In 1964, in his essay "The logical categories of learning and communication" (cph. "Steps to an ecology of mind, The University of Chicago Press), Gregory Bateson left us these words:
" Insofar as behavioral scientists still ignore
the problems of 'Principia Mathematica',
they can claim approximatively
sixty years of obsolescence..."
Those sixty
years have today become approximatively a century: all the same it doesn't
really seem that the problems addressed in 1903 by Russell and Whitehead
in their 'Theory of the Logical Types' and then continued by Carnap and
Tarsky in what is known as 'Theory of the Language Levels', are still
accorded all the attention they deserve.
To outline it, and as it concerns us here, the Theory of the Logical Types
says that in inter-individual relationship systems some problems admit
a hypothesis of resolution on various levels, and these are the Logical
Levels. As soon as these hypotheses become operative or take on a communication
value, the distinction between all the various levels must be respected,
because if a problem is treated on an incorrect logical level, there unavoidably
arise some disorders and paradoxes. Therefore, given the disorders and
paradoxes which mark much of actual collective behaviour patterns, it
seems indeed to be logical to re-visit the theory at issue.
The logical
level of intervention is, in this case, the time when the personality
of young individuals starts to develop. At this time, it is inclined towards
two different traits: either rigid psychodependent, or autonomous and
self-conscious, "flexible".
One can see from the analysis of some relationship problems still unsolved
-- from drugs addiction to medicines, to ecological crisis, to politics,
to culture and fundamentalism itself -- that their solution primarily
infers the 'personality' factor; that the family educational level must
be treated on a separate level because it seems to take precedence over
the other considered problems.
Before pointing out a global solution to this complex problem, according to the Logical Types Theory, a distinction must be made between the different logical levels where it is articulated. In this case the levels to be considered are two: that of the "giving" of drugs by organized criminals, and that of the "having" of drugs by potential addicts. If a resolution hypothesis is restricted only to one of these levels, it will plainly only be partial. To be complete, it must be compatible with every logical requirement of both logical levels, as shown in Fig. 1 below:
The chart
in fig. 1 is divided into two parts on its vertical axis.
Its upper part shows the level of the feasible interventions against people
giving drugs, and therefore it identifies a distinct and peculiar logical
level. In turn, this 'giving' level is itself divided into two fields,
each of them indicating one of the two opposite trends where the public
debate about drugs identifies itself today.
The lower part of the chart identifies a second logical level; that of
feasible interventions on whoever may present a demand for 'having' drugs.
It is also divided into two fields, each indicating one of the two psychological
traits of the potential addicts: this further distinction answering the
pragmatic necessity of identifying the kind of personality most resistant
to the risk of drug addiction. Regarding that necessity, we surely know
the flexible autonomous personality as the more resistant as opposed to
the rigid closed and psycho-dependent one. (This specification comes from
the Circular 20/10/'84 n.84 of the Italian Ministry of Health "Indications
to interventions of prevention against medicine and drug addiction", published
in the Italian Republic's Official Gazette n. 255 on 31/10/1990, which
then became an integral part of Italian Law 309 of 9th October 1990, which
indicates that the educational messages aimed at developing in children
a flexible autonomous personality, capable of critical and active comparison,
must be sustained.)
Today, the
debate about drugs remains restricted, however, to a more or less repressive
intervention on the level of the 'giving' of drugs only, and it fails
to touch on the direct responsibilities of the family in the formation
of the child's personality. It should, however, be clear that both the
different orders of intervention, the 'giving' and the 'having' levels,
are not competitive but complementary. Similarly, it is clear that any
intervention on the 'giving' level could never be decisive while families
continue to represent endless reservoirs of children who are offered up
without defence to the world of drugs, without their children being provided
with the needed defence of a personality fortified with more suitable
characteristics. Only radical intervention by way of primary prevention
aimed at developing the personality of potential addicts' towards a more
suitable direction can provide a definite solution to this grave problem.
Today, the educational Institution seems only to intervene in schools
without investigating more deeply the responsibilities of the Family as
the first educational agency where the child's personality begins to take
its form. It is therefore necessary to teach parents how to educate their
children to prevent their potential desire for drugs, and how to provide
them with an autonomous and active defence against those who would offer
drugs to them. In that sense, a correct analysis of this problem must
concern both the logical levels of 'giving' and 'having' drugs; and if
one wants to define a comprehensive strategy of prevention, it must be
extended to all educational structures starting right from the family.
In other words, we need a greater systemic consciousness of both the logical
levels at which the drugs problem presents itself.
According
to the same kind of analysis, an intervention on the 'having' level also
has a precise application against the excessive and unjustified demand
for sometimes objectively useless or wrongly used medicines. According
to the WHO, today the occurrence of sicknesses linked to an excessive
and/or improper use of medicines amounts to 25 % of all illnesses. Hence
a considerable economic problem of health policy arises because it increases
costs without lowering the risk/benefit ratio. We certainly know that
the widespread use of many pharmaceutical products depends not on their
pharmacological effect only, but also on a "Placebo Effect" which has
a suggestive and rewarding nature. Furthermore, this is always inherent
in the physician/patient relationship, so that the latter very often pushes
for a prescription. Yet the responsible Authority extends its control
only as far as the pharmacological properties of medicines. In this way
it is active only on the 'giving' logical level, and doesn't appear interested
in investigating the psychological process upon which the user bases his
need for a Placebo.
From this it follows that there is a lack of intervention at the 'having'
logical level. It is clear that the provision of consistent information
about the "Placebo Effect", hidden as it always is in each request for
medical services, could increase the self-consciousness of potential addicts
of medicines and drugs and would not fail to result in a decrease in their
psychodependence on medicine (See also: "About the connection between
pharmaco-dependence, Placebo Effect and psychological dependence", Bulletin
of Pharmaco-toxico-dependence and Alcoholism n 4-5-6/1988, 315, Italian
Ministry of Health, Rome).
Furthermore
the common hypothesis of intervention in today's ecological crisis in
the light of the possible intervention levels discussed, and of the two
possible psychological types in the 'having' logical level, shows the
importance of the above kind of analysis.
In Figure 2 below, the 'giving' level refers to the Institutions responsible
for the major economic choices of our society. The 'having' level refers
to the single individual, according to the two possible traits of his
personality, either strictly psychodependent or autonomous and flexible:
Apart from
industrial pollution that is the consequence of consumerist policies ('giving'
logical level), in this case we must consider the prevailing ecological
damage resulting from the consumerist attitude of the individual ('having'
logical level).
If indeed the imminent crisis is due to an accumulation of wrong behaviouron
the part of countless single individuals as conditioned by consumerism,
its solution must be found in a greater systemic wisdom; not only in public
institutions responsible for collective economic choices, but most of
all in the individual consumer who plainly participates in the social
system at a 'having' logical level. Plainly, at this operating level there
must be an intervention of information aimed at developing in each single
individual those endowments of knowledge, critical autonomy and flexibility
which can only allow the latter to modify her possibly wrong existential
customs.
A debate has been initiated in Italy - but with very dramatic effects even in other countries - on the question of whether the current constitutional order should remain unchanged, or whether it must move towards reform of democratic institutions. Also in this case, the distinction between logical levels and the reference to the development of the individual's personality show their important operating inference:
In Fig. 3
above, the 'giving' Logical Level belongs to the social operators, who
are represented by political parties.
These can be divided in two opposite categories in accordance with the
different political programs by which each political party is characterised.
The 'having' Level shows the two different kinds of personality theoretically
admissible in anyone who demands to be led by a party and expresses one's
wish by voting:
It is indeed clear that some indespensible reforms which are today on the table could miss all their function and effectiveness if they were to be conducted only on a 'giving' level and were presented to people marked by a rigid, dependent personality, adapted to passive delegation and welfare, unable to partecipate consciously and responsibly in the social context - and vice versa.
The distinction between the 'giving' and 'having' logical levels and between the rigid psychodependent conservative personality and the flexible autonomous one on the 'having' level, seem therefore to offer a modern analytical approach to a structural understanding of many important relational problems which could otherwise be hard to solve. Hence a way is open to systemic knowledge which makes it possible to put into effect the hypothesis of a unitary solution to many social problems of considerable importance; from drugs to medicines, from the institutional to the ecological crisis and, above all, to the same human evolution and "flexibility", opposite to fundamentalism, seen as the final aim of cultural 'giving'.
Notice that in Fig. 4, the 'giving' level does not report to the various cultural outputs since, in this particular case, a twin distinction of simple variants is no longer possible because of the huge number of variants in which artistic and teaching outputs and information are articulated as a rule. It reports instead to the general attitude of the individual's approach to knowledge: either rigidly dependent on "the given truth" -- as the "fundamentalist" rule -- or suitable for critical thinking and self-consciousness, in a word: "flexible". We must remark that the cultural product qualifies itself solely by its critical and dialectical content, able to encourage autonomous and flexible behaviour. And so, with much difficulty, it can permeate an individual characterised by a rigid psychodependent personality:
It is moreover obvious that one's approach to culture depends on the personality of the user: how one is capable of interaction on one's 'having' level. Indeed, if the user of culture goods possesses an autonomous flexible personality, he/she is going to have many more possibilities to convey the cultural message on the basis of its best and noble evolutionary aims than the fundamentalist who approaches any knowledge issue with a rigid psychodependent personality. It is indeed the standard level of communication which the "personality" factor affects, be it more or less rigid dependent or more or less autonomous flexible. Indeed, this factor determines the individual's degree of permeability to the learning instruments of themass media, of school, and of the family.
This remark
should indicate the need for official education policy-makers and cultural
operators to look more carefully for this particular problem whose roots
are upstream of customary cultural information; that is, they must recognise
the utility of rationally qualifying the personality traits of those who
are to receive the cultural message before that message is communicated.
This particular side of the problem leads unavoidably to the context in
which a person's first educational formation happens: the Family.
So a new opportunity of intervention is available for those working in
the field of psychology; that of critically analyzing the old conventional
family pattern of education and considering the clear inadequacy of this
very important factor in guiding the personalities of young individuals
towards a "flexible" approach to culture and knowledge.
So emerges the overwhelming need to point out clearly what is the most suitable kind of personality for participation in the social fabric. The constant presence of this particular factor in all the previous examples indicates its probable framework function for the generality of relational systems. In fact, the importance of this factor is linked to the possibility of action at the appropriate operating level, i.e. the possibility of putting into action an educational practice which would allow parents to guide and form the child's personality towards the desired direction. It is thus indispensable to revise existing educational family patterns to point out to parents what is the more suitable for forming stronger personalites in future generations. The family educational patterns are shown on the 'giving' level in Fig. 5 below:
To the formative
aims, we must pay great attention to the nature of the environmental pressures
acting at the time when the child's mind-frame is in the process of setting
in its final arrangement.
This environmental pressure is clearly the result of demands parents make
for a child to consent, as those demands are expressed in the educative
communication relationship. The parent's more or less compulsory demands
for consent correspond to two logical variants of family pattern.
1. The first
variant, which I call "Subjective Educational Practice", identifies a
family framework which is closed to dialogue, characterized by the rigid
application of the "No-contradiction Principle" as the compulsory demands
for consent firstly between the parents themselves, and then between the
parents and their child.
2. The alternative variant, which I call "Objective Educational Practice",
identifies a more flexible family framework, open to dialectical comparison
and to reciprocal tolerance of every possible difference of opinion.
In 1. the parents, being the subjects of the family educational practice, provide the family values (including food) according to their initiative and by thier authority and this is mostly independent of any conscious participation by the child, who is the object of the educational practice.
In 2. the family values are given to the 'object' of the educational practice, the child, only after he/she has exspressed a responsible and conscious demand.
Both the above variants of educational family patterning belong to the same logical level, that of "'giving' family values. Also in this case, as shown in Fig. 5, the 'having' logical level is given by the two different theoretically admissible kinds of personality. In this last particular case, these depend on the educational function, i.e. on the two different educational family patterns shown on the 'giving' logical level. Therefore this last case is different from all the others considered above.
In fact, in the particular case of the family, the two levels of 'giving' and 'having' are tied together by a cause/effect sequential ratio. According to Logical Types Theory, this particular difference puts the educational problem of children's personality formation at a logical level which must be distinguished from the others we have considered. Indeed, to avoid disorders and paradoxes, the logical level regarding the family pattern of educative communication must be considered as early as possible, both for the precocious age at which family environmental pressure has a more pronounced effect on the mental formation of children, and for the greater preparatory and preventive importance of the personality formation as compared to every other level of social problems.
The Theory of Logical Types therefore offers a consistent tool for the structural and systemic analysis of the growth of knowledge and of the need for progress in today's society because it allows a modern and unitary approach to some of today's most important problems; and especially for the so-called "fundamentalist" because of its dramatic consequences and the danger to humankind's survival.
Hence there
is a great urgency to inform parents that two different educational family
models are plainly practicable: one is based on compulsion and is closed
to dialogue; the other is open to dialectic comparison and is more apt
to develop in children a flexible personality capable of self-determination
and of self conscious choices.
The knowledge of both these variants gives families the real possibility,
through a wiser use of language in educational communication patterns,
to choose a more appropriate educational family model and to have an influence
on the rational strengthening of the child's personality.
Therefore this issue should take precedence over all other social policies, shown here as interventions on the 'giving' level, because it constitutes a contribution of a general and prior order to the solution of many important relational problems. Specifically, it would seem very necessary to suggest that interested operators engage with all Family organizations and other Institutions responsible for Education Policy in a thorough debate on the above matter.
Antonio
Rossin
Neurologist - Family Doctor
45010, Ca' Vendramin (RO)
Italy
www.flexible-learning.org
Last update: 06/17/03
