Interdisciplinary Approaches to Human Communication

Brent D. Ruben, Brent D. Ruben

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351309981
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Estudios de comunicación

This volume brings together diverse and divergent essays on communication as viewed by outstanding scholars in various disciplines. The authors review the mainstream of each approach to communication, sketch the dimensions of that concern, and discuss the problems and potential for future progress. Contents: Lee Thayer, "Communication: Sine Qua Non of the Behavioral Sciences"; Hubert Frings, "Zoology"; Alfred G. Smith, "Anthropology"; Richard W. Budd, "General Semantics"; Brent D. Ruben, "General System Theory"; Joseph M.R. Del-gado, "Neurophysiology"; Herbert Blumer, "Symbolic Interaction"; and Peter L. Berger, "Sociology of Knowledge."

1
Communication:
Sine Qua Non of the Behavioral Sciences

LEE THAYER

IT IS extremely difficult to talk sense about communication. There are a number of reasons why this is so, and some awareness of the reasons for that difficulty is an important preliminary for anyone who is seriously interested in the subject. That is where this paper must begin.

Some Fundamental Difficulties

It would be impossible to indicate an order of importance of the several difficulties to be faced in trying to talk sense about communication. What for one reader may stand as a serious obstacle may be of little consequence for another. Hence, I make no claim that the sequence in which these difficulties are presented in any way represents the order of their importance. Since it is conceptual difficulties we are faced with, the pertinence of any one of them for each reader can be determined only by the individual reader.

Familiarity, Popularity

One difficulty of major import is the fact that the phenomenon of communication is a familiar one to most of us. And the term communication is a very popular one these days. From an individual point of view, the more familiar a phenomenon, the more difficult it is to develop a sound, empirical understanding of it. From an aggregate point of view, the more talked about a phenomenon is, the more difficult it becomes to develop scientifically sound conceptualizations of it. It is even more difficult to come to grips with a phenomenon so vital to our behavior.(⁸, p. 11; ⁶; ⁹, ^{pp. 86-87})

Lack of a Discipline

A second difficulty is the fact that there exists no single scientific discipline having an exclusive interest in communication or a systematic body of knowledge. There are loose “professional” associations of persons having some part-interest in communication, of course, as well as academic programs built on some special orientation; and there is undoubtedly an “invisible college” of scholars whose scientific interests and pursuits, with respect to communication, do overlap to some degree. But there is nothing like the disciplinary foundations one sees in physics, for example.

Closely related is the fact that the phenomena of communication are so basic to the life and behavioral sciences that they transcend most of the arbitrary disciplinary boundaries that do exist. Each discipline thus appropriates some part-aspect of the total process of communication as a matter of proprietary concern, the consequence being a discontinuous and fractionated hodgepodge of terms and approaches that doesn’t add up to much more than any of the pieces. Not only is there no single core of knowledge to draw on, but also there is often no way to relate the part-aspects to one another. Each discipline is destined to study its own myopias. Because the phenomena of communication are so basic as to have some relevance for all scientific disciplines, and because each of the often diverse points of view brought to bear is self-legitimizing, no comprehending body of knowledge is likely to emerge in the near future. It is like a piece of farmland which belongs to everyone for his or her own whimsical uses; it is likely never to be properly cultivated or systematically productive.

Approachable Both Operationally and Scientifically

A third difficulty is the fact that communication can be approached either as an operational or as a scientific phenomenon, or both. That is, communication is not only something that can be studied, it is something most of us do. While it would seem odd to try to talk about someone “physic-ing” or “psychology-ing,” it is easy to talk about “communicating.”

This is an especially potent difficulty, for there is no necessary relationship between our scientific knowledges and the uses to which those knowledges are put. What the physicist learns from his inquiries into the nature of things is not likely to alter, significantly, his own social behavior—likewise, the traditional psychologist. The difficulty arises from the pervasive ambiguity that surrounds most of the writing and the talk that goes on about communication: Is it in the spirit of scientific inquiry or operational usefulness? Is the purpose to develop a reliable theory of the phenomenon, or to figure out how to “communicate” better in some way?

The fundamental issue, as Donald MacKay has often urged,(¹⁵, ^{pp. 164-65}) is whether or not there is a need for a theory of communication as distinct from a body of practical know-how. It would require too much space to address that issue here. But an awareness and an appreciation of this basic difficulty seems to me indispensable to an adequate posture for coming to conceptual grips with the phenomena of communication.

Scientism and the Mystique of Technology

A fourth difficulty lies in the incompatibility of our seemingly inexhaustible faith in scientism on the one hand,(⁷; ¹⁰, ^{p. 20}) and on the other the nature of the phenomenon itself. The power of the scientific approach is hardly to be doubted, but the cult of scientism is remarkably barren. The increasing efforts being made to “scientize” communication will likely reveal little more about the phenomenon than the limits of its scientizability.

Closely related is the fact that we suffer a deeply embedded cultural belief in technology as the answer to our problems. The illusion is that, no matter what the nature of our problems, we have only to await or urge on the development of some new technology and those problems will be solved. Yet the human and “organizational” communication problems we have today are not basically different from those Confucius pondered more than 20 centuries ago. A fantastic array of technology has evolved, but tacitly assuming these technologies to be an adequate substitute for a sound and comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon, has led not to the solution of our so-called “communication problems” but to an intensification of them.

In short, the inclination to assume that communication is whatever is easily and handily scientizable about it, and the inclination to assume that technological progress is equivalent to understanding, are basic difficulties standing in the way of talking sense about communication.

Basic Reconceptualization

Finally, it is exceedingly more difficult to reconceptualize something as basic and as ubiquitous as communication, and to come to terms with the implications of that basic reconceptualization, than it is to accumulate new knowledges. The ways in which we traditionally and conventionally conceive of communication—those being inadequate and untenable—stand as obstacles to more adequate and more potent ways of conceiving of communication.^* But the lifeblood of science has always been infused by its basic reconceptualizations, not its “research.” What is needed now to provide this sort of impetus for conceptual progress in the study of communication is a basic reconceptualization of the underlying phenomena.

That is what I would like to try to do in this paper: Suggest some ways of reconceptualizing the phenomena of communication which offer a means of organizing a wide range of facts and ideas from a wide range of disciplines of the life and behavioral sciences having some part-interest in communication—cybernetics, information theory, psychology, systems theory, sociology and anthropology, cognitive studies, and so on.

The reason for this long digression is that this is a task to be faced only when the kinds of difficulties described above are in full and meaningful view.

Objectives

For these same reasons, it would not be especially profitable to survey here the “state-of-the-art” of human communication theory—or research. The conceptual/theoretical foundations are neither sound enough, nor broadly based enough. Most of the “research” that has been produced to date is therefore of questionable value. Thus, my objectives here are directed not to the scientific accomplishments of this patchwork “field” but to the pressing scientific need, viz.:

1. To stimulate some thought about why, and in what ways, communication and its related phenomena are the sine qua non of the behavioral sciences
2. To present a basic conceptual framework for approaching those phenomena empirically and systematically
3. To provide a way of generating some of the far-ranging implications of this conceptual foundation

Some Basic Concepts

At the outset, some basic propositions and distinctions need to be introduced.

Communication

First, it will be useful, if not necessary, to conceive of communication as one of the two basic life processes—one, of course, being the ingestión and processing of energy, the other being the acquisition and processing of information, or communication. Just as the crucial component of physical metabolism is the conversion of raw environmental processes into energy forms consumable or processable by a particular living system, the crucial component of the communication process is the conversion of raw event-data into forms of information consumable or processable by that living system.

Communication is not, therefore, a uniquely human phenomenon. We have been greatly disadvantaged by the assumption that communication is something peculiarly human, when, in fact, the process is as basic and indispensable to living systems as is their physical metabolism.

Communication and Intercommunication

One immediate advantage is that a distinction must be made between communication and intercommunication.^* The distinction can most clearly be made in terms of the separate functions each subserves.

The primitive functions of communication for all complex living systems are those of (1) “mapping” into itself relationships between itself and some temporary or recurrent aspects of its environment (adaptation),^** or (2) confirming those relationships, or the resulting orientations, to the ends of the stability or the direction of growth or movement of that living system.

The primitive functions of intercommunication—the intentional and mutual production and consumption of event-data—are therefore those of (1) mutual adaptation and/or manipulation (or control), which in turn results in (2) the building and/or confirming of aggregate structures such as family units, communities, societies, etc., and, at the human level, of institutions, cultures, ideologies, etc.

Although an understanding of communication at the human level is hardly possible without a conception of intercommunication, it is necessary to keep in mind that communication and intercommunication are different processes subserving different (though often related) ends. The technologies employed in specifically human communication and intercommunication may differ, but the primitive functions subserved are similar throughout the phylogenetic scale.

The Communicational Environment

What is uniquely characteristic of human communication and intercommunication is the fact that the technological sophistication of human intercommunication has made possible the emergence and evolution of a purely communicational environment or reality—i.e., an environment or reality comprised of anything that can be and is talked about. Whatever can be and is talked about comprises a reality in the sense that it must be adapted to and dealt with in much the same way as that reality which is subject only to sensory validation. In other words, man’s position on the phylogenetic scale has made possible the emergence and evolution of a communicational environment which has as much or more significance for man than does the physical environment for the “lower” animals. All of those conditions which function as determinants of man’s thought and hence his behavior, but which are not directly verifiable by his own sensorium, are aspects of his communicational environment. Thus, most of what we term man’s values, beliefs, ideologies, aesthetic standards, etc., are ultimately products of human intercommunication. Taken together, anything and everything which man can and does talk about comprises his communicational reality. Whatever one or more men can and do talk about, but which is not amenable to direct sensory contact by them, has no reality beyond what can be and is said about it. The significance of his communicational environment to modem man makes it the major aspect of his ecology.(¹³; ¹⁶)

Teleological vs. Telesitic Behavior

At the level of man, it is necessary to make a distinction between what might be termed his “teleological” contrasted with his “telesitic” behavior. We can do so easily by taking a brief look backward along the phylogenetic scale.

At some vague point along that scale, self-reflexivity emerges as a biological possibility. What this emergent characteristic enables man to do is conceive of himself in relation to those aspects of his environment which he must or would encounter behaviorally.

All living systems, from the simplest to the most complex, exhibit what has been viewed as “purposive” behavior in the teleological sense;(⁴) that is, given that every healthy living system is continuously and unavoidably in the process of becoming what it is, the behavior it manifests can be viewed as having purposiveness about it.^*

Man’s complex biological architecture and sophisticated intercommunication technologies make possible an exceptional degree of self-reflexivity; he is capable of behaving other than teleologically. Because he can conceive of very intricate and future-projected relationships between himself (as he conceives of himself) and his environments (including other people and his expectations of their conceptions of those relationships...