From the nature of symbols and symbolic processes one can also formulate hypotheses regarding the inner structure or anatomy of the mind, which can then be methodically tested against empirical evidence—historical, psychological, psychiatric, and even neuroscientific. The variability of human social orders, which is a function of the fact that human ways of life are constituted and transmitted symbolically rather than genetically, implies that, in contrast to all other animals, who are born into a specific ordered world, clearly organized by their genes, human beings are born into a world with numerous, potentially mutually exclusive, possibilities, and very early on in life (from early childhood) they must be able to adapt themselves to the possibilities that happen to be realized around them. Not being genetically equipped for any particular possibility, humans, in the first years of their lives, must grow adaptive mechanisms for focusing on such possibilities. Those mechanisms are the constituent processes of the mind.
Two of those processes can be logically deduced from the essentially indeterminate (arbitrary, potentially variable) nature of human social orders: identity and will. No other animal (with the exception of pets, whose world is the same as their human companions and is thus, by definition, also cultural) has a need for identity and will: their positions vis-à-vis other members of their group and their actions under all likely circumstances—that is, the circumstances of the species’ adaptive niche—are genetically dictated. Being genetically unique, each animal has individuality, but only human individual character has (and is mostly a reflection of) this adaptive subjective dimension. Identity and will constitute functional requirements of the individual’s adaptation to the indeterminate cultural environment. They represent the different aspects of the self, or “I”—identity being a relationally-constituted self and will being the acting self, or agency.
Identity may be understood as symbolic self-definition: the image of one’s position in a sociocultural “space” within a larger image of the relevant sociocultural terrain. The larger image is an individualized microcosm of the particular culture in which one is immersed, a mental map of the variable aspects of the sociocultural environment, analogous to representations of the changing spatial environment yielded by place cells, discovered in neurological experiments with rodents. Like the indication of a rat’s place on the spatial mental map, the human identity map defines the individual’s possibilities of adaptation to the sociocultural environment. Because that environment is so complex, however, the human individual, unlike a rat, is presented in the map with various possibilities of adaptation, which cannot be objectively and clearly ranked. They must be ranked subjectively—i.e., the individual must choose or decide which of them to pursue. This subjective ranking of options is a function of the general character of the mental map (for instance, what place on it is occupied by God and the afterlife, or by Brahman, or by the nation, or by one’s caste, etc.) and where one is placed on it in relation to such other presences.
While identity serves as a representation (and agent) of a particular culture (the culture in which the individual is immersed), will is a function of the symbolic process in general—i.e., it reflects the intentionality of symbols. Human actions (except involuntary reflexes) are not determined reactions but products of decision and choice. The nature of the human response to any stimulus is indeterminate: it is the will that steps in, as it were, in a split-second intermediate stage between stimulus and reaction, deciding in that moment what the response will be. The word “consciousness” is frequently applied to these moments of decision, but, unless rendered problematic by special circumstances, both identity and will are largely unconscious processes in the sense that humans very rarely think about or become consciously aware of them.
Given the character of the human environment, the logical reasons for the existence of identity and will are rather obvious: both “structures” are necessary for the individual’s adaptation to that environment and, therefore, for the individual’s survival. Discoverable only logically (like gravity or evolution), they remain hypothetical until tested against empirical evidence. This is not so as regards the thinking component of the mind—the thinking “I,” or the “I” of self-consciousness (which can also be called “the ‘I’ of Descartes,” because it is to that notion that Descartes referred in his famous dictum, cogito, ergo sum [Latin: “I think, therefore I am”]). Each person is aware of a thinking “I” (it is the thinking “I” that one experiences as one’s mind). Its existence is known directly through experience—in other words, empirically. This knowledge is absolute, or certain, in the sense that it is impossible to doubt. It is, as already mentioned, the only certain knowledge available to human beings.
The thinking “I” is not necessary for the individual’s adaptation to the sociocultural environment and to his or her survival in it, but human existence in general would be impossible without it. It is a necessary condition for the culture process on the collective level. As the “I” of self-consciousness, the thinking “I” makes possible self-consciousness for any individual human; as the process of self-conscious thought, the one explicitly symbolic process among all symbolic mental processes, it makes possible indirect learning and thereby the transmission of human ways of life across generations and distances. It is not just a process informed and directed by our symbolic environment, but an essentially symbolic process, similar to the development of language, musical tradition, elaboration of a theorem—and to the transmission of culture, in general—in the sense that it actually operates with formal symbols, the formal media of symbolic expression. This is the reason for the dependence of thought on language, which has been frequently noted. Thought extends only as far as the possibilities of the formal symbolic medium in which it operates.
Another fabulous piece. At some point I'd like to see you articulate the specific development of identity, will, and the thinking "I" within different civilizations. I expect that an explicit statement of how our minds develop within different civilizations over time would help all of us understand more clearly how and why different minds are structured so differently in different civilizations.
How does the identity, will, and thinking "I" differ among five year olds in China vs. the U.S.? How about at age 10? 15? 25?
While somewhat speculative, and necessarily involving scholars from both civilizations, such mapping would add considerably to a more widespread understanding of your thesis. Ultimately, such a mapping could yield testable conclusions, that could then lead to even greater refinement in the mapping of identity, will, and thinking "I" across different civilizations.
I could speculate my own answers to such questions, but ultimately my acquaintance with those from Confucian civilizations are too casual to do this responsibly. At a minimum I would envision extensive interviews with them, ideally in combination with similarly structured interviews with samples from the West (despite the fact that living within this civilization, and having worked with thousands of children in the West, I have a much clearer understanding of the development of the mind on this side).
Once such a mapping had become more widely known and accepted, then we could get greater acceptance on the importance of developing identity among youth in the Anglosphere in order to reduce the prevalence of mental illness. This is a large project, and ideally your existing work would have set such a research project in motion. But since it has not, something like the foregoing pathway strikes me as a productive direction both for developing your work and ultimately for addressing the ever growing mental health crisis.