Terministic Screens
Terministic Screens
Chapter Three
Terministic Screens
1 Directing the Attention
We might begin by stressing the distinction between a “scientistic” and a
“dramatistic” approach to the nature of language. A “scientistic” approach
begins with questions of naming, or definition. Or the power of language to
define and describe may be viewed as derivative; and its essential function
may be treated as attitudinal or hortatory: attitudinal as with expressions of
complaint, fear, gratitude, and such; hortatory as with commands or
requests, or, in general, an instrument developed through its use in the social
processes of cooperation and competition. I say “developed”; I do not say
“originating.” The ultimate origins of language seem to me as mysterious as
the origins of the universe itself. One must view it, I feel, simply as the
“given.” But once an animal comes into being that does happen to have this
particular aptitude, the various tribal idioms are unquestionably developed
by their use as instruments in the tribe’s way of living (the practical role of
symbolism in what the anthropologist, Malinowski, has called “context of
situation”). Such considerations are involved in what 1 mean by the
“dramatistic,” stressing language as an aspect of “action,” that is, as
“symbolic action.”
The two approaches, the “scientistic” and the “dramatistic” (language
as definition, and language as act) are by no means mutually exclusive.
Since both approaches have their proper uses, the distinction is not being
introduced invidiously. Definition itself is a symbolic act, just as my
proposing of this very distinction is a symbolic act. But though at this
moment of beginning, the overlap is considerable, later the two roads
diverge considerably, and direct our attention to quite different kinds of
observation. The quickest way to indicate the differences of direction might
be by this formula: The “scientistic” approach builds the edifice of language
with primary stress upon a proposition such as “It is, or it is not.” The
“dramatistic” approach puts the primary stress upon such hortatory
expressions as “thou shalt, or thou shalt not.” And at the other extreme the
distinction be-
45
comes quite obvious, since the scientistic approach culminates in the kinds of speculation we associate with symbolic logic,
while the dramatisdc culminates in the kinds of speculation that
find their handiest material in stories, plays, poems, the rhetoric of oratory
and advertising, mythologies, theologies, and philosophies
after the classic model.
The dramatistic view of language, in terms of
“symbolic action,” is exercised about the necessarily suasive
nature of even the most unemotional scientific nomenclatures. And we shall
proceed along those lines; thus:
Even if any given terminology is a reflection of reality, by its very
nature as a terminology it must be a selection of reality; and to this extent it
must function also as a deflection of reality.
In his seventh Provincial Letter, Pascal satirizes a device which the Jesuits of his day called “directing the intention.”
For instance, to illustrate satirically how one should “direct
the intention,” he used a burlesque example of this sort: Dueling was
forbidden by the Church. Yet it was 8üll a prevalent practice.
Pascal satirically demonstrated how, by “directing
the intention,” one could both take part in a duel and not violate the Church
injunctions against it. Thus, instead of
intentionally going to take part in a duel, the
duelists would merely go for a walk to the place
where the duel was to be held. And they would carry guns merely as
a precautionary means of self-protection in case they happened to meet an
armed enemy. By so “directing the intention,” they could have their duel
without having transgressed the Church’s thou-shalt-not’s
against dueling. For it was perfectly proper to go for a
walk; and in case one encountered an enemy bent on murder, it was perfectly
proper to protect oneself by shooting in self-defense.
I bring up this satirically excessive account of
directing the intendon, in the hopes that I can thereby settle for
less when discussing the ways in which “terministic screens” direct the
attention. Here the kind of deflection I have in mind concerns simply the fact
that any nomenclature necessarily directs the attention into some channels
SUMMARIZINO ESSAYS Terministic Screens
rather than others. In one sense, this likelihood is painfully
obvious. A textbook on physics, for instance, turns
the attention in a different direction from a textbook on law or psychology.
But some implications of this terminisdc incentive are not so obvious.
When I speak of “terministic screens,” 1 have particularly in mind some
photographs I once saw. They were different photographs of the same
objects, the difference being that they were made with different color filters.
Here something so “factual” as a photograph revealed notable distinctions
in texture, and even in form, depending upon which
color filter was used for the documentary
description of the event being recorded.
Similarly, a man has a dream. He reports his dream to a Freudian analyst,
or a Jungian, or an Adlerian, or to a practitioner of some other 46
school. In each case, we might say, the “same” dream will be subjected to
a different color filter, with corresponding differences in the nature of the
event as perceived, recorded, and interpreted. (It is a commonplace that
patients soon learn to have the kind of dreams best suited to the terms
favored by their analysts.)
11
Observations Implicit in Terms
We have now moved things one step further along. Not only does the
nature of our terms affect the nature of our observations, in the sense that
the terms direct the attention to one field rather than to another. Also, many
of the “observations” are but implications of the particular terminology in
terms of which the observations are made. In brief, much that we take as
observations about “reality” may be but the spinning out of possibilities
implicit in our particular choice of terms.
Perhaps the simplest illustration of this point is to be got by
contrasting secular and theological terminologies of motives. If you want
to operate, like a theologian, with a terminology that includes “God” as its
key term, the only sure way to do so is to put in the term, and that’s that.
The Bible solves the problem by putting “God” into the first sentence—
and from this initial move, many implications “necessarily” follow. A
naturalistic, Darwinian terminology flatly omits the term, with a
corresponding set of implications— and that’s that. I have called
metaphysics “coy theology” because the metaphysician often introduces
the term “God” not outright, as with the Bible, but by beginning with a
term that ambiguously contains such implications; then he gradually
makes these implications explicit. If the term is not introduced thus
ambiguously, it can be introduced only by fiat, either outright at the
beginning (like the Bible) or as a non sequitur (a break in the argument
somewhere along the way). In Platonic dialogues, myth sometimes serves
this purpose of a leap en route, a step prepared for by the fact that, in the
Platonic dialectic, the methodic progress towards higher levels of
generalization was in itself thought of as progress towards the divine.
But such a terministic situation is not by any means confined to
matters of theology or metaphysics. As Jeremy Bentham aptly pointed
out, all terms for mental states, sociopolitical relationships, and the like
are necessarily “fictions,” in the sense that we must express such concepts
by the use of terms borrowed from the realm of the physical. Thus, what
Emerson said in the accents of transcendental enthusiasm, Bentham said
in the accents of “tough-mindedness.” In Emerson’s “tender-minded”
scheme, “nature” exists to provide us with terms for the physical realm
that are transferable to the moral realm, as the sight of a straight line gives
us our word for “right,” and of a crooked or twisted line our word for
“wrong”; or as we derived our word
47
for “spirit” from a word for “breath,” or as “superciliousness” means literally a
raising of the eyebrow. But Bentham would state the same relationship
“tough-mindedly” by noting that our words for
“right,” “wrong,” “spirit,” etc. are “fictions” carried over from their
strictly literal use in the realm of physical sensation. Bentham does not hope
that such “fictions” can be avoided. He but asks that we recognize their nature
as fictions. So he worked out a technique for helping to disclose the imagery
in such ideas, and to discount accordingly. (See C. K. Ogden’s book, Bentham’s
Theory of Fictions.)
But though this situation is by no means confined
to the terminologies of theology and metaphysics, or even to such
sciences as psychology (with terms for the out-going as vs. the in-turning, for
dispositions, tendencies, drives, for the workings of the “it” in the
Unconscious, and so on), by its very thoroughness theology does have a
formula that we can adapt, for purely secular purposes of analysis. I have in
mind the injunction, at once pious and methodological, “Believe, that you may
understand (crede, ut intelligas).” In its theological application, this formula
served to define the relation between faith and reason. That is, if one begins
with “faith,” which must be taken on authority, one can work out a rationale
based on this faith. But the faith must “precede” the rationale. (We here
SUMMARIZINO ESSAYS Terministic Screens
impinge upon considerations of logical and temporal priority that were
approached from another angle in the previous chapter.)
In my book, The Rhetoric of Religion, I have proposed that the word “logology” might be applied in a special way to this
issue. By “logology,” as so conceived, I would mean
the systematic study of theological terms, not from the
standpoint of their truth or falsity as statements about the supernatural, but
purely for the light they might throw upon the forms of language. That
is, the tactics involved in the theologian’s “words
about God” might be studied as “words about words”
(by using as a methodological bridge the opening sentence in
the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God”).
“Logology” would be a purely empirical study of
symbolic action. Not being a theologian, I would have no grounds to
discuss the truth or falsity of theological doctrines as such.
But I do feel entitled to discuss them with regard
to their nature merely as language. And it is my claim
that the injunction, “Believe, that you may understand,” has a
fundamental application to the purely secular problem of “tcrministic screens.”
The “logological,” or “tcrministic” counterpart of “Believe” in the formula would be: l’ick so’ne particular
nopnenclature, some one terministic screen. And for “Fl’hat
you may understand,” the counterpart would be: “That you ‘nay proceed to
track the kinds of observation irnplicit in the tenninology you have
chosen, “‘hether your choice of terms “‘as deliberate
or spontaneous.”
SUMMARIZINO ESSAYS Terministic Screens 48 FIVE
SUMMARIZINO ESSAYS Terministic Screens
111
Examples
I can best state the case by giving some
illustrations. But first let me ask you to
reconsider a passage from Chapter One which
presents the matter in the most general sense: l
. can we bring ourselves to realize just how
overwhelmingly much of what we mean by “reality”
has been built up for us through nothing but our
symbol systems? Take away our books, and what
little do we know about history, biography, even
something so “down to earth” as the relative
position of seas and continents? What is our
“reality” for today (beyond the paper-thin line
of our own particular lives) but all this clutter
of symbols about the past, combined with
whatever things we know mainly through maps,
magazines, newspapers, •and the like about the
present? In school, as they go from class to
class, students turn from one idiom to another.
The various courses in the curriculum are in
effect but so many differnt terminologies. And
however important to us is the tiny sliver of
reality each of us has experienced firsthand,
the whole overall “picture” is but a construct
of our symbol systems. To meditate on this fact
until one sees its full implications is much
like peering over the edge of things into an
ultimate abyss. And doubtless that’s one reason
why, though man is typically the symbol-using
animal, he clings to a kind of naive verbal
realism that refuses to let him realize the full
extent of the role played by symbolicity in his
notions of reality.
I hope the passage can serve at least somewhat
to suggest how fantastically much of our “Reality”
could not exist for us, were it not for our profound
and inveterate involvement in symbol systems. Our
presence in a room is immediate, but the room’s
relation to our country as a nation, and beyond
that, to international relations and cosmic
relations, dissolves into a web of ideas and images
that reach through our senses only insofar as the
symbol systems that report on them are heard or
seen. To mistake this vast tangle of ideas for
immediate experience is much more fallacious than
to accept a drcam as an immediate experience. For
a dream really is an immediate experience, but the
information that we receive about today’s events
throughout the world most decidedly is not.
But le t us consider some examples of
terministic screens, in a more specific sense. The
child psychologist, John Bowlby, writes a subtle
and perceptive paper on “‘l he Nature of the
Child’s Ties to Its Mother.” He obscrves what he
calls “five instinctual responses” of infants,
which he lists as: crying, smiling, sucking,
clinging, following. Surely no one would deny that
See p. 5. 49
such responses are there to see. But at the same time,
we might recall the observations of the behaviorist,
John B. Watson. He, too, found things that were there
to see. For instance, by careful scientific study, he
discovered sure ways to make babies cry in fright or
shriek with rage.
In contrast with Watson’s terminology of
observation rcgarding the nature of infantile
reflexes, note that Bowlby adopted a much more social
point of view. His terms were explicitly designed to
study infantile responses that involved the mother in
a reciprocal relationship to the child.
At the time I read Bowlby’s paper, I happcned to
be doing a monograph on “Verbal Action in St.
Augustine’s Confessions.” I was struck by the fact
that Augustine’s terms for the behavior of infants
closely paralleled Bowlby’s. Three were definitely
the same: crying, smiling, sucking. Although he
docsn’t mention clinging as a particularly notable
term with regard to infancy, as the result of Bowlby’s
list I noticed, as I might otherwise not have, that
he frequently used the corresponding Latin term
SUMMARIZINO ESSAYS Terministic Screens
(inhaerere) regarding his attachment to the Lord.
“Following” was not explicitly worked out, as an
infantile response, though Augustine docs refer to
God as his Icadcr. And I began wondering what might
be done with Spinoza’s Ethics in this connection,
whether his persistent conccrn with what necessarily
“follows” what in Nature could have been in part a
metaphysician’s transformation of a personal motivc
strong in childhood. Bc that as it may, 1 was struck
by the fact that Augustine made one strategically
important addition to Bowlby’s list: rcst. Once you
mention it, you realize that it is very definitely an
instinctual response of the sort that Bowlby was
concerned with, since it involves a social relation
betwccn mother and child. In Augustine’s scheme, of
course, it also allowed for a transformation from
resting as an infant to hopes of ultimately “resting
in God.”
Our point is: All thrce terminologies (Watson’s,
Bowlby’s, Augustine’s) directed the attention
differently, and thus led to a correspondingly
different quality of obscrvations. In brief,
“behavior” isn’t something that you nccd but observe;
even something so “objectively there” as behavior
must be obscrvcd through onc or another kind of
tenninistic scrccn, that directs thc attcntion in
keeping with its nature.
Basically, therc are two kinds of terms: tcrms
that put things together, and tern’s that take things
apart. Othcrwisc put, A can fccl himsclf identified
with B, or he can think of himself as disassociatcd
from B. Carried into mathcmatics, somc systems strcss
the principlc of continuity, some the principle of
discontinuity, or particlcs. And sincc all laboratory
instrumcnts of mcasuremcnt and obscrvation arc
deviccs invcntcd by the symbol-using animal, thcy too
ncccssarily givc intcrprctations in tcnns of cithcr
continuity or discontinuity. Hcnce, physicists
forever kecp finding that so:nc sub-sub-subsub-aspcct
of nature can bc again subdividcd; whcrcupon it’s
only a qucs(ion of tinie until thcy discovcr that
sonic ncw cut mcrgcs monicnt.s prcviously considcrcd
distinct—and so on. Knowing nothing rnuch about
physics cx-
SUMMARIZINO ESSAYS Terministic Screens 50 FIVE
SUMMARIZINO ESSAYS Terministic Screens
cept the terministic fact that any observation of a
physicist must necessarily be stated within the
resources and embarrassments of man-made
terminologies, I would still dare risk the
proposition that Socrates’ basic point about
dialectic will continue to prevail; namely, there is
composition, and there is division.
Often this shows up as a distinction between
terministic screens positing differences of degree
and those based on differences of kind. For instance,
Darwin sees only a difference of degree between man
and other animals. But the theologian sees a
difference in kind. That is, where Darwin views man
as continuous with other animals, the theologian
would stress the principle of discontinuity in this
regard. But the theologian’s screen also posits a
certain kind of continuity between man and God that
is not ascribed to the relation between God and other
animals.
The logological screen finds itself in a peculiar
position here. It holds that, even on the purely
secular level, Darwin overstated his case. And as a
consequence, in his stress upon the principle of
continuity between man and the other animals, he
unduly slighted the evidence for discontinuity here.
For be assumed that the principle of discontinuity
between man and other animals was necessarily
identical with a theological view of man.
Such need not be the case at all. Darwin says
astonishingly little about man’s special aptitudes
as a symbol-user. His terministic screen so stressed
the principle of continuity here that he could view
the principle of discontinuity only as a case of
human self-flattery. Yet, logology would point out:
We can distinguish man from other animals without
necessarily being overhaughty. For what other
animals have yellow journalism, corrupt politics,
pornography, stock market manipulators, plans for
waging thermonuclear, chemical, and bacteriological
war? I think we can consider ourselves different in
kind from the other animals, without necessarily
being overproud of our distinction. We don’t need
theology, but merely the evidence of our
characteristic sociopolitical disorders, to make it
apparent that man, the typically symbol-using
animal, is alas! something special.
Further Examples
Where are we, then?
We must use terministic screens, since we can’t
say anything without the use of terms; whatever
terms we use, they necessarily constitute a
corresponding kind of screen; and any such screen
necessarily directs the attcntion to one field
rather than another. Within that field there can be
different scrcens, each with its ways of directing
the attention and shaping the range of observations
implicit in the given terminology. All terminologies
must implicitly or explicitly embody choices between
the principle of continuity and the principle of
discontinuity.
51
Two other variants of this point about
continuity and discontinuity should be mentioned.
First, note how it operates in political affairs:
During a national election, the situation places
great stress upon a division between the citizens.
But often such divisiveness (or discontinuity) can
be healed when the warring factions join in a common
cause against an alien enemy (the division elsewhere
thus serving to reestablish the principle of
continuity at home). It should be apparent how
either situation sets up the conditions for its
particular kind of scapegoat, as a device that
unifies all those who share the same enemy.
For a subtler variant (and here I am somewhat
anticipating the specific subject matter of the next
chapter) we might cite an observation by D. W.
Harding, printed in Metaphor and Symbol, a
collection of essays by various writers on literary
SUMMARIZINO ESSAYS Terministic Screens
and psychological symbolism. The author concedes
that the Freudian terminology is highly serviceable
in calling attention to ideas that are not given
full conscious recognition because they are
repressed. But he asks: Why can there not also be
ideas that are unclear simply because we have not
yet become familiar enough with a situation to take
them adequately into account? Thus, when we see an
object at a (fistance, we do not ordinarily
“repress” the knowledge of its identity. We don’t
recognize it simply because we must come closer, or
use an instrument, before we can see it clearly
enough to know precisely what it is. Would not a
terminology that features the unconscious
repression of ideas automatically deflect our
attention from symbols that are not repressed but
merely remote? (At this point, of course, a Jungian
terministic screen would ascribe the remoteness of
many dream-symbols to their misty survival from an
earlier stage in man’s development—a terministic
device that I have called the “temporiz.ing of
essence,” since the nature of conditions now is
stated quasi-narratively in terms of temporal
priority, a vestigial derivation from “prehistory.”
)
One more point will end this part of our
discussion. Recently I read a paper in which one
sociologist accused other sociologists of
“oversocializing” their terms for the discussion of
human motives. (The article, “The Oversocialized
Conception of Man in Modern Sociology,” by Dennis
H. Wrong, appears in the April 1961 issue of the
American Sociological Review. )
This controversy brings us to a variant of the
terministic situation I discussed in distinguishing
between terms for Poetics in particular and terms
for Language in General. But the author’s thesis
really has a much wider application than he claims
for it. To the extent that all scientific
terminologies, by their very role in specialized
disciplines, are designed to focus attention upon
one or another particular field of observation,
would it not be technically impossible for any such
spccialized terminology to supply an adequate
definition for the discussion of Plan in general?
Each might scrve to throw light upon one or another
aspect of human motives. But thc definition of man
in general would be formally possible only to a
philosophic 52 PIVB
terminology of motives (insofar as philosophy is
the proper field for thoughts on man in general).
Any definition of man in terms of specialized
scientific nomenclatures would necessarily be
“over-socialized,” or “over-biologized,” or “over-
psychologized,” or “over-physicized,” or “over-
poetized,” and 80 on, depending upon which
specialized terministic screen was being stretched
to cover not just its own special field but a more
comprehensive area. Or, if we try to correct the
excesses of one terminology, by borrowing from
severa’, what strictly scientific canon (in the
modern sense of scientific specialization) could we
adduce as sanction? Would not such an eclectic
recipe itself involve a generalized philosophy of
some sort?
Our Attempt to Avoid Mere Relativism
And now where are we? Must we merely resign
ourselves to an endless catalogue of terministic
screens, each of which can be valued for the light
it throws upon the human animal, yet none of which
can be considered central? In one sense, yes. For,
strictly speaking, there will be as many different
world views in human history as there are people.
(Tot homines, tot sententiae.) We can safely take
SUMMARIZINO ESSAYS Terministic Screens
it for granted that no one’s “personal equations”
are quite identical with anyone else’s. In the
unwritten cosmic constitution that lies behind all
man-made Constitutions, it is decreed by the nature
of things that each man is “necessarily free” to be
his own tyrant, inexorably imposing upon himself
the peculiar combination of insights associated
with his peculiar combination of experiences.
At the other extreme, each of us shares with
all other members of our kind (the often-inhuman
human species) the fatal fact that, however the
situation came to be, alt members of our species
conceive of reality somewhat roundabout, through
various media of symbolism. Any such medium will
be, as you prefer, either a way of “dividing” us
from the “immediate” (thereby setting up a kind of
“alienation” at the very start of our emergence
from infancy into that state of articulacy somewhat
misleadingly called the “age of reason”); or it can
be viewed as a paradoxical way of “uniting” us with
things on a “higher level of awareness,” or some
such. (Here again, we encounter our principles of
continuity and discontinuity.)
Whether such proneness to symbolic activity be
viewed as a privilege or 8 calamity (or as
something of both). it is a distinguishing
characteristic of the human animal in general.
Hence it can properly serve as the basis of a
generali or phlloqophlc definition of this animalt
From this terministic beginning, this intuitive
grounding of a position, many observations
“necessarily follow.” But are we not here
“necessarily” caught in our own net? Must we not
concede that 8 screen built on this basis is just
one more screen;
53
and that it can at best be permitted to take its
place along with all the others? Can we claim for
it special favors?
If I, or any one person, or even one particular
philosophic school, had invented it, such doubts
would be quite justified. But if we pause to look
at it quizzically, 1 think we shall see that it is
grounded in a kind of “collective revelation,” from
away back. This “collective revelation” involves the
pragmetic recognition of a distinction between
persons and things. I say “pragmatic” recognition,
because often the distinction has not been formally
recognized. And all the more so because, if an
object is closely associated with some person whom
we know intimately, it can readily become infused
with the identity of that person.
Reverting now to our original term,
“dramatistic,” I would offer this basic proposition
for your consideration: Despite the evidences of
primitive animism (that endows many sheer things
with “souls”) and the opposite modes of contemporary
behaviorism (designed to study people as mere
things), we do make a pragmatic distinction between
the “actions” of “persons” and the sheer “motions”
of “things.” The slashing of the waves against the
beach, or the endless cycle of births and deaths in
biologic organisms would be examples of sheer
motion. Yet we, the typically symbol-using animal,
cannot relate to one another sheerly as things in
motion. Even the behaviorist, who studies man in
terms of his laboratory experiments, must treat his
colleagues as persons, rather than purely and simply
as automata responding to stimuli.
1 should make it clear: I am not pronouncing on
the metaphysics of this controversy. Maybe we are
but things in motion. I don’t have to haggle about
that possibility. I need but point out that, whether
or not we are just things in motion, we think of one
another (and especially of those with whom we are
intimate) as persons. And the difference between a
SUMMARIZINO ESSAYS Terministic Screens
thing and a person is that the one merely moves
whereas the other acts. For the sake of the
argument, I’m even willing to grant that the
distinction between things moving and persons acting
is but an illusion. All I would claim is that,
illusion or not, the human race cannot possibly get
along with itself on the basis of any other
intuition. The human animal, as we know it, emerges
into personality by first mastering whatever tribal
speech happens to be its particular symbolic
environment.
We could not here list even summarily the main
aspects of the Dramatistic screen without launching
into a whole new project. For present purposes, I
must only say enough to indicate my grounds for
contending that a Dramatistic screen does possess
the philosophic character adapted to the digcuulon
ot man in general, ng distinct from the kind8 of
insight afforded b the a lication of s ecial
scientific terminolo ie n be a of my claim that the
“dramatistic screen” is sanctioned by
