COMMENSAL ISSUE 94

In addressing an issue one might put down a starter, chew on it, add a little more, chew on what has formed, and continue in such a way until some end is reached. If applied generally that is of course bad practice because it often leads to something out of balance. However, it is not always an avoidable practice, and, because it means dealing with small things quite slowly, it can possibly be quite illuminating of the thinking process. For a sort of case study suppose one is attempting new thought. Here one begins with the problem one can only perceive the merest snippet of something. If one can assume anything at all it is only that what one can see is most likely not a beginning, middle or end. So, immediately, one is forced into bad practice whether one likes it or not. Here the best practice probably is to just slap down the snippet which is in the mind and then fiddle about both in and around it until the snippet turns into a something more like a concept. But how does the fiddling process operate. What appears to happen is that work begins fairly crudely. This is probably because not yet having a reference to work against the mind instantly develops a huge error signal causing it to try major alterations of the snippet to get basic information about it. According to what it finds it then tries minor variations. With a sentence for example, the mind looks to see what happens if it uses different words, then what happens if it inserts extra words or takes some out, and then it might try for the effect of changing tenses and so forth. By this stage it has done many sub- and super- snippet property tests and usually discovered much about the snippet in question; what field of knowledge it is in, how significant it is, places where it can start to take the snippet apart more or attach more to it, and, perhaps most importantly, which directions the snippet seems to prefer going in when prodded. With that and by adapting subject and method examples from its repertoire, one's mind starts working on the snippet to create a structure pointing away from it. The construction begins tentatively, but at some stage the content itself starts to point the new thought towards a goal. Work then becomes easier and quicker so that, with luck, the end of the new thought practically boots itself into the net. Presumably, as all this goes on, one's mind incorporates what it is discovering into one's memory, reworking some of what is already there and fashioning the new material so as to maintain compatibility of information as it works. Even rejection would still imply that. The compatibility indicators "always", "sometimes", "sometimes not", and "never" either would be found already attached to things the mind looked at for use in possible changes, or the mind would attach them to the snippet where appropriate. Whenever it found a "never" it would certainly nip off to look at something else it might use instead. This then points to the view that even one's boldest thinking is in part limited by what is already in one's memory, and, perhaps even more importantly, by what one's mind has been preconditioned to allow as valid. Suggesting it is perhaps impossible to set up a thought which is truly recollection independent and mental process independent. Not just in the simple sense that the mind must be able to call up a few related and defined words and arrange some grammatical ordering of them, but in the more subtle sense that the memory must have at least one thought in it before it can argue out a second thought, and the mind must be able to ignore rules in order to be able to argue at all. Concrete example of all this is to be found in what happens with Commensal itself. It is perhaps not obvious because lead text can be followed separately by commentaries as discussion evolves. But the different contributors to a topic do chew on it, find a direction it favours, and then inch it forward to a conclusion, with none knowing in advance what that will be. And, still with Commensal, that conclusion is reached only because at least one other provides a second thought, even though that "other" might only be a notional representation of everyone and the other "thought" might be no more than "no further comment". Also, insofar as rules are concerned, even the entirely innocent Commensal itself affects things. As soon as one thinks to begin a piece for it one is inevitably very gently propelled toward particular topics and approaches. Then one is left with the tweaking, and one could easily test for eternity in tweaking. However, as soon as one's mind has hacked away sufficiently to produce something apparently complete an old rule comes to assist in escaping the tweaking addiction: Publish and be damned! Always; some will not care, some will like it, some will not. And thus a provisional end to a thought is reached.

Albert Dean