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medium of the construction of mental models of reality, is
misguided. But it wouldn't be the first instance in the
history of science where the experts were wrong. Firstly, as
stated here, the model implies that without language, the
construction of mental models of the world, by animals for
instance, is minimal. Yet the habit routine cognitive model
shows that the habit routine, constructed by thinking1
processes and analyzed by thinking2 processes, is the mental
model of reality we are concerned with, and that the
transformation into language or other forms of symbolization
is a subsidiary, secondary, and non-essential process
occurring in thinking2. As I have argued previously, the
habit routine system has been the constant companion of
animal life from the beginning, it is the primary function
of all animal nervous systems, not just advanced ones such
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as our own. It is interesting how close the above quotation
comes to the idea of the habit routine model as the
mechanism of construction of the "mental model of external
reality," ("a melange of sensory input creates a complete
mental model of external reality") but then misses the
necessary conclusion. Jerison's model would have the
symbolization function as the primary cognitive operation,
but that would require that the "raw material" of
symbolization be the primary sensory information rather than
the generated habit routine, and a great deal of evidence,
summarized in previous chapters, argues against this model.
Language is not at all the medium of the thinking
processes which precedes symbolization, which is a resonance
to the habit routine and its analysis. Language as it is
realized, or other forms of symbolization such as the
production of gesture or music, perhaps also the expression
of emotion via facial expression and general posture, are
serial processes, yet the habit routine, the internal model
of the world, is iconic. It is a Gestalt, a constantly
changing and updated holistic entity not requiring
elaboration through a serial process of point for point
representation with abstract symbols as does language. Our
basic thinking process is in terms of icons or Gestalts,
holoprojections, which later, and sometimes very
laboriously, may find only incomplete and unsatisfactory
expression through the symbolization processes. Consider
this statement by Albert Einstein, describing the way he
considered his creative thinking to occur:
"The words of the language, as they are written or
spoken, do not seem to play any role in my
mechanism of thought. The psychical entities in my
case are . . . visual and some of muscular type.
Conventional words and other signs have to be
sought for laboriously only in a secondary stage."
Thus many recent views of language and thinking miss the
essential fact that the great part of what constitutes
thinking, both conscious and pre-conscious as with the
construction of the habit routine, has nothing to do with
the serial process of spoken language at all. The creation
of the mental model of reality is not "linguistic" except in
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the sense that we might define a new type of "language"
constituted not of words and the rules for serially
connecting them, but of the very iconic Gestalts that are
created by habit routine search. The evolution of the
ability to produce the habit routine Gestalt started
probably with the very first animals, as I have discussed,
but the evolution of spoken language only began much later.
The two evolutionary processes are very far apart indeed, as
are the brain processes which produce them.
The problem of the modern understanding of these facts
probably arises from the nature of the methods of modern
Western science itself. It is, above all, a descriptive
undertaking, and therefore a serial process rather than an
experiential, iconic one. So in attempting to
"scientifically explain" many of our cognitive abilities
using descriptive language, we must necessarily let serial
symbolization rule our paradigm to such an extent that we
ignore certain aspects of the ongoing iconic thinking
process which is the seed of our explanations. Thus the
possible Gestalts which would themselves, if we became aware
of them, allow us an experience of the nature of the iconic
thinking processes which precede symbolization, of how they
provide the basis for symbolization, are ignored by the
requirements of our paradigm to provide only serial
explanation: these ignored Gestalts, the iconic habit
routines which would give a view of the nearly invisible
underlying thinking processes, do not activate the
significance detection system piloted by the locus
coeruleus, because we have ruled them out from consideration
by the programming of working memory with the specifics of
our paradigm, this is the conscious feedback process which
is an input, along with sensory information, to the habit
routine generation process in thinking1 (see again figure
1). Except in the reflection of those unusually perceptive
and gifted individuals such as Einstein who have developed
life-long habits of looking for the significant in what
everyone else deems the routine, the iconic nature of basic
thinking processes is therefore rendered invisible. As I
have shown, of course, the psychedelic experience can
produce this very same result reliably and safely, although
it requires considerable experience with the drugs to
understand that this is what is happening, and to use the
effect to its potential. I might say, perhaps not too
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ponderously I hope, that this entire book is the
symbolization in language of an iconic entity or Gestalt, a
"mental model" of my theory that I have been slowly
constructing over the years. I "know" full well its entire
content and form, and yes, it seems to be visual and even
"muscular" in a certain sense, but its translation into
serial language is another affair altogether, requiring
entirely different types of effort than the construction of
the informational entity which I am describing.
Interestingly, the symbolization in language does have a
feedback to the characteristics of the iconic Gestalt: the
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