problem or the imposition or suggestion
of change. This first impression has invaluable potential for the preservation
of community well being. Within this natural resistance to change lies
the capacity to prevent a loss of grounded ness in the reality of group
life that can easily be disrupted by unbridled technological or social
innovation. Ironically enough, our “gut response’ or capacity
to make sense somatically is the well spring of curiosity and heartbeat
of creativity when employed in conjunction with other modes of rationality.
We can enhance our understanding of somatic intelligence by envisaging
our bodies as having two dimensions. One an objectual body in that we
can turn it into an object that can be an instrument for achieving cultural
aims. "Hard bodies" come to mind here as an example where weight
training, dieting, and the use of supplements shape the body for competitive
athletic purposes or for display purposes. The other aspect is the organizmal
body that is not under our control, but functions to maintain grounded
ness, sanity, health, and general well being. Here we mean the spontaneous
form and action that is a matter of natural grace rather than discipline.
Human beings are thought to have three modes of expression, with each
mode having a vital function: language and gestures, laughing and crying,
and paling and blushing. The first is associated with our symbolic or
cultural life and the latter somatic two with our emotional life. Laughing
and crying, is one type of somatic intelligence. To a certain degree they
are involuntary reactions. Laughing often comes upon us when we encounter
life situations in which we are unable to make sense of them through our
conventional view of reality. We fall into a paroxysm that shakes us out
of our rigidified ways of thinking, and provides distance and a temporary
breather from the situation. This hiatus enables us to return to the situation
with renewed vigour and spirit to reconstruct it. The kind of laughter
here is of the spontaneous, uncontrollable type that issues from the belly,
in contrast to the socially contrived, polite type of laughter. Through
crying we are able to distance ourselves from situations in which we are
overwhelmed by emotions such as pity, devotion, and rage. And, ironically,
make it possible to deal with problems more objectively. The idea of weeping
may more adequately capture this type of crying. Both of these help us
to deal with the awfulness of certain cultural expectations around a given
event.
Paling and blushing, or becoming rigid or relaxing, is another all but
involuntary type of somatic intelligence. They are forms of communication
with our self regarding our emotional states, which lie beyond our culturally
influenced intentions. When we blush, we are signalling to ourselves,
as well as others, that we desire to move toward an object or person whereas
when we become pale, we are signalling that we wish to move away from
an object or person. The fact that these particular ways of expressing
ourselves can only come into being in the presence of and with confirmation
from, other human beings, affirms our earlier discussion about the role
of somatic intelligence in preserving our grounded ness. As we shall see
later, being aware of these involuntary, organizmal reactions on our part
can enhance our participation in the activities of an organization.
| Human beings make sense of their lives by creating stories that explain what has taken place in the past. As a basis for future actions, they also portray what can be expected to take place in the future. Stories, or narratives as they are more formally referred to, shape our mental functions. They tell us what to pay attention to, what parts of a thing are important, what to call these parts, and how they are related. So if we are to change our mental world and consequently our actions, we must reconstruct the narratives that are the bases for them. |  |
An ironic part of this storytelling intelligence is that
once we have told, or created, a story that resonates with us and hence
becomes the basis for our intentions and actions, it very rapidly becomes
"unconscious". This is so, in order that we do not have to constantly
refer to the story or intentions every time we act. The story, in a certain
sense, becomes erased and the action associated with it becomes almost
second nature. This aspect of narrative intelligence has its downside
in that stories that underpin our action are not easily made apparent.
So changing our action is not just a simple matter of implementing a new
plan. Before we can do this, we must also change our story about the matter.
The two are intricately intertwined.
There are essentially two types of narratives, the ideal or canonical
ones that are held as sacred by the culture and portray how things should
be done. And the exceptional narratives, the stories that tell how one
plays a societal role on a practical basis. The latter tells what it was
like getting the job done under real conditions, rather than the ideal
circumstances portrayed in the official, or as they are referred to, canonical
narratives. As you may already realise, the relations between them are
conflict-ridden and represent forces for change when mediated. We use
the term mediate to remind ourselves that we are never creating or telling
brand new stories; we are reconstructing the old ones using our reflection
on experiences encountered in attempts to enact the canonical narrative.
We can think of a story as being part truth and part fiction. The truth
part, verifiability, is how things actually happened. The fiction part,
verisimilitude, is how, in hindsight, things could have happened had we
known what we now know! Verisimilitude is a lifelike portrayal of how
it could have happened with the benefit of reflection. We tell a story,
or recount events after they happen. We tell it in a certain way that
allows us to capitalise on our mistakes, or experience. A good story is
told at the intersection of truth and fiction, or verifiability and verisimilitude.
As we shall see later, good exceptional stories constructed from practice
hold the potential to alter the canonical ones and transform our theories.
Narrative intelligence, or story telling, has four features that issue
from our somatic intelligence. Stories always portray action directed
toward a goal, agentivity. Things are arranged linearly so as to allow
for standardisation, sequentiality. Curiosity about breaches in standard
interaction is always in a narrative, plot. And a distanced view that
allows for a more objective recounting of experience is a constant, perspective.
Although the constraints of this brief overview of narrative intelligence
do not allow for further elaboration, the forerunners of these features
can be found in nonhuman primates.
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Human beings have the capacity to be objective when they are thinking about a problem. We become non-emotional about it, and focus our energies upon what is verifiable by entering the "scientific laboratory". We abstract the problem from our larger reality in order to get a more precise purchase on certain aspects of it by employing the assumption, "all other things being equal". That is, the influence of other influential factors is assumed to cancel each other out. A certain form of discipline is exercised through which we are able to screen out our feelings and imagination based on the narrative of the awesome power of science. |
Inside the "laboratory of the mind", with extraneous
factors removed, we are able to explain, predict, and control certain
aspects of a problem. We theorise within the limits of the laboratory
conditions under which only certain specified variables are considered
while others are factored out. This analysis of variance that accounts
for the influence of those specified variables we have chosen gives us
leverage in solving the problem through the implementation of a scientifically
grounded plan. With this theory generated from our thought experiment,
we enact a plan that, if it is a good one, produces desired results. Over
time, however, invariably the theory or plan runs into difficulties. These
snags in turn require more problem-solving endeavours calling for more
iteration of precise, non-emotional, scientific thought and action.
At some point in time our theory or plan begins to run out. All plans
and theories do this as they have depended upon the "all things being
equal" assumption. In a sense we have been able to rule out dramatic
change in order to gain the stability required for gradual, nonchaotic,
sane progress. When a theory or plan reaches a crisis state where its
results, over a period of time, have reached the point of diminishing
returns, we call upon our somatic and narrative intelligences to fashion
a new vision from which operations can be cast. We can think of this process
as rewriting or reconstructing canonical or institutional narratives in
order to make sense out of desnagging operations that were outside the
bounds of the conventional or canonical narratives.
From the point of view of types of sensemaking we have been pursuing thus
far, we can begin to see how gradual, or quantitative, change --problem-solving--
and dramatic, or qualitative, change --problem finding-- are related.
Initially, through our somatic and narrative intelligence, we "dream
up" a vision, or in more conventional scientific discourse, we create
an hypothesis through the "logic of discovery". We have now
fleshed out this notion of the logic of discovery in terms of somatic
and narrative intelligence that make it possible, through our organismal
and objectual bodies, to plug into the world of primordiality, our source
of imagination and creativity. And then, using our narrative intelligence,
we invent a story or vision that can be subsequently theorized and crafted
into an operational plan.
We test our plan or theory, when, by means of scientific intelligence,
we put the operating plan into action by isolating a few key variables
that we can manipulate by what scientists, or at least philosophers of
science, refer to as the "logic of verification”. In more prosaic
terms problem solving. We are now concentrating on a few important variables
and temporarily ignoring all others in order to ensure some practical
progress.
Scientific intelligence is mirrored in common sense. We deal with only
those aspects of a problem that are within our present knowledge base,
and then only those over which we can exercise some control. In this way
we are able to maximise our efforts. But there is a price to be paid for
the elegance of simplicity! As a renown social scientist once put it,"
We exclude --And what we exclude haunts us at the walls we set up. We
include --And what we include limps wounded by amputation. And most of
all we must live with our ghosts"
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Now we can begin to see how our somatic and narrative intelligence serve
as the sources of our creative capacity to dream up more inclusive visions
of where we might go. And our scientific intelligence is where our ability
to operationalize these dreams in a do-able, efficient, realistic fashion
comes from. Over time an organization's success is a function of a combination
of timely problem finding, or "magic", and tenacious problem
solving, or science. The relation between problem solving and problem-finding
is captured in the folk saying " If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
We only switch to the problem-finding mode when we are in deep trouble.
Being able to recognise when things are broke is what linguistic intelligence
is about.
| Being able to realise that our current view of sensemaking
is seriously in need of reconstruction through problem-finding and
not just adjustment for efficiency sake through problem solving is
connected to our capacity to describe our descriptions of reality.
These descriptions of how we are supposed to enact organizational
roles are cast in language that can be examined in the context of
their meaning, hence the label linguistic intelligence. If we believe we are intentional actors, that is we have a rationale for what we do that can be described in words, then the language we use to describe these intentions to ourselves and to others can be seen as a primary influence on our actions. |
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We can say that language influences or mediates rather
than that it controls our actions. By this we mean that although our intentions
guide our practice, practice inevitably diverges from our intentions,
or the theory, causing us to change our language and intentions so that
they more adequately reflect, or are more congruent with, the realities
of practice. The crucial relation to be understood here is between meaning
and action. They are always in a state of tension that stands open to
mediation. Recasting our folk knowledge, we can say that rather than "actions
speak louder than words", "words speak as loud as actions".
We can examine our language that describes our practice to ensure that
what we say we mean is what we really mean. We can do this by examining
the disparity between what we say and what we do, or between theory and
practice. A problem here, as we previously discussed, is that our language,
especially our narrative, over time becomes implicit or erased. And, as
actions occur in a complex world, they always transcend the meaning that
resides in our often-implicit descriptions of reality. So describing our
descriptions of reality is not an easy or straightforward task!
When the discrepancy between our descriptions and reality is not wide,
we continue on with our scientific problem-solving endeavours. In terms
of our previously mentioned maxim, "if it ain't broke don't fix it".
But how would we know when broke means broke? At strategic moments we
can examine our narratives, descriptions of reality that emanate from
them, and associated practice, or action, to determine whether our intentions
reflect an under use of somatic and narrative and an overuse of scientific
intelligence. We can do this by employing the notion of languages as discourses
that incorporate words, theories and narratives but also other components
of intentions such as the values we embrace, the way in which we hold
our bodies, the clothes we wear, and the attitudes we manifest. By so
doing we make our intentions more explicit and amenable to reconstruction.
Linguistic intelligence is a tool for reflecting on our intentions and
practice. It is dependent upon a view of the world that recognises the
inherent conflict between biology (somatic intelligence) and culture (narrative,
scientific, and linguistic intelligences) that, at any given historical
moment, can be overbalanced in favour of either one of these forces. It
is through an examination of our intentions that are manifested in our
everyday language and “official discourse" that we are able
to detect and mediate this conflict.
For amore indepth description of these concepts, click here.
©2003 David Little