Ratioverbalistics

This page encompasses only a brief treatment of the subject. My two books on thinking and communication — You Must Not Let Them Con You! There's Too Much at Stake and the Seminal Guidebook for the Mens Sana Foundation Socratic Discourse on Thinking and Communication — both treat the subject in greater detail.

You see, scuba divers can be taught; surfers can only be entertained. And I am a teacher, not someone whose mission in life is to amuse others, although I'm told I can be very funny at times. 

But please know that this site will do more for you in the long run than will most “cool” (in quotation marks because I haven't the foggiest notion what that word means except in the context of temperature) sites. 

In this regard, my philosophy is much like President Reagan's when he made the observation that if you feed someone by giving him or her a fish to eat, you'll have to give that someone a fish every day. But if you teach that someone how to fish, then he or she will be able to feed him or herself from then on without help from anyone. 

I can teach you how to (1) correctly analyze and digest information, (2) think clearly and innovatively using that information, and (3) effectively communicate the results of that thinking to others. If you learn these skills — and you can, believe me, if you want to — not only will you be able to feed yourself every day, but you'll be able to put on a banquet at the same time and feed others as well until they, too, learn how to “fish.” 

You have my word. 

Now to continue.

Dr. Shapiro calls this new discipline Ratioverbalistics, a word he came up with because none existed that would adequately do the job — ratio, Latin for “reason” or the “reasoning faculty”; verbal, from the Latin verbum, meaning “word”; and istics, a suffix used to convert an adjective to a noun. It is the study of the relationship between words and (1) the correct processing of verbal information, (2) clear, innovative thinking and (3) superior communication. 

Following is a bare bones treatment of Ratioverbalistics. Much more detailed treatments can be found in two books, both written by Dr. Shapiro and both published by the Mens Sana Foundation — You Must Not Let Them Con You! There’s Too Much at Stake and Seminal Guidebook for the Mens Sana Foundation Socratic Discourse on Thinking and Communication. 

A symbol is something that stands for, or represents, something else. A set of symbols, each symbol in the set related to all the other symbols in that set, by agreement or by custom, comprises a language. When the symbols involved are words, then that language is a verbal language.

Thinking is the mental process centered in the mind and brain acting in concert with one another ( referred to as the mind/brain from here on) to produce a rational end result. 

Pondering, considering, weighing (in the sense of comparing), reasoning, imagining, speculating, contemplating, deliberating, ruminating, meditating, and reflecting are all specialized forms of thinking.

Generally what passes for thinking is anything but. Frequently it’s not even thinking but feeling. Or sensing. Or parroting. 

So we don’t mistake feeling, sensing, or parroting for thinking, here’s what constitutes each of these processes:

Feeling is the mental process centered in what seems to be the rest of the body. The result produced is not a rational one because no reasoning is involved.

Sensing is an automatic process by which outside stimuli, or sensory data, are received by body sensors — eyes, ears, skin, palate, and nose — and decoded by the brain into sights, sounds, touches, tastes, and smells. This is the raw, unprocessed part of the material that the mind/brain works on when it’s thinking. However, the mind/brain plays no role in the sensing process itself.

Your body sensors do their sensing automatically and your brain does its decoding also automatically throughout your entire life — when you’re asleep, awake, dreaming, conscious, unconscious. It makes no difference. Sensory data constantly flow to the brain for decoding.

Parroting is a mental process during which the inferences, judgments, and opinions of others are repeated by the one doing the parroting with little or nothing added or taken away. Statements made by a parroter are typically the “They say that. . .” and the “I read somewhere that . . .” kinds of statements though they may not begin with such introductory words or phrases.

Parroters are like tape recorders — they take in data indiscriminately and play it back also indiscriminately.

Passive thinking is a mental state during which the mind/brain is aware of all kinds of unrelated data randomly passing through it. It’s a state in which the mind/brain has no particular purpose. It’s also a state in which the data themselves are in control. An example of passive thinking is the state of your mind/brain immediately upon awakening in the morning. Bits and pieces of data — events of the day before, what has to be done at the office, scenes from a movie that you saw on TV the night before, problems with your children, thoughts that you’re getting old, fear of being laid off, and on and on and on — rush through your mind/brain. It’s almost as though you’re drugged; it’s all happening to you. And you don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. 

Active thinking is more or less the opposite of passive thinking. It’s a mental state during which the mind/brain is in control, consciously selecting data that it deems related to the achievement of a particular purpose — e.g., to make a decision, to understand a phenomenon of some kind, to explain a feeling, to make an induction or deduction, and so on. 

So much for passive and active thinking. Now what about clear, cloudy, conventional, and innovative thinking. 

Clear thinking is active thinking that entails (1) carefully selecting as premises relevant sensory data; inferences and judgments made by the thinker herself that have been “proven” in the real world; and inferences and judgments made by others that have also been “proven” in the real world, and (2) “playing with” or “pushing around” those data for the purpose of completing a mental task of some kind. Please note that clear thinking does not involve opinion of any kind no matter whose. 

A “premise” is a given, something that’s accepted as being true although it may not be, a proposition antecedently supposed as a basis of argument, or inference. It could be firsthand data, secondhand data, or nthhand data. For example, I look out the window, see wet streets, and conclude that it had just rained. The premise for that inference was the wet streets, sensory data, which makes it firsthand information. Or I tell my employer that Charley will not show up for work today. The premise for that inference is information given me by a neighbor that Charley’s wife had just taken him to a nearby ER. The premise in that case comprises something someone told me, something he had seen, which makes it secondhand information. Or I tell my wife that we’re going to be paying more for milk in the near future. The premise in this case is something I had heard on the news — that Federal price supports for milk had just been increased. Probably fifthhand information.

These are very simple examples. Premises can be far more complex. But simple or complex, true or not, the importance of the premise is that (1) there can be no drawing of an inference without it and (2) virtually every choice made in life follows the drawing of at least one inference. Clearly, then, faulty premises — untrue, invalid, or irrelevant — lead to bad choices in life no matter how sound a thinker one is.

The thinking of any number of scientists who observed, thought, and successfully tested their hypotheses in the real world — Galileo, Fulton, Carver, and a host of others — would constitute examples of clear thinking.

And because feelings play a relatively large part in this process, cloudy thinking tends to be less rational and more emotional. It also tends to be subjective. 

The paradox of Zeno relating to motion, one of three such paradoxes, is a good example of cloudy thinking. In that paradox, Zeno “proved” on the basis of logical argument that motion is impossible. First, he said, an object must occupy a given place at a given time. Then, he continued, it must leave that given place at that given time to reach the next place at a later time. And if you follow this reasoning through to a conclusion, he said, motion cannot exist. For example, take a runner in a race. Before the race starts, the runner occupies a given place at a given time. For that runner to reach the finish line, he must first reach a point that’s halfway between the starting and finish lines. But before he can reach that halfway point, he must first reach a point that’s halfway between the starting line and the point that’s halfway between the starting and finish lines. And because there are an infinite number of halfway points between the starting and finish lines, the runner must remain frozen for all time, so to speak, at the starting line; he cannot move forward. And, therefore, motion is impossible.

Now please consider that Zeno’s argument, however logical it may appear to be, makes no sense with respect to the real world. Because in that world runners do run, and, therefore, there is such a thing as motion.

By the way, for whatever it’s worth, I believe Zeno hatched his three paradoxes not because he believed them, but rather to show his “logical” colleagues how cloudy their thinking was.

However, there are notable exceptions to the latter. Adam Smith, when he inferred from what he had observed that plumbers and garbage collectors would eventually make more money than secretaries or clerks was a soft-scientist whose thinking was clear. And so was Sir Thomas Gresham, who concluded after careful observation that “bad” money drives “good” money out of circulation. 

Always keep in mind that thinking can’t be classified as either clear or cloudy until the outcome has been tested in the real world, the only realm of process. And by “process” I mean the ways in which people usually do things. Not think. Not say. But do.

Conventional thinking is thinking that tends to stay in charted waters — i.e., it is thinking that takes a path that others have taken before. Therefore, it will most likely result in a conclusion that will not catch anyone by surprise, a conclusion that will not cause any raised eyebrows. 

Innovative thinking is thinking that tends to venture forth in uncharted waters — i.e., it is thinking that takes a path that none has taken before. Therefore, it will most likely result in a conclusion that can catch others by surprise. A conclusion that can cause raised eyebrows. A conclusion that can result from putting factors together in a new, unprecedented, different, imaginative way. A new product. A new service. A new market. A new way of doing things, of looking at a problem, of organizing and applying limited resources. New efficiencies. New solutions. It’s the kind of thinking that’s always valued at a premium because of its relative scarcity. 

I can’t offer you a rigorously scientific explanation of how mastering the principles of language — what it is and how it works — can make you a clear, innovative thinker. No one can. But I can offer you a structure of reason shored up here and there by intuition that might convince you that it can.

First, the brain is the most awesome mechanism in the known universe. For example, it’s been estimated that the average brain has within it the ability to produce between 100,000 and 1,000,000 different chemicals, each capable of reacting by itself, or in combination with others, for the accomplishment of some purpose. Further, within its three pounds, give or take a few ounces, are about ten billion individual nerve cells, or neurons. That’s more than one and a half times as many cells as there are people on this planet. Implanted within those cells are more than one thousand billion billion molecules — that’s a ten followed by twenty zeros. Because each neuron can interact with other neurons in many ways, it’s estimated that the number of possible interconnections among a brain’s neurons may be as many as ten with eight hundred zeros following it. To give you an idea of how large that number is, the total number of subatomic particles in the entire universe is estimated at only ten followed by about eighty-nine zeros. Now just think, you’ve got one of those awesome mechanisms in your skull cavity, there to serve you at all times.

Second, thinking and language are inseparable; indeed, it’s not possible to think without using a language of some kind as a medium any more than it’s possible for a painter to express him- or herself without using paint or some such substance as a medium.

Third, thinking towards the achievement of a particular purpose entails (1) the selection of premises and (2) reasoning from those premises towards a conclusion. Which suggests, given the premise that everyone’s reasoning ability is more or less equal, that what appear to be differences in thinking ability stem more from differences in how people select premises than from any other factor.

Fourth, if you understand how your medium works — language, in this case — you’re more likely to adopt valid premises relevant to a specific mental task than would otherwise be the case. And again, given the premise that everyone’s power of reasoning is, essentially, a constant, you would be more likely to reach a valid conclusion than would also otherwise be the case.

Fifth, the premises available to you for adoption in any given instance fall into two categories: premises based upon your own experience and premises based upon the experience of others.

Sixth, if you’ve mastered the principles of language —what it is and how it works — your reliance on the experience of others for the premises that you will adopt in a given instance will virtually disappear, leaving you only with information that you know to be true because you experienced it. (You’re going to have to trust me on this one until you’ve mastered those principles, virtually all of which you’ll find in this book.)

Seventh, having to rely on your own experiences for premises rather than on the experiences of others as conveyed to you through language causes you to work your brain a lot harder than you’ve ever done before, including making it search intensively for new connections, new relationships, new combinations. And your brain, being the awesome mechanism that it is, is up to the task — the end result of this whole process is a conceptual breakthrough, a paradigm shift, a quantum leap, it doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s innovative thinking made manifest. Perhaps this is why Zen Master Shunryo Suzuki once observed that, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the experts’ there are few.”

There’s an old parlor-game puzzle that well demonstrates the difference between conventional and innovative thinking. It involves two steps:
 

(1) Drawing nine dots on a piece of paper, arranged as shown in Figure 1.
   
(2) Drawing four straight lines that will intersect all nine dots. The conventional thinker will not be able to do it. He or she will most likely come up with the arrangement shown in Figure 2.
   
(3) The innovative thinker will be able to do it. You see, whereas the conventional thinker creates limits where no limits exist, the innovative thinker does not. And so he or she goes outside the imagined, self-imposed boundary lines of the outermost dots and draws four straight lines that do the job, as shown in Figure 3.
  I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t add at this point that there is an alternative explanation for the conceptual breakthroughs, paradigm shifts, or quantum leaps that have come to people since the beginning of time. And that is that the flashes, insights, intuitions, and so on that we call conceptual breakthroughs, paradigm shifts, or quantum leaps are put in people’s minds by that entity called God, the Unknowable One, First Cause, Mother Nature, the Exalted One, the Almighty, among others. I will say no more about this except to paraphrase something Franz Werfel once wrote (in his book The Song of Bernadette) — “For those who favor this alternative, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, no explanation will suffice.”

1. Ratioverbalistics is the study of the relationship between words and (1) the correct processing of verbal information, (2) clear, innovative thinking, and (3) superior communication. 

2. A verbal language comprises a set of words, each word in the set related to all the other words in that set, by agreement or by custom. 

3. Thinking is the mental process centered in the mind and brain acting in concert with one another to produce a rational end result. It is not feeling, sensing, or parroting. 

4. Thinking can be either passive or active, active thinking can be either clear or cloudy, and clear thinking can be either conventional or innovative. 

It is something that does not exist outside of mind/brains — not in books, newspapers, or magazines; not on radio or television, not on computer screens, not anywhere but in mind/brains. 

This is so because until such time as the mind/brain decodes the stimuli impacting upon the nervous system sensors, that’s all they are — visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, or gustatory stimuli. 

They become information only after they are mentally processed. Consequently, information and thoughts are synonymous. 

Descriptive information is raw information that has been processed into identities such as rain, hills, automobiles, traffic noise, the smell of perfume, a headache, fibrillation, etc. 

Evaluative information is information that is the outcome of a mental process whose purpose is to determine or decide upon a relationship between two or more objects.

1. A state of mind wherein only the feelings generated by word information determine one’s response to that information; all other considerations are excluded. 

2. A state of mind wherein the desire to believe or not to believe a statement is sufficient to compel one to substitute perceptions of reality created by that desire for perceptions of reality created by one’s senses or past experience. It can also compel him to temporarily suspend all powers of reasoning. 

A hypnotic state of mind can be induced in a subject by the suggestions of a hypnotist with whom the subject has developed a rapport. It can also be induced by a combination of suitable factors without a hypnotist — fatigue, fixation, and relaxation, among others. 

The hypnoverbal state of mind can be induced by hearing certain words or phrases -— welfare, income redistribution, oil depletion allowance, trade unionism, the three-martini lunch — and by certain proper names — e.g., Roosevelt, Vietnam, Moral Majority, Nixon, Kennedy, Auschwitz, SDI, and Reagan. 

The induction of a hypnotic state may take considerable time, but sometimes requires only a few seconds. While in such a state of mind, the hypnotized individual appears to heed only the communications of the hypnotist, automatically and uncritically. He appears to have no will of his own. He sees, feels, smells, touches, and tastes completely in accordance with what he is told by the hypnotist, even though it may be in obvious conflict with what he senses is happening around him. He doesn’t reason or analyze, nor does he make deductions or inductions. Even his memory may be altered by suggestions made by the hypnotist. 

While in such a state of mind, the individual appears to be aware only of what his feelings are about the words, automatically and uncritically, even though those feelings may be in conflict with the sense of what he is hearing. He doesn’t reason or analyze, nor does he make deductions or inductions. He just feels.

Computer hot keys are determined by the TSR program involved; human “hot keys” are determined by the symbolic-self involved. While in this state, the mind tends to reject as false word information reported to it by the brain that appears to it to be in conflict with its symbolic-self, while accepting as true only word information that appears supportive of that symbolic-self.

A state of mind that recognizes that the meaning of word information, in the absence of immediate sensory corroboration, can be nothing more than a tentative perception of reality, to be subsequently accepted or discarded on the basis of either experiential evidence or independent, reliable corroboration. 

Fatigue, fixation, and relaxation have no effect on it. 

Certain words or phrases — welfare, income redistribution, oil depletion allowance, trade unionism, the three-martini lunch, etc. — have no effect on it. 
Certain proper names — e.g., Roosevelt, Vietnam, Moral Majority, Nixon, Kennedy, Auschwitz, SDI, and Reagan — have no effect on it. 

Considers the meaning of word information deliberately and critically. 

Is a self-controlled state of mind, with both the ability and a ready disposition to exercise will. 

Doesn’t ignore sensory evidence. 

Reasons, analyzes, and makes deductions or inductions. 

Does not permit its memory to be altered by suggestions. 

Is attentive to what’s happening in the real world.

So much for the relationship between words and clear, innovative thinking. Now for the one between words and superior communication.

Please note that I’ve limited what’s being made known by one mind to another to thoughts only. While it’s true that every mental experience comprises part thought and part feeling, the feeling component can’t be made known to another. For example, someone says to you “I’m afraid.” Now that’s all you’re going to get — the words “I’m afraid.” But there’s no way that you can know the fear that the other person says he’s feeling. 

1. It’s always thinking “How can I help?” rather than “What’s in it for me?” 
 
And people can usually sense the difference in the speaker’s choice of words, in his facial expression, and in his voice tone.

2. It’s nonjudgmental, neutral. Which means that it  literally doesn’t try to put words in other people’s mouths. 

I say “heavily” biased because everyone is biased to some extent. See “No such thing as objectivity” in Chapter 6.

3. It respects others. Because respect for others builds trust just as the “How can I help?” mindset builds trust. And with trust, channels of communication open widely. 
 

There’s a lovely Hindustani word of greeting or salutation: “Namaskar!” It literally means “I salute the divinity in you.” And there’s an old Hasidic saying that if we treat every person we meet as though he were the Messiah, then it wouldn’t make any difference if he weren’t. That’s  the sense of what I’m trying to convey to you when I talk about being respectful of others.
4. It always thinks, speaks, and acts out of love rather than out of fear, because love is creative while fear is destructive. 
 
There are only two fundamental emotions — love and fear. They are the two poles of feelings. All other emotions cluster around one or the other. Joy, generosity, compassion, patience, good humor, and the like are offshoots of love while anger, worry, envy, bad temper, pessimism, and so on flow from fear. Love in thought, words, and in deeds begets contagious positivity. And communication follows. Conversely, fear in thought, words, and in deeds begets contagious negativity. And communication fails.
5. It’s aware that it cannot change someone else’s mind; it can only give that someone else something to think about in the hope that the latter will change his or her mind voluntarily. As Samuel Butler put it more than three hundred years ago: “He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still.” 

6. It’s aware that just as suspicion begets suspicion, game-playing begets game-playing, and deviousness begets deviousness, openness begets openness, trust begets trust, and goodwill begets goodwill. Therefore, it tries very hard to be a what-you-see-is-what-you-get entity, confident that that will beget a what-you-see-is-what-you-get entity at the other side of the table, so to speak. 

7. It’s a good listener. It’s aware that it doesn’t have all the answers and, therefore, that it can always learn from others by being open at all times. 

For example, the following sentence appears in a book by psychoanalyst and literary theorist Jacques Lacan, a current "icon" of American soft-science college professors: 

It is clear that, as far as meaning is concerned, this "takes hold of it" of the sub-sentence — pseudo-modal — reverberates from the object itself which it wraps, as verb, in its grammatical subject, and that is a false effect of meaning, a resonance of the imaginary induced by the topology, according to whether the effect of the subject makes a whirlwind of asphere or the subjective of this effect "reflects" itself from it.

There's very little question in my mind that the writer intended to hoodwink and impress rather than inform, an affliction that appears to me to be as widespread as the flu in winter time. 

I submit that if all the time that people spend every day trying to make sense of such gibberish were clumped together into a visible ball (an obvious impossibility but useful to contemplate), the sphere thus created would make the planet Jupiter look like a BB by comparison. 

The best engine I know of for correctly processing verbal information is our own InfoTest, which we developed as a public service for just that purpose.