How to separate "your beliefs" from what's actually in your mind

You know those many arguments that we all seem to have, unfortunately, over "who's right and who's wrong"? All those words! What do we know about our minds that can help us break down some basic misconceptions that make it so difficult to communicate? Read on . . .

Instructions

Difficulty: Challenging

Things You’ll Need:

• Just your mind.

1. What the heck is, MEANING AND SYMBOLS: Words, and sounds (including tone of voice), and even gestures, are for us human beings, symbolic in nature. So when I write "Rot," for example, English speakers know it refers to garbage and so on, but if you were German, it would mean what we English speakers call, "red." But this break-down of communication can happen to two English speakers as well. In other words, two speakers of the same language can mean radically different things, even though they're using the same word. Symbols (as described above) don't mean anything, but what "underlies" those symbols (gestures, words, sounds) certainly does. My son speaks gibberish, and I swear it's a language I'm learning! (Hopefully one day he'll learn mine.)
2. MENTAL MAKE-UP: Human minds obviously have a number of functions. I can intend to go to a party; I can desire to eat a cheese burger; I can feel an itch on my arm. But these "mental states" I am identifying right here and now (by means of words) are meaningful to you because we share similar backgrounds. Plus the fact that I've used simple examples. (Imagine talking about "justice," for a hard example.)
3. MORE ON MENTAL MAKE-UP: All those symbols are what I like to call, "blah-blahs." Ultimately they're arbitrary, even if a few of them happen to be onomatopoetic. But you need to share within a community so that your own "blah-blahs" wind up enabling you to communicate, at least with others within your community. (Even among English speakers there are a vast array of dialects!)
4. HOW TO COMMUNICATE: Realize that your beliefs are stated either verbally, in written language, or by some gesture (like the proverbial "middle finger," or, in a different culture, a flick of the hand under the chin), but that because such communication is like, say, a painting, there's no guarantee that it will be interpreted by your conversational partner (interlocutor) in the way in which you wish for him or her to. And, not surprisingly, the chances of another person interpreting you exactly as you wish for them to are almost nil (zero).
5. RECOGNITION: People fight, I'm pretty sure, because of the gap between symbols and what is actually occurring in their minds. It leads to persistent misunderstandings. So what do you do?
6. RESOLUTION: Resolve that, being human, we have to use even more words to try to ensure not that we are, "speaking the same language," but rather, that we are communicating about an identical mental content. That's the hardest part to learn, but it's possible to do it. (You have to truly want to, though.) (Plato's and Aristotle's discussions of regression when it comes to defining terms is legendary, but it's probably ultimately a matter of sour grapes once you think carefully about how human beings are constructed.) When I say "justice," if we're going to go on meaningfully talking about it, I need to know that you don't conceive of it, say, as a "balancing of the scales," since that's certainly not the way that I conceive of it. (That view, by the way, is sometimes also called, "retributive justice," based on the idea that if a wrong is done, you have to "balance the scales" by doing something harmful in response in order to "restore justice." Ring a bell? "An eye for an eye," in other words. But there are other ways of thinking about justice, like seeing it as a *system* devised so that the minimum requirements of fairness are realized even if it means limiting the resources available to those who are naturally more inclined to accumulate goods (Donald Trump and Bill Gates, for examples).
7. FINALLY: Try to make this outlook a habit of mind. In other words, don't make assumptions about what your "audience" intends to be saying just because they use a word that you yourself would use. This requires careful listening, and this skill (careful listening) is the central ingredient in what education is supposed to enable you to accomplish. It's an activity, not a set of facts.

Tips & Warnings

• Take a philosophy course. I've long advocated that Critical Thinking (a philosophy course) should be taught in high school, followed up by both Introduction to Philosophy and Introduction to Ethics (in that precise order).