What is to think?

We face a very large and difficult game, which resides in the distinction that it should be carefully establish between, on one side, the language itself. I mean the cognitive processes to the phrase, and in the other hand, the languages countless and arbitrarily codified by all the companies, such or such time of their history, languages which president to the interlocution. I insist on the fact well put you in custody, because we have here a real obstacle, to extent that the process we are going to try to hunt down below the languages, emerges only invested in uses codified in number almost incalculable. It was understood that when an English said “water” when a French says “eau,” there is, certainly, an obvious difference of vocabulary – The difference which is, it, sociology (more precisely of the sociolinguistics). It must, however conceive that one as the other testify to the same capacity to sign. Then you see where the difficulty comes: we must take care not to impute the sign which is equivalent to its use, and, for this, bring to between parentheses, everything that makes that “water” and “eau” are, sociologically, words belonging to two different languages. We must recognize that this parenthesis in the language is very difficult to operate!

That said; let us start with the specific of the traditional definition of the sign as association of itself and its meaning. We know, today, that this definition is totally inadequate: since the beginning of the XX century, in effect, very exactly since Ferdinand de Saussure’s work, we know that his and this sense is to analyze conversely, this means that we cannot cut one of the two sides of the sign without automatically cut the other. To give you an image which will help you to understand this phenomenon, write, for example, on a piece of paper the word “maintenant,” and, armed of a pair of scissors, cut the word after the syllable “main”: you will have, on one side, a word, that means, in a system like French, “head,” “foot,” “leg”, etc. , and in the other hand, another word that oppose it and means “taking,” “unleashing,” “will,” etc. That is what Saussure called the reciprocity of two “faces” of the sign of language, that was called the “meaning” (at the level of the sign) and the “meant” (at the level of the sense). Take again the syllable “main” and replace the initial letter by “p” or “b,” it is obvious that, in the French system, it means “hand,” “bread” and “bath” and it serves to a totally different meaning. And it is so for all the languages that, each have, certainly, their own grid analysis of sound and direction, but which the signifying units all have in common to possess this bifaciality which means that they are always its analyzed by of sense and meaning analyzed by the sound (it is what defines, in Saussure’s terms, the “immanence of the sign.”)

But there is more: what characterizes all the language units, whatever the language is, there is also biaxiality it governs its mutual oppositions as well as its combinations. Of course, again, I will be extremely schematic for you to suggest the thing. I will take the example of the sound produced by a music instrument. There are, in reality, two ways of defining a music note: If I push, for example, on the key “g” of a piano keyboard, the note I cannot be perceive only with the other notes that could be in his place and that there is a point. The substance of the note is a degree in a certain vertical scale, scale that is called a “range.” But the note also has a relative value of difference compared to those which are above ore the one that follows, and this is what makes it possible what is called “melody.” All its musical is therefore an interference of a range and a melody, or, if you want, an opposition or a contrast, of a vertical axis and a horizontal axis. In other words, there is no melody without a range, and there is no range without melody!

Well, this double and reciprocal screening of a focuses on the other is the own of all our particulars, no matter what is the language we practice. There is always, basically, a grammatical and logic analysis we learned, not without good sense, namely, that the elements of a statement had a “nature” – this means an identity (vertical axis) – and a “function” (horizontal axis), this means that these two axis contribute, each for their part to the functioning of a statement (I leave aside, to simplify the great innovation of the successors of Saussure which was to extend this idea of function to the vocabulary itself). Or, for example, the unit “bread” (must be done, here, completely divorced from the spelling, and imagine that we are equivalent of the note “g”) “bread” does not exist, as a verbal unit, because I can say “the bread” or “he brained,” which allows me to classify the first unit in the range of nouns (range in which, lexically “bread” is opposed to “brained,” “brain,” etc. ), and to classify the second in the range of verbs (range in which, “painting” is opposed to “coloring,” “smudge”, etc. ). But, conversely, if I do not have the range, I mean the principle of classification; I could not organize these two units as I have done. We can no classify, without a layout, not a layout without no classification, or, if you prefer, there is no analysis on one of the two axis without an analysis on the other, this means that the two axis to analyze conversely, exactly as the two sides. That is the first contribution of Jean Gagnepain to the knowledge of language, on the basis of the clinic aphasiologique.

I want to clarify that is in the Middle Age that the old analysis date the one that many of you may have practiced at school, ate least I did; analyze a sentence, it is was to isolate the elements, of course, by defining their “nature” and then their “functions.” The “nature” meant “this thing which is defined.” The function was the report. But in the other hand, it has kept this opposition of nature and function, which is what, makes laugh all the “modern” linguists.  Well, that are the modern linguists which are made of fools, because they had been retained something that was important, I mean an axis opposition between a classification of identities and, in the other hand, an enumeration of units. Therefore, the grammatical analysis, which comes in a straight line of Aristotle, has been maintained by the grammarians who have not blushing, up to the emergence of our “school teachers.” The former teachers we may have left in primary education, but we have at least learned something. And this was nothing! (It is true that they could not say a word of the projection of the axis.)

Bifaciality and biaxiality that is what defines what is called the structure of language, structure we must design as a purely and formal system, without any content: the faces and the axis do not have any existence butt a merely virtual. This prevents not, of course, the existence of their reciprocal analysis, reciprocal analysis proven by the results of the clinic aphasiologique.

But it is the same clinic which led Jean Gagnepain, not only to highlight the biaxiality to his own process of language, which was already a fantastic step comparing to Saussure, but to ask, in 1960-1970, the assumption (since scientifically verified) of the intervention, in the implementation of the sign, a third process: a dialectical process. What is it?

It is understood that signify the language units, is not the only to their virtual structure, it cannot be anything other than a mere “for-say.” Because to speak, is always speak of something, in other words, if, in the first time (first in the sense logical and not chronological) we fly out of our perceptive representations, thus acceding to the structure, we reinvest, then, this structure in the universe of “things,” I mean, in essence, in the world to say. In other words, the structure is the implicit mediation (“unconscious,” if you want) between the percept and the concept: design (conceptualize, some people say) is beyond our representations, we do ideas, putting things in report these ideas, and, therefore, we systematize. Jean Gagnepain called grammar this formal structure of the sign (its bifaciality and its biaxiality) and “rhetorical,” the reinvestment of its structure which allows us to develop a concept.

There are three very important details to bring to this quick presentation.

The first is that if, in the model of the sign prepared by Saussure, the concept is external to sign, in the model developed by Jean Gagnepain, the concept is an integral part of the sign: it is the result of his mediation implicit in the structure in the circumstances, in other words, it is the product of the reinvestment of the structure in the universe of things to say, while not ceasing not to participate in sign.

The second important precision is that, this reinvestment is never a concept that can be completely adhered to the thing (the word “dog” do not bite!), and it is what defines polysemy of signifying units (“I custody a dog of his bitch.”) Take, again, for example, the word “foot”: it has a plurality of meanings which a dictionary of the English language may try to make the turn (“the human foot,” “the foot of a table,” “the foot of a mountain” “the foot of the nose,” etc.) And it is the same with all our statements. If I say: “Ernestine feels the lavender”, I want to say that Ernestine breathes a bouquet of flowers of lavender, or that it is perfumed with water of lavender? Of course, my three examples are extremely simplistic, but they will be enough, I hope. To make you appear that what is called “the words” are absolutely not labels likely to stick to things: despite all the desperate efforts that we can provide to try to reduce this many meanings, which defines their fundamental impropriety, in order to reach absolute transparency of words, there will always remain between the words and things that we “play” (as we speak, for example, the game between two pieces of wood or between two mechanisms,) and fortunately, because this is the game, precisely, it allows us to think. You see, as well as thinking, it is to exploit (certainly, with more or less of happiness!) this irreducible and permanent game which exists between the language of which we have the faculty and what we sometimes, baptize “real.”

Finally, I remind you that this “game” which I have just you spoken can be more or less important. This game is in his maximum status when we tend to fold the world to say, the words that we have to say, it is minimum when we tend to bend our words to this same world to say. In a case, you have this dialog in Raymond Devos way: “- The sea raves – Well, it must be appeased!,” In the other cases, one will speak about nitric acid, sulfuric or hydrochloric acid, for example, formulations that are trying to “paste,” the more possible, to what we believe to be the reality. In other words, the reinvestment that we are doing in the “real” of the verbal structure is submitted to the two “referred” antagonists you know well: the referred that Jean Gagnepain calls, one, mythical, the other, scientific, and you see, already, that myth and science are also rational one and the other, to the extent that they are all two of the same faculty of design, in other words they are the product of the same process, which is the same of a verbal rationality.

If you approve this model of verbal rationality mediations; I have very quickly explained you, the important questions will receive an initial response, to begin by the famous so-called “animal language.” I have recently seen exposed, in a great bookstore of our city in a good place, a book recently published and the title that caught my eye was: “Animals do they think?” I do not have to say that I did not see the first page of the book. The answer to this question is “No!,” Of course, since the animals do not possess this faculty of verbal rationality they cannot think this faculty belongs to the man. This does not say, of course, that animals emit no messages, and by means more or less complexes, even extremely sophisticated (even if it is far to know all), but it must do, animals are animals!

In a general way, this makes today a screen and we often prevents to see what distinguishes the animal rights, it is the existence of the etho-logy, I mean, the science of animal “morals”, while the animal belongs in its entirety to the animal biology (just as there is the plant biology), and, in its “morals,” to zoology (just as there is the botany.) Daring to do a “science of animal morals,” it is to make to the classical an old evolutionary sociology which said that, in animal, there is something of men, in other words that there is no difference with human, which, scientifically, has never been proven. In contrast, which is in the process of being proved, to the current hour, thanks to clinical researches by Jean Gagnepain, it is that there is a monkey in a man, here again, there is no not man in the monkey! We must admit that ethologic, to the point where it has remained, is a science without object which cannot only lead to the resurgence of the fable, this means that instead of using the study of the animal (of the animal biology and zoology) to study the natural functions that we have in common with him (in particular the memory, certain modes of communication by the contagion, signals, etc.) and especially what distinguishes us from them, the vast majority of ethologic doctors are not interested in animals that for relate it to us, which does not teach us nothing on the man, since, in any case, what the animal does, as we will see later, he does it different than a man.

Any ethology, being, therefore set aside, is absolutely sure, however, that the study of animals present a real interest in the specialist of the humanities in so far as it allows to explain, free state (to the state sometimes said “wild,”) which, among the man, also works, but always framed by the culture, namely natural processes available to it as animal, and in particular the capacity of percept. But the man is doing something else with this capacity. You see, at the same time that all the interests that there would be in the Koko, Washoe, Viki and other anthropoid apes, with the condition to take some precautions, especially when it compares their behavior so-called “language” to that of a child. Because, if the results of tests proposed for children and monkeys are often neighbors, one and the other are not at all in the same situation, in the extent that a child has the sole the capacity of verbal abstraction, so that we imagine that it is the same for the monkey as for the child, well this is false. There is a huge difference between children and monkeys, a monkey whose performance may not be comparable to those of the child, since the problem that is shall submit to the two, under the name of “language,” the one has it, while the other has nothing.

Added this, we can say that the behavioral assumption is much more serious than the evolutionary premise to the extent that is all a problem of experimentation in human sciences which is asked there: the behaviorism consisting not to take into account that the results, this means the successes and failures, misses of the only thing that should be apprehend, namely procedures, and, in the extent that error alone is human (provided that the analysis of the man alone, even if this analysis is implicit, this is the mechanisms of these errors which should be object of attention.) As an illustration, some tests so-called “non-verbal,” but which are in fact full of “verbosity”, I mean that we cannot solve without design. Such is the famous experience of Binet, which consists in this: we have several boxes returned, and we put sugar under one, the first and then under the second, and then under the third, etc. We are asking the monkey, and the child to seek the sugar; at the beginning, monkey and child will seek the sugar under the box where it was previously, but from the third attempt, the child and the monkey diverge: the monkey continues to seek in the previous box, while the child goes directly to the next box, because he has designed, without knowing of course, that the sugar is under the following box. That is what is called, intellectually, the intelligence: what a child has seized, it is a report, and it has seized a report, it is because he is able to understand, and it is capable of concept, it means to express of formal and not to express of things, it is that he is capable of language.

There is no absolutely no place to ask the question: “Do the animals think?,” Nor to speak of “animal intelligence,” even about these charming puppets which are, apparently, the best friends of the man. At worst, an animal is in a situation of pure dressage I mean the addiction to cultural realities which he will never have the key: as much as he learns to a mascot to swim using the arms! In contrast, the verbal rationality is done to humans, children are not in the same situation of animals because he can learn, he suffers infinitely less than an animal, because he is already able to understand the problematic in the problem of this proposes, it means to call into a question the way to ask, or even to rest, and this is why it will tend, as it is badly listened, to reformulate the problem otherwise, he will say that he is mistaken: it is why to err is human (the monkey is never wrong). In other words, for a child there is a really problematic, which is no the case for a monkey: it is purely and simply coercion, or even cruelty to animals.

That is why, it is absurd to speak of an “artificial intelligence” when we are talking about computers, even if only because, they are never mistaken (or at least, are they supposed to not be mistaken) they must be so precise that they have to get with the solution. We laughed with Descartes theory of an “animal-machine,” well, at least he was, certainly infinitely less ridiculous to speak, of an “animal-machine” in the seventeenth century, than ours ideas of today when we talk about an “electronic brain,” for example a “brain-machine”. In each case, it is in fact a metaphor that has absolutely no scientific value, a metaphor that we only return to Descartes when we compare animals to machines, or animal’s machines, and -the most ridiculous! – The human animals! To say the truth, whether it is an animal or a machine, we are dealing with two types of operations that have nothing to do with ours -that operation, in the case of the computer (which function by storage and drainage, for example “memory” and “Program”) is infinitely more dopey than the animal.

Because animals are capable of some abstraction degree and sensorial perception. They have, the capacity of that (unlike the computer!) They are under a natural treatment. You may know, as I have shown, that the seizure of an object returns to the animal to the seizure of another subject that he “imagined” (in the Sartre sense, and not analytic.) He has treated the subject in a particular way, a first object send it to a second, and even he has little imagination, the second referring to a third, etc. That defines a series. However, if you call the first object index and the second object meaning, indeed the second object may be in serial relation, the index of a third object becomes meaningless, so that in the series, any object can be defined by index and the place it occupies. But what do man does? He interrupts, as you know, the serial connection for each index and the link direction, and this bond of reciprocity defines, as we have seen, the “immanence of the sign, that is to say its bifaciality.”

On the other hand, it is perhaps not impossible that the ape, in certain situations of training (and perhaps to the “wild” status) is capable of selecting signals (vertical axis) and to combine (horizontal axis), but any ethnologist has not yet scientifically proven that the monkey had the ability to perform the reciprocal analysis of the two axes, an analysis which defines the biaxiality. And if the fact was established, it should still prove that he is capable of dialectic! In other words, if by chance you encounter a monkey before you manifest all the signs of an ability to analyze both bifacial, biaxial and dialectic, there is no possible doubt: as hairy as it is, you are dealing with a man!

That said, do not believe that man is “superior” to the monkey; that we are animals too, but different, that’s all. Better, even if we do not have, as some animals, at least the sensory and perception, and if we did not share with them the ability to treat it naturally, we would be absolutely incapable, of projecting our rationality to emerge in the dialectic of the sign. This time, we can say that there is no man because there’s a monkey in him!

What we can know for sure is that computers do not have any sensorial perception (which are the two levels of animal representation), not already in any way, treat them naturally! How do you think he has the ability to culturally process a natural treatment to make the sign? You see that to speak of an “artificial intelligence” and an “electronic brain” or a “computer language” we should begin by putting the monkey on the computer! It is clear that manufacturing intelligence or rational word, it is, in short, a dream of enlightened people!

It is true, however, that machines can go much further than animals and much further than men, and far beyond even that it does today: how our computers are the beginning of the XXI century it is absolutely ridiculous (in a few years they will probably “talk” almost like us, and they are certainly capable of much more), but the procedures are not the same. The results are almost perfect, but, precisely, computers are never wrong, at least not as the man is wrong, simply because is a man, and only he has the power to think.

In summary, you see that there are three ways of processing information: the artificial way (by storing and programming), the simplest and only accessible to the machine, the natural way, infinitely more complex and is only accessible to the animal and finally as cultural -that is peculiar to man, and which alone involves cognitive processes totally unconscious outside their manifestations in languages: an analysis of implicit representations, the man emerges from the structure (the faces and axes) and the reinvestment of this structure in the economy. That leads me to conclude, to say a word about the opposition that is commonly arises between the abstract and the concrete.

In addressing the problem of the concrete and the abstract, they generally say that a child begins with the concrete and ends with the abstract, and it sees “progress” of thought (see the work of Piaget, for example). However, in language, there is absolutely nothing concrete: all languages are abstract, so that instead of considering the process as a supposed “progress” we must say that a man is abstract from the start, and it is precisely this ability of abstraction that allows him to manufacture concrete. In other words, what we call real is just the product of reinvestment in the “real” of our ability to structure, so that we can never grasp the abstract or concrete: we can not grasp that the bipolar relationship between the two.

That can show us that the definition of sign may be the most faithful to the theory developed by John Gagnepain: the sign is where the mutual contradiction of the abstract and concrete. This means that we can not enter, anywhere, an abstraction that does not refer to a specific, nor, a concrete regardless of abstraction that allows to ask. The best that can specialists of humanities do is to take this contradiction round the waist, and make their subject.

And I would add, and this is where I conclude that this treatment of concrete-abstract representation is common to all men: not only to the “thinker,” but the child at least so far as a Nobel Prize. In other words, the mechanisms of abstraction do not have sense of the age or environment, or occupation, etc. Nor should it be considered as a knowledge “degree.”

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