By
Obododimma
Oha
Facebook
could posture as an inquisitive child: that child wants to probe the subscriber
and, if possible, scan every user so as to be able to assert that it is an
authority on subscribers, to say that this authority is an omniscient knower.
So, in the update field, Facebook asks the user: “What is on your mind?” So,
Facebook wants to know this mind through its various possible expressions:
pictures, texts, video clips, audio clips, etc? Facebook wants to know so that
these expressions could be used in generalising about one’s thinking. In other
words, the expressions could roughly tell about
the unseen software called “mind.” I do not know what philosophers think
about this ambitious project of knowing thought through expression. But as
someone in love with signs (in spite of the angle brought in by Jesus Christ
that a sinful and adulterous generation looks for signs), I am interested
in that Facebook question from a simple
semiotic standpoint. Maybe my attempt would open up serious thinking about the
significs of that question.
What is on my
mind is that that question first of all brings up the relationship between the
sign and thought, the sign of the variety of thought. Since we cannot see
thought directly, we can at least see its expression. Charles Sanders Peirce’s
famous indexical mode of the sign comes in here. The sign as a clue to thought,
and this thought or thinking could be used to know the person. The ancients
gave attention in that respect to the symptom. The pictures or texts, etc would
collectively tell us about the person. That is why one should weigh and
consider what one wants to feature as an update, or what one shares. The share
is alignment or identification. So, I should be careful in sharing what could
send a wrong signal about me. Imagine: there is the ghost of ethics there also! Same for the type of people I accept as my
friends or associate online with. Are they kidnappers? Are they terrorists?
Have they been associated with one crime or the other? You see, that “playground”
called Facebook is one place one could come face-to-face with trouble! In that
case, a free thing could become very expensive eventually!
The ancient
semioticians were interested in the relationship between the sign and thought.
That was one reason St. Augustine in his theory of signa data, his attention to
conventional signs, emphasised mentalism of the sign a bit. William of Ockam
amplified that thinking, distinguishing between “mental words” and public or
externalised ones. Mental words? That sounds like "silent speech" or thought
itself , which could metaphorically be called expression? That monism is hard! Anyway,
it was Ferdinand de Saussure, that Swiss
linguist, who initially thought of the signifier and the signified themselves
as mental facilities in his phonocentrism. Later followers would later think of them as material.
Today, when the American generative grammarian, Noam Chomsky, talks about syntax
or language generally as providing a footpath to the mind, I tell myself that
he is unrepentantly following an ancient Western idea. It is not a new mentalism. It is an
ancient one which is nevertheless beneficial to all who want to track down behaviour through
expression, which is also part of behaviour.
The Facebook
update question, “What is on your mind?” is a very powerful one that could be
deployed effectively in the clever new world in following patterns of behaviour
that could be monitored. It could be used by serious-minded law-enforcement
agents in their shortlisting, just as criminals can also use Facebook updates
to monitor their targets! Chineke! Further, the bar is raised again for disciplines that
see something mentalistic in signs we attach ourselves, or those who have no cause for shame in being a sinful and adulterous generation
looking for signs! But this is a warning worth sounding anyway: what is on somebody’s
mind could be slippery, in fact, deceptive, and that deception may be
intentional. So, apply some other technique or caution before generalising. What is on my
mind may not be what is on my mind. I am just dribbling you!
Comments