The Message in the Bottle and Lost in the Cosmos

by Walker Percy

  But a second event occurred. One day Helen learned in great excitement that the word water spelled in one hand was the name of the liquid flowing over the other hand. She then wanted to know the names of other things.

  Theorists of language behavior have been unable to give a coherent account of this event. When one tries to fit this triadic event onto a dyadic model, queer things happen. Ogden and Richards, for example, found themselves with a triangle, two sides of which represented proper “causal” relations between symbol and reference and between reference and referent. A dotted line was drawn between symbol and referent. The dotted line stood for an “imputed relation” between word and thing as contrasted with the “real” relation between word and organism, and organism and referent. The next step was to see man’s use of symbols as somehow deplorable. Korzybski constructed a curious quasi-ethical science of “general semantics” in which he berated people for the wrong use of symbols. Stuart Chase compared symbol-using man unfavorably with his cat Hobie.

  One might suppose that a science of language behavior must first determine what sort of behavior is taking place before issuing moral judgments about it.

  Three men have a toothache.

  One man groans.

  The second man say, “Ouch!”

  The third man says, “My tooth aches.”

  Now it may be unexceptionable to say that all three men emitted responses, the first a wired-in response, the second and third learned responses.* But if one wishes to give a nontrivial account of language behavior, it does not suffice to describe the second and third utterances as learned responses. What kind of a learned response is a sentence and how does it differ from other responses?

  Nor does it suffice to describe the two events in Helen Keller’s childhood as instances of learning by reinforcement.

  The greatest obstacle to progress in semiotic has been the loose use of analogical terms to describe different events without specifying wherein lies the similarity and wherein lies the difference. To use a term like response analogically is to risk a spurious understanding of matters that are in fact little understood and difficult to investigate.

  One recalls Chomsky’s reaction to Skinner’s Verbal Behavior:

  Anyone who seriously approaches the study of linguistic behavior, whether linguist, psychologist, or philosopher, must quickly become aware of the enormous difficulty of stating a problem which will define the area of his investigation, and which will not be either trivial or hopelessly beyond the range of present-day understanding and technique.

  The following is a loose set of postulates and definitions which I take to be suitable for a behavioral schema of symbol use and which might be adapted from Peirce’s theory of triads. Recognizing the peculiar difficulties that regularly attend such enterprises—not the least source of confusion is the fact that unlike any other field of inquiry language is fair game for everybody, for formal and factual scientists, for logicians, linguists, learning theorists, semanticists, syntacticians, information theorists, and, alas, even for philosophers—I accordingly offer these propositions with the minimal expectation that they will at least suggest an alternative, a way of thinking about man’s use of signs which is different from the standard treatment and, I trust also, less dispiriting.

  The Peirce scholar will note certain omissions and divergencies. There are two main departures from Peirce’s theory. (1) No account whatever is given here of Peirce’s ontology of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness in terms of which his semiotic is expressed. This omission I take to be justified by the desirability of using only those concepts which have operational significance for behavioral science. Accordingly, what is offered is not a comprehensive theory of signs but only a very tentative account of sentence utterance, that is, sentences considered as items of behavior. (2) The emphasis is clinical, that is, upon mistakes, misperceptions of sentences in their transmission from sender to receiver. There are two reasons for this emphasis. One is that the clinical encounter, that of therapist and patient, is the recurring paradigm in this essay. The other is that mistakes suggest a useful method of exploring this treacherous terrain. There are different kinds of mistakes and there are different kinds of variables in the communication process. Perhaps one may be taken as evidence of the other. A good way to study auto mechanics is to study auto breakdowns. Vapor locks, short circuits, transmission failures may be the best evidence that there are such things as carburetors, electrical systems, and gears—especially if the mechanic can’t lift the hood.

  1. The basic unit of language behavior is the sentence.

  A word has no meaning except as part of a sentence. Single-word utterances are either understood as sentences or else they are not understood at all. For example, when Wittgenstein’s Worker A says to Worker B, “Slabs!” Worker B understands him to mean, send slabs!—or perhaps misunderstands him to mean, I already have slabs.

  If I say the word pickle to you, you must either understand the utterance as a sentence—this is a pickle, this is a picture of a pickle, pass the pickles, tastes like a pickle—or you will ask me what I mean or perhaps say, “What about pickles?”

  1.1. A sentence utterance is a coupling of elements by a coupler.

  The subject-predicate division* is not the only kind of coupling which occurs in sentences.* Not only can symbols be coupled with symbols; symbols can also be coupled with things or classes of things. Peirce’s example: A father catches his child’s eye, points to an object, and says, “Balloon.”

  1.2. A sentence utterance is a triadic event involving a coupler and the two elements of the uttered sentence.†

  1.21. If a dyadic relation is abstracted from a triadic relation and studied as such, the study may have validity as a science, but the science will not be a science of triadic behavior.

  For example, a neurologist may study the dyadic events which occur in the acoustic nerve of a person who hears the sentence The King of France is bald. The result of such a study may be a contribution to the science of neurology, but it will not be a contribution to the science of triadic behavior.

  A logician may abstract from the speaker of a sentence, study the formal relation between the terms of the sentence and what is entailed by its assertion. His study may contribute to the science of logic, but it will not contribute to the science of triadic behavior.

  A professor writes a sentence on the blackboard: The King of France is bald. The class reads the sentence.

  If one wishes to study this sentence utterance as an item of behavior, it does not suffice to abstract from the professor and the class and to study the semantics and syntax of the sentence. If one considers the sentence utterance as an item of behavior, one quickly perceives that it is a pseudo sentence. The sentence may have been uttered but it does not assert anything. For one thing, the phrase the King of France does not refer to anything, since there does not presently exist a king of France. For another thing, a second condition of bona fide sentence utterance is lacking. As Peirce said, asserting a sentence is something like going before a notary and assuming responsibility for it. No one imagines that the professor has done this.

  Many of the philosophical puzzles about sentences have arisen from the failure to distinguish between actual sentence utterances and professors uttering pseudo sentences in classrooms.

  1.3. A name is a class of sounds coupled with a thing or class of things.

  There is no necessary relationship between a name and that which is named beyond the coupling of name and thing by namer.

  1.31. It is the peculiar property of a name, a class of sounds, not only that it can be coupled with a class of things but also that in the coupling the sound is transformed and “becomes” the thing.*

  The word glass sounds brittle but it is not. The word brittle sounds brittle but it is not.

  The word sparkle seems to sparkle for English-speakers but not for Germans. The word funkeln seems to sparkle for Germans but not for English-speakers.†

  1
.311. A symbol must be unlike what it symbolizes in order that it may be transformed and “become” what is symbolized.

  The sound cup can become a symbol for cup. A cup cannot be a symbol for cup.

  1.4. The coupling relation of a sentence is not like any other world relation. Yet—indeed for this very reason—it may symbolize any world relation whatever, subject only to the context of utterance and the rules of sentence formation.

  1.41. A sentence may mean anything it is used to mean.

  Thus, the sentence baby chair uttered by a two-year-old can be reliably understood by its mother as asserting within different contexts any number of different relationships. It can also be understood as a command or a question. Some possible meanings of the two-word telegraph sentence baby chair:

  That is a baby chair (chair for the baby).

  That is a little chair.

  Baby is in his chair.

  Baby wants his chair.

  Where is baby chair?

  Bring baby chair.

  Bring chair for baby.*

  1.42. The coupling relation of a sentence is not isomorphic with the world relation it symbolizes.

  It is true that the sentence John loves Mary is a coupling of sentence elements (a child could say John Mary and be understood if John was loving Mary at the time) referring to a dyadic relationship between John and Mary.

  But it is also true that although the sentence John gives a ring to Mary refers to a triadic relation obtaining between John, the ring, and Mary, the sentence is still a coupling of elements: (1) we are speaking about John; (2) we are saying something about him.

  It is also true that although the sentence John plays bridge with Mary and Ted and Alice refers to a tetradic relation obtaining between John and Mary and Ted and Alice, the sentence is still a coupling of elements: (1) we are speaking about John; (2) we are saying something about him.*

  1.5. When one studies dyadic behavior, i.e., the learned response of an organism to stimuli, it is proper to isolate certain parameters and variables. These include: amplitude of response, latency of response, frequency of stimulus, reinforcement, extinction, discrimination, and so on.

  But if one considers triadic behavior, i.e., the coupling of a sentence by a coupler, a different set of parameters and variables must be considered.

  There follow below some of these parameters and variables.

  1.51. Every sentence is uttered in a community.

  The community of discourse is a necessary and nontrivial parameter of triadic behavior.

  This is not the case in dyadic behavior. For example, to speak of a “community” of organisms responding to each other by signals may be true enough, but it is also to use words trivially, analogically, and contingently. Thus, it may not be false to say that an exchange of growls between polar bears takes place in a community of polar bears. It is trivial to say so, however, because it is possible to think of bears responding to stimuli outside a community, e.g., to the sound of splitting ice, in the same way we think of bears responding to growls.

  But it is impossible to think of an exchange of sentences occurring otherwise than between two or more persons.

  1.511. In triadic behavior, the dimension of community can act as either parameter or variable.

  It is a parameter, for example, in an ongoing encounter between therapist and patient: the community does not change.

  It is a variable when the community varies. The meaning of a sentence can very well be a dependent variable, depending on the independent variable, the changing community.

  For example, the patient utters the following sentence to the therapist: My wife bugs me. This sentence may be uttered as a constative sentence asserting a state of affairs between patient and wife.

  On the following day, however, at a group session at which both patient and wife are present, the same sentence is both uttered by patient and received by all present with another or at least an added meaning. The new meaning, moreover, is a function of the new community. Thus, it not only asserts a relation between patient and wife; it is also delivered and received as an attack, a bugging of wife and a wife being bugged.

  1.52. A signal is received by an organism in an environment. A sentence is received and uttered in a world.

  When Helen Keller learned that water was water, she then wished to know what other things “were”—until the world she knew was named.

  1.521. An environment has gaps for an organism, but the world is global, that is, it is totally accounted for, one way or another, rightly or wrongly, by names and sentences.

  A chicken will respond to the sight of a hawk but not to the sight of a tree. But a child wishes to know what a tree “is.”

  A chicken does not know whether the earth is flat or round or a bowl, but a man, primitive or technological, will account for the earth one way or another.

  1.522. Sentences refer to different worlds.

  A sentence may refer to the here-and-now world, a past world, a future world, an imaginary world, a theoretical world.

  There are often cues or referring words in the sentence which indicate its world.

  That is a balloon. (Present world)

  President Kennedy was assassinated. (Past world)

  Communism will disappear. (Future world)

  Once upon a time there lived a king. (Fictional past world)

  There was this traveling salesman. (Fictional world, joke)

  In this dream I saw a burning house. (Dream world)

  If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. (Hypothetical world)

  The square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the opposite sides. (Abstract world)

  Once upon a time is a referring phrase which clearly specifies its world for the listener. That in That is a balloon is a referring word which indicates something being looked at or pointed at. But not all sentences have referring words which specify the world of the sentence. In any case a world must be supplied by the listener. Some sentences are ambiguous. Thus a patient may say to his therapist:

  This traveling salesman was hoping to meet a farmer’s daughter.

  The sentence may be: (1) the beginning of a joke, (2) an account of a dream, (3) a facetious but nonetheless true declaration of lust by the patient, who is in fact a traveling salesman.*

  1.523. Since a sentence entails a world for both utterer and receiver, both utterer and receiver necessarily see themselves as being placed vis-à-vis the world, A sentence utterer cannot not be placed vis-à-vis the world of the sentence. If he is not placed, then his relation to the world of the sentence is the relation of not being placed.

  Some sentences are uttered and received in the everyday world of marketplace and fireside.

  Broker: IBM is up two points.

  Husband: The baby is crying, dear.

  Other sentences, e.g., scientific propositions, are uttered, so to speak, out of the world, that is to say, from a posture abstracted from the everyday world, or as the scholastics used to say, sub specie aeternitatis. From this posture world items tend to be seen not as consumer articles or sources of need-satisfactions but rather as specimens to be classified or events to be arrayed in causal chains. Even concrete sentences, uttered from this posture, are received as propositions in hypothetico-deductive systems.

  Chemist A to Chemist B: The temperature is now 102!

  This sentence is not a comment on the weather but is rather an evidential sentence, perhaps an observation of a pointer reading at the end of an experiment which serves to confirm a hypothetico-deductive system.†

  The peculiar vocation of the therapist requires that he listen to both kinds of sentences, distinguish one from the other, and respond accordingly.

  Thus the sentence

  After what happened yesterday, I’ve decided that life is not worth living.

  is open to one of several readings. It may be the serious expression of a decision by one man in the world to another. Perhaps the patient intends to commit suicide. Mor
e likely, it is uttered by way of a general complaint and to pass the time of day. But perhaps also it could be uttered as a data sentence, i.e., a product of the joint patient-therapist investigation of the patient’s illness. The patient is saying: I have indeed reached a decision but rather than act on it by committing suicide I am going to play the language game of analysis and offer it as data. The therapist in turn is required to decide on the spot whether the sentence (1) is a cry for help, (2) asserts commonplace low spirits, (3) offers data for the language game of analysis, or (4) is all three.

  It will be seen in this context that Sullivan’s description of the psychiatrist as a participant-observer is in fact an accurate characterization of the semiotic options available in the therapist-patient encounter.

  1.53. Every sentence is uttered and received in a medium.

  The medium is a nontrivial parameter or variable in every transaction in which sentences are used. The medium is not necessarily the message, but the message can be strongly influenced by the medium.

  In learned or instinctive behavior, stimulus S1 is received by an organism which in turn responds as it has learned or been wired to respond. To a similar stimulus S2 it responds similarly according as S2 resembles S1. A dog responds to his master’s whistle or to a recording of his master’s whistle in the same way.

  But the sentence utterance I need you can provoke varying responses according as the medium varies through which it is transmitted.

  If the President says to me, “I need you!” my response will vary according as the message reaches me over television or by way of a person-to-person phone call—even though the acoustic and phonemic properties of the two utterances may be identical.

  1.54. Every sentence has a normative dimension.

  The true-or-false property which Aristotle ascribed to propositions is only one of the norms of sentence utterances. A sentence may be true or false, significant or nonsensical, trite or fresh, bad art or good art, etc.