The Kiki-Bouba effect

Look at the picture above. Which one of the two figures would you call Kiki and which one would you call Bouba? I guess that you’ll say that the left one with jagged shapes is Kiki and the right one with round shapes is Bouba. If so, you are not alone. More than 95% of all people who were asked this question gave the same answer. Moreover, it’s an intercultural phenomenon and it’s also independent of age. The Kiki-Bouba effect prevails even in cultures with no written language and among pre-reader children. Apparently, the relation between the sound of a word and the image it evokes (and the other way round) is to a high extent innate in man. It belongs to man’s nature. On purpose I write “to a high extent”, for, as we saw already, not 100% of all who were asked the question called the jagged-shaped figure Kiki, and for some groups, like autists, and for some cultures the connection is weaker, though it still exists. Nevertheless, we can call the Kiki-Bouba effect a natural phenomenon.
The effect was first discovered in 1929 by the German-American psychologist Wolfgang Köhler, but it has especially been investigated since Vilayanur S. Ramachandran and Edward M. Hubbard repeated Köhler’s experiment in 2001. They introduced also the nonsense words Kiki and Bouba. The effect exists also outside language. For instance, we call some music romantic and other music wild. In music the effect is used for evoking certain feelings or emotions.
Linguists always thought that the relation between the sound of a word and its meaning is arbitrary. The Kiki-Bouba effect shows that as such this view is not right. Of course, when we say “table”, it’s not so that it is inherent to the word that we are talking about a certain piece of furniture with four legs. But the opposite would be that a relationship between language and meaning is completely absent, and that’s not true either. I have shown already that such a relationship exists in my blog “How we think, at least initially”, dated 18 November 2013. The Kiki-Bouba effect is another instance of this relationship.
There are several explanations for the phenomenon. One is quite interesting in view of the relation between language and the way we think: Ideasthesia. Ideasthesia is the term for the neuroscientific phenomenon in which activations of concepts evoke perception-like sensory experiences. Synesthesia is a well-known example. In the case of synesthesia people have sensory responses in reaction to external stimuli. For instance, they see colours, when they hear music. Ideasthesia is broader and involves also the cognitive and semantic aspects of the stimulus: The relationship involved is dependent on the meaning of the stimulus. In the relationship between music and colours, for instance, meaning doesn’t play a part; the phenomenon just happens. In the Kiki-Bouba effect, however, meanings are essential. If you think of a sharp sound you can think of a knife, because a knife is also sharp, albeit in another sense. In the same way there is a relation between Kiki and jagged-shaped and between Bouba and round-shaped. In view of the idea that there is a connection between language and thought this is quite interesting. The Kiki-Bouba effect is an instance of the way we think. It says something about how we are constituted. It’s an example of how in a sense a concept determines the way we look at the world and see reality. Language influences our thinking about the world, although it goes in two directions, of course, for what we see influences also how we speak about it: Whether something is Kiki or whether it is Bouba. 

Some sources and literature
- “Bouba/kiki effect”, in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect
- Peiffer-Smadja, Nathan; Laurent Cohen, “The cerebral bases of the bouba-kiki effect”, on https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811918321141
- Ramachandran, V.S,; E.M. Hubbard, “Synaesthesia – a window into perception, thought and language.” Journal of  Consciousness Studies, 2001/8: 3-34.
- “What is the Kiki-Bouba test?”, on https://brainstuff.org/blog/what-is-the-kiki-bouba-test
- Shukla, Aditya, “The Kiki Bouba effect – research overview & explanation”, on https://cognitiontoday.com/the-kiki-bouba-effect-research-overview-explanation/#The_Kiki-Bouba_effect

Democracy in America

When I heard of the attack on the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., I had immediately to think of Democracy in America, a book written by the French count and politician Alexis de Tocqueville, almost 200 years ago (published in 1835). Tocqueville wrote his book after his travels in the USA in the early 19th century. It is a praise of American democracy and an analysis of how it worked. Since it is a thick book of almost thousand pages, it is impossible for me to summarize the main ideas in a blog. Instead you’ll find here some quotes, collected from my notes in the book and from what stroke my eye, when I leafed through it, plus some comments. I’ll restrict myself to quotes from volume I which is about the political institutions (while volume II is about the influence of politics on society). 

- [I]n a State where the citizens are nearly on an equality, it becomes difficult for them to preserve their independence against the aggressions of power. No one among them being strong enough to engage in the struggle with advantage, nothing but a general combination [of the strength of all] can protect their liberty. (I-3)
To my mind, this passage from one of the first chapters of the book is very relevant to the presidential term that now comes to an end: How to stop a non-democratic president that follows the democratic rules but actually does not follow them and who has a big group of supporters who also follow the rules but actually do not and who are often on the brink of violence and sometimes really use it?

- On CNN, Fox News and the press in general and on Facebook, Twitter and other social media: 
[I]n the countries in which the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people ostensibly prevails, the censorship of the press is not only dangerous, but it is absurd. … The sovereignty of the people and the liberty of the press [are] correlative institutions; just as the censorship of the press and universal suffrage are two things which are irreconcilably opposed … [The press] constitutes a singular power, so strangely composed of mingled good and evil that it is at the same time indispensable to the existence of freedom, and nearly incompatible with the maintenance of public order. … It is an enemy with which a Government may sign an occasional truce, but which it is difficult to resist for any length of time. (I-11) See also my comment on the first quote.

- On Trump and his supporters (but not only):
[I]n the first instance, a society [= party] is formed between individuals professing the same opinion, and the tie which keeps it together is of a purely intellectual nature;[then] small assemblies are formed which only represent a fraction of the party. Lastly,… they constitute a separate nation in the midst of the nation, a government within the Government. Their delegates, like the real delegates of the majority, represent the entire collective force of their party; and they enjoy a certain degree of that national dignity and great influence which belong to the chosen representatives of the people.
That’s how democracy works, indeed. However, this can also work against democracy, as we have seen during the past four years, which Tocqueville implicitly admits: It must be acknowledged that the unrestrained liberty of political association has not hitherto produced, in the United States [till 1835], those fatal consequences which might perhaps be expected from it elsewhere. … At the present time the liberty of association is become a necessary guarantee against the tyranny of the majority. (I-12) But during the Trump years it failed, as said (compare again also the first quote).

- [A]t the present day the most able men in the United States are very rarely placed at the head of affairs … [affairs=public office, as my home edition of the book says] (I-13)

- Nothing is so irresistible as a tyrannical power commanding in the name of the people, because, whilst it exercises that moral influence which belongs to the decision of the majority, it acts at the same time with the promptitude and the tenacity of a single man. (I-13)

- I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the very inadequate securities which exist against tyranny. (I-15)

- On social and moral pressure: [T]he majority possesses a power which is physical and moral at the same time; it acts upon the will as well as upon the actions of men, and it represses not only all contest, but all controversy. I know no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America. (I-15)

- The majority is principally composed of peaceful citizens who, either by inclination or by interest, are sincerely desirous of the welfare of their country. But they are surrounded by the incessant agitation of parties, which attempt to gain their co-operation and to avail themselves of their support. (I-9) 

In selecting these quotes, I could neither do justice to Tocqueville’s book nor to the USA and democracy in America. The selection is quite arbitrary and I have chosen the quotations in view of the present crisis in the country. Seen thus I think that the quotes tell us a lot about the state of the union. 

Note on the source
There are many editions of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, in many languages. For this blog I used the internet version in English on the Gutenberg website:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/815/815-h/815-h.htm (Volume I)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm (Volume II)
Way of quoting: Volume-Chapter. So I-3 means vol I, ch. 3.

Complementarity

Actually it is strange that I haven’t written here about it before: the so-called complementarity thesis. It’s strange, for this thesis has influenced my thinking a lot. Even more, it is one of the leading ideas I used in my PhD thesis on the method of understanding. I realized this omission, when I read the last issue of the Dutch Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte (General Dutch Journal for Philosophy), devoted to the question: “Which philosophical idea deserves wider attention?” The first idea discussed was complementarity, an idea that first has been developed by the Danish physicist Niels Bohr in his debate with Werner Heisenberg. However, since I got it from Karl-Otto Apel, who also has written much about it, I’ll discuss his version.
When Apel discussed the complementarity thesis, there was a hot debate going on on the question whether there is a distinction between the method of explanation, especially used in the natural sciences but also in psychology and the social sciences, for instance, and the method of understanding, used in the humanities and also in psychology and the social sciences. Sometimes explanation is seen as a “hard” method that gives concrete results, while understanding is seen as a “soft” subjective method founded on empathy. Apel wanted to make clear – especially in his Die Erklären-Verstehen Kontroverse in transzendentalpragmatischer Sicht (= The controversy between explanation and understanding from a transcendental-pragmatic perspective) – that a thus conceived distinction between both methods is not correct and that explanation and understanding are just different approaches with different purposes. He did this with the help of Bohr’s complementarity thesis.
What we often see, so Apel, is that the methods of explanation and understanding are associated with different types of sciences (“sciences” understood in the German and Dutch sense, so as all kinds of systematically gathering knowledge, including the humanities and not only the exact sciences). Then explanation is the method of the physical sciences and the science-based approaches of the social sciences and the like, while understanding is the method of the humanities. However Apel’s thesis is (and mine as well) that explanation and understanding are different approaches that can be used in all kinds of sciences (in the broad sense, as just explained). For what is relevant when you gather knowledge is not the field of investigation as such (physical sciences vs humanities) but the type of questions you ask when gathering knowledge. If – my words – you are interested in causes, laws, objective connections etc., you use the method of explanation. In this case you ask why-questions. If you are interested in reasons, motives, or the meaning or sense that something happened, you use the method of understanding. Then the leading questing is the “what … for”-question. Especially (but certainly not only) psychology and sociology are the meeting points of both types of questions. For instance, we want to know why John murdered his father. Then we can ask whether John has an Oedipus-complex, whether he is a psychopath, whether he had used drugs at the moment of the murder, etc. In this explanatory approach we see John as an object drifted by objective forces “external” to him, so to speak. However, we can John also see as a subject with reasons and motives, and then we ask him himself what made him kill his father. Maybe John will tell us that he had been sexually assaulted by his father when he was a child, or, that his father always beat his mother and that he wanted to take revenge. Then we try to understand John and what he did.
As this example shows, explanation and understanding do not need to exclude each other but they are different methods to gather knowledge that can be used alongside each other: both methods are complementary. This made Apel formulate his version of the complementarity thesis:
“Understanding and explanation ... are complementary forms of knowledge corresponding to complementary leading knowledge-interests. That is to say, they
(a) supplement each other within the whole household of human knowledge, so to speak, and at the same time,
(b) they exclude each other as different interests or intentions of asking questions, and,
(c) for both reasons, they cannot be reduced to each other.”
(1979b:12‑13; italics mine).
Now it is so that complementary in this sense is not limited to the methods of explanation and understanding. It is a wider phenomenon. Actually, methodical complementarity is a special instance of the dual aspect view that says that the world as a whole and man in particular can be considered in two ways: objectively and subjectively. For example, man can be considered either as a biological body or as a conscious and thinking subjective mind, as we just have seen. Or, to take another example, nature can be considered as a natural, so physical process, or it can be considered as it is subjectively experienced and constructed (a duality that is important to take into account in this age of global warming and a decreasing biodiversity). But don’t take the complementarity thesis and the dual aspect view in the wrong way. They are ways to look at the world around us. The complementarity thesis and generally the dual aspect view stress that the world or whatever we want to study can be approached from different sides and can be seen from different angles. In the end the world is one. 

Sources
- Apel, Karl-Otto, Die Erklären-Verstehen Kontroverse in transzendental pragmatischer Sicht. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1979a.
- Apel, Karl-Otto, “Types of social science in the light of human cognitive interests”, in: S.C. Brown (ed.), Philosophical disputes in the social sciences. Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1979b; pp. 3‑50.
- My PhD thesis (see the column left on this blog page). 

Family resemblances

At the moment many countries are again in lockdown because of the second wave of Covid-19. I told a friend of mine in another country what the present lockdown in the Netherlands involves: Non-essential shops are closed. Schools are closed. Groups outside are not allowed to be bigger than two persons. You are allowed to receive only two persons a day at home. Libraries, concert halls etc. are closed. People have to work at home again, as much as possible. Etc. Etc. However, people can leave their homes when they like, so they are not locked up in their houses. In my friend’s country, however, people must stay at home and will be allowed to leave only for work, health issues, or buying daily necessities like food. There are yet a few other exceptions that you are allowed to leave your home but if you don’t have a legally accepted reason, you can be fined. Therefore, we can say that in my friend’s country people are locked up in their houses, unless they have a legal reason to go out. The difference with the Netherlands made my friend remark: “I understand that the term ‘lockdown’ has different meanings and is applied with different guidelines in the countries adopting it.” Apparently, the word “lockdown” doesn’t have the same meaning for everybody. In one country it means this, in another country that, although in a way the idea of lockdown is the same everywhere in the world. What a lockdown involves can even differ from person to person. To quote a blog by Chris Bloor: “Some friends have considered themselves ‘in lockdown’ while permitting themselves visits to relatives’ homes, family gatherings, a long trip to a distant beauty spot. Others I know have enforced a virtual total exclusion from the world.” (source) How can one word have such different meanings?
In order to answer this question, I think we can best go to Wittgenstein. Somewhere in the beginning of his Philosophical Investigations he explains the idea of language-game. In this blog it’s not important what he means by it, but then, in § 65, he says: “[S]omeone might object against me: ‘You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game … is: what is common to all these activities …’ ” Wittgenstein’s admits that this is true and then he begins to explain (66): “Consider for example the proceedings that we call ‘games’. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all? … [I]f you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. … Look for example at board-games, with their multifarious relationships. Now pass to card-games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ballgames, much that is common is retained, but much is lost.—Are they all ‘amusing’? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball games there is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has disappeared. Look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games like ring-a-ring-a-roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many other characteristic features have disappeared! And we can go through the many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities crop up and disappear. And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.”
And then Wittgenstein continues (67): “I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than ‘family resemblances’; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, colour of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way.— And I shall say: ‘games’ form a family.”
Now back to my question: How is it possible that the word “lockdown” has so many different meanings? As we have just seen: How different games may be from each other, we see enough similarities in them to call them all “games”. Games have “family resemblances” in Wittgenstein’s words. It’s the same so for all kinds of lockdown: How different they are, apparently we see enough similarities in them to call them all “lockdown”. All these kinds of lockdown have “family resemblances”. What they all have in common is even clearer than in the case of games: We talk of a lockdown in case of restrictions imposed on society or on large groups in society by the state for a public reason. You can refine this definition, but I guess that this is what all lockdowns have more or less in common. Of course, you can say that it’s weird to use for all different types of lockdown the same word. But this is how we use the word, and as Wittgenstein said: “[T]he meaning of a word is its use in the language.” (43)