This post is one of my occasional philosophical departures from my usual subject matter. Although it isn’t specifically about rational thinking (which I’ve written about in previous posts), it is about mental habits and how they can shape our experience. I even intend to examine what “is” is.
Things that we know and experience through our senses are phenomena: rain, wind, temperature, the day/night cycle, seasons, etc. Mental concepts – noumena – such as justice, authority, honor, nationality and race don’t exist in the same way rain exists. For one thing, they’re not Absolutes; they mean different things to different people. And yet we often act as if certain noumena were as real as rain. Race used to be thought of as a biologically-based reality. Now we know that it’s a social construct based on culture and tradition. All homo sapiens belong to the human race, despite variations in outward appearances.
Days, months and years are all phenomenal, based on planetary rotation, the lunar cycle, and the earth’s orbit around the sun, respectively. The convention of the week, however is noumenal – it isn’t based on any natural phenomenon. The seven-day week has long been the standard way of sub-dividing months throughout the industrialized world, and most of us organize how we spend our time using this noumenal convention. “Monday” (for instance) is a social construct. But it’s only Monday if you think it is.
Try this thought experiment: Imagine waking up on the beach, alone, on a desert island. You’ve been delirious with a fever and don’t know how long you were “out of it,” so you’ve lost track of what day it “is.” You have no sensory way of determining it, and it doesn’t even matter in any practical way whether it “is” Monday or Tuesday, because you’re not on anybody’s schedule. Will you arbitrarily choose a day of the week as your baseline and keep track of what day it “is”? Or will you adopt a different mode of thinking and just live each day on the island, without having to give it a name?
Even though it’s just a mental construct that most of us buy into, the day of the week may control our actions and thoughts, and even our moods. You might hear someone who works Monday through Friday complain about having the blues “because it’s Monday.” He’ll predictably perk up five days later because it “is” Friday, the start of the weekend (another noumenal concept). Which brings us to the question of what “is” is.
“Is” can be used to cite a phenomenal reality (it is raining), a noumenal belief (it is Monday), or to state a quality or property of a thing (the apple is red) – the Aristotelean “is of equivalency.” In the first instance, regardless of what I may believe, I’ll get wet if I step outside when it’s raining. As regards the second instance, wars have been fought over where, exactly, the border between two countries “is.” In the third instance, if one person in a room says “It is hot in here” and another person in the room says “No, it’s not,” one of them has to be wrong. What “is” is the basis of many a dispute, whether interpersonal or international. Such disputes can be avoided by dropping the pretense of objective truth implied by an “is of equivalency,” and “subjectivising” the statements: “I’m hot.”/ “I’m not.” No conflict about what “is.” Whether or not Sally “is” pretty can be viewed as a matter of subjective opinion, not of objective fact. Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.
E-prime – English that omits all forms of “is” – is a tool for learning about the linguistic traps that can be set by its use. Nobody has ever suggested that E-prime should replace English. (It’s often more precise than English, but doesn’t lend itself to poetic word formulations.) But try writing without using is/am/are/were etc. and it will help you to appreciate how much you tend to unconsciously objectivise things you believe to be true or important.
Here are some translations of English sentences into E-prime: English – She is pretty. E-prime – I find her attractive/pretty. English – This is really difficult. E-prime – I really have a hard time doing this. English – Look, it’s a UFO! E-prime – I can’t identify that flying object. English – Time is money. E-prime – Earning money correlates to a high degree with the way you spend your time. English – This is Monday. E-prime – Because of the social convention of the seven-day week, most people think of today as Monday. English – He is a liar. E-prime – He lies a lot. English – God is love. E-prime – I believe in God as the embodiment of love.
There’s some overlap in the ideas I’ve written about here and my previous posts on rational thinking and cognitive behavior therapy. Linguistic conventions can make us prisoners of language. Wittgenstein wrote, “The limits of my language are the limits of my universe.”
Some irrational self-talk involves the “is of equivalency.” The thought “I am a Loser” presupposes that people are either Winners or Losers and might mean any of several things to different people. It might mean “I think that I lose more often than I should” or it might mean “I’m destined to fail, no matter what I do.” In either case it’s an irrational simplification that can’t help anyone to achieve their goals. “Being a Loser” is a self-limiting noumenal notion.
It’s only Monday (or Tuesday, etc.) if you think it is. Monday isn’t real in the same way that rain is real.
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