The Two Mentalities

I was blessed early on by stumbling across excellent guides who helped me orient myself. One of these was Pitirim Sorokin (1889-1968), a Russian sociologist who later became a U.S. citizen. His defining work was Social & Cultural Dynamics in 4 volumes, but a single-volume abridgement is also available. Sorokin proposed two fundamental human mentalities, and he summarizes them as follows:

One extreme is a mentality for which reality is that which can be perceived by the organs of the sense; it does not see anything beyond the sensate being of the milieu (cosmic and social). Those who posses this sort of mentality try to adapt themselves to those conditions which appear to the sense organs, or more exactly to the exterior receptors of the nervous system. On the other extreme are persons who perceive and apprehend the same sensate phenomena in a very different way. For them they are mere appearance, a dream, or an illusion. True reality is not to be found here; it is something beyond, hidden by the appearance, different from this material and sensate veil which conceals it. Such persons do not try to adapt themselves to what now seems superficial, illusory, unreal. They strive to adapt themselves to the true reality which is beyond appearances. [Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics (abridged), p. 25]

The first mentality Sorokin calls sensate, the other ideational. He rightly asserts that the pure type probably does not exist, but he asserts that in most people one or the other will be predominant. He then proceeds to build a cyclic history from this in which Ideational eras are followed by Sensate eras, and in between will come a brief period where the two blend, of which an example is the Renaissance. Good enough, you might say, for sociological work. At the same time my own life’s experience (75 and still counting) totally confirms this classification.

Elaborating on this very basic classification (which brings to mind the introverted/extroverted pairing), Sorokin characterizes the ideational mentality by using negations. Such people are trying to negate the world—while the sensate embrace it.

My own experience suggests a more complex explanation. The real difference between these two extremes is actually a greater openness, in those labeled ideational, to the spiritual, intellectual, and subtle aspects of reality—which they feel to be higher. It’s not that they are negative toward the world. It is that they are much more positively drawn toward the higher—not because of virtue but because they sense it. Sorry about that word. But to the inwardly-oriented, intuition is just as keen a perception as the sensory. And it’s not as if those labeled sensate lack all awareness of the higher currents; they have them too. But they don’t perceive them quite so intensely and are therefore inclined, all things equal, to ignore them.

Vast domains of human conflict exist because these fundamental differences are not sharply and effectively understood by either side. They are therefore conflicts between those who see colors and those who’re colorblind. We cannot overcome a condition like colorblindness by logical discourse. Nor can the colorblind suddenly begin to see colors because they engage in acts of faith. Faith requires more than will. It requires cultivation of the intuitive nature enough so that it will yield an inner sensation of the truth of it; once that is present, faith is easy—indeed unavoidable. The human condition is very powerfully shaped by gifts. To see beyond the borderzone, indeed even to see it as existent, you have to see. And that power is not something that can be manufactured. We’re born with it. Conversely, those who are sensitive can also learn to act as if they do not really see—in order to conform at least behaviorally with the majority of the blind—but that’s just an adaptation. They still see, whether they like it or not. 

Is Evidence Subject to Debate?

That would depend, it seems to be, on who is engaging in the debate. The line of thought that I began pursuing in the last posting strongly suggests that thought takes place within environments. Indeed, until we’ve produced or selected a broad framework in which to think, we are engaged in something else: we are attempting to find an orientation, we’re clearing land, surveying, and otherwise preparing the ground for thought. This conclusion is almost self-evident. We don’t start thinking suddenly. We’re raised in cultural settings; we learn to think while using mental tooling formed and perfected over many generations by others. We in turn make our contribution and pass on.

In one sense there are as many cultures as individuals. Families have cultures, small communities ditto, and so on up the line to very large collectives. At the same time cultures can be divided into two fundamental kinds: those spiritually and those materially oriented. The Russian sociologist, Pitirim Sorokin, renders these as ideational (spiritual) and as sensate (materialistic). He also thinks that in periods of transition, the Renaissance being an example, the two forms mix. I will content myself with the two basic forms because I somewhat doubt that a real mixing is possible.

The ultimate problem for thought—or for the evaluation of evidence—is that these two position are incompatible. I’m tempted to pile on the adjectives: radically, totally, absolutely, and so on. But a naked “incompatible” will do. Here different a priori premises define all that follows; one cannot reconcile this difference at later stages of the argument. The ideational position begins with the acceptance, a priori, of an immaterial reality; its evidence is the sheer fact that we are, know it, and therefore we are conscious. Consciousness cannot be logically reduced to matter; therefore the soul is immaterial. The sensate position denies precisely this basic starting premise of the other side; it asserts the priority of inorganic matter. In effect it never reaches consciousness because it views it as a negligible by-product of brain functioning (mind is an epiphenomenon).

These two sides can’t debate. What are usually labeled debates are efforts to attract a following. To rally a following is, in essence, a form of politics, certainly not philosophy. Or metaphysics. Or theology. There are countless examples of such debates not least, on one side, the rash of books promoting atheism and, on the other, the intelligent design (ID) argument contra Darwin. Such squabbles may have a secondary benefit in helping people orient themselves—thus choosing a framework of thought in which to abide. The best way to identify this sort of ideological activity is to look at the tooling being used. If the argument makes use of physics, biology, or some other natural science to argue—whether it is for or against spirituality—you can be certain that the argument is ideological. So far as I’m concerned, basing a spiritual interpretation on quantum mechanics is still materialism. And so is an argument based on very spiritual-sounding entities like memes, complexity theory, or the Collective Unconscious.

What is interesting is the popular manifestation of this mixed-up situation. The sharp difference in fundamental premises is obscured. The ideational position appears to be grounded on God or, in a more philosophical contexts, where God is assigned to theology, on Being. God’s existence is held to be a matter of debate because in a mixed culture such as ours the best evidence is thought to be something physical out there. There is no physical out there that is evidence for God. Thus a population that is vaguely spiritual in orientation—because, it seems, it comes as a natural endowment—nevertheless gives standing to another ideology. The nihilistic conclusions of the sensate viewpoint, to be sure, are not loudly proclaimed; where they are touted at all, it is as emblems of superior status.

From a point of view like my own—let us say someone who likes to do his own thinking—the real grounding of the ideational position has the strongest possible evidence: it is our internal experience of the self. God becomes a necessary inference if we take this evidence seriously, if we assume, in other words, that we have meaning and that our personally felt meaning has a real foundation, isn’t merely an illusion, has ontological reality. To be sure, we operate at all times as if this were true—ignoring troubled, suicidal states. If it is—especially in light of our personal impermanence on this plane—then it requires a grounding in a transcending Meaning, call it what we may.

Now to the question posed in the title. Debates take place within a framework—else they don’t deserve the name. All sides must share the same grounding premises. Concepts, similarly, must hold their definitions and not undergo strange morphings along the way. If the evidence for anything, let us say for NDEs, takes place within a framework, why not debate it? Something of value may emerge. Across frameworks, however, discussions lose all relevance.