Once Upon A Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic Of Stories by John Allen Paulos

Author:John Allen Paulos [Paulos, John Allen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-07-20T07:04:00+00:00

NARRATIVE COMMON GROUND

The Austrian journalist Karl Kraus once remarked, "Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself as therapy." Although I share his low regard for the nar rowly scientific merits of Freudianism, the quip does nicely suggest the self-building aspects of intensional logic. Hearing, telling, and ultimately internalizing stories are necessary steps in the construction of a self. We adopt pieces and patterns from others' personas and make them elements of our own, these pieces and patterns having evolved from simple, animal-like propensities. The empathy we feel for our families, our friends, and in an attenuated form, for the larger community makes us human. (Antipathy works the same way, although generally with an opposite gradient-community, friends, family.) Empathy also makes possible human communication and what might. be called cognitive coupling, or more prosaically, a meeting of the minds.

As has been indicated, the extensional logic of science is not adequate for describing this cognitive coupling that plays such a big role in storytelling and conversation. In general, we don't just impart information to one another and then draw static inferences from this information about the external world. We "dance" with each other and establish a common ground in which the story or conversation can proceed (or in some cases, not proceed). An example of a conversation's not proceeding very far-but an instance of a dance nevertheless-is the following schematic conversation type.

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