Part II




SELF-REGULATION AND OTHER-SIMULATION BY THE
VERBAL MIND




Papers nos 4 and 5 present a conversational model
of Ego's internal regulation of coding and
symbol processing by simulating the reverse
processes in Alter. Presented at a cybernetics
meeting in 1973 this model emerged from my study
in the sixties of the situation-oriented
semantics developed by Arne Næss, and from my
parallel work on object-oriented computer
simulations of interpersonal communication. That
made me realize that a shared language and a
common code would not suffice for intersubjective
understanding, not even external corrective
feedback from Alter would do. Somehow, the
interlocutors must wittingly or unwittingly
resort to internal simulation circuits: Egos'
encoding of what is (to be) said is regulated by
predictory simulation of Alter's decoding; and
Ego's decoding of what has been heard is
regulated by postdictory simulation of Alter's
encoding. This is akin to, and probably supported
by the underlying altercentric capacity of the
preverbal mind to mirror Alter's act by virtual
participation which I came to identify and
specify twenty years later (as reflected in Part
IV), and point in the same direction as
suggestions made by Rizzolatti and Arbib (1998)
in their article on 'Language within our
grasp' with reference to the discovery of
"mirror neurons". The model implies that the
listener monitors her own listening by mirroring
the partner's speaking, and that the speaker
monitors her own speaking by anticipatory
mirroring of processes in the listener. In the
mental simulation version of current
theory-of-mind terms (cf. for example Harris 1991
in Whiten (ed.) 1991), the model amounts to
saying that the verbal child or adult uses his
model or imaginary capacity to simulate the
other's mind in conversation.


Papers nos 6 and 7 extend the idea of
other-oriented self-regulation and simulation of
mind to the issue of being dominated by the model
power of another mind, ruling out any
complementary or rival perspectives, including
one's own. Essay no. 6 is an extract from the
original paper on the model power thesis (Bråten
1973c). It relates to what Bourdieu (1977) came
to term 'symbolic power', albeit with this
difference: while symbolic power is cancelled
only by cancelling its material basis, model
power may be cancelled by symbolic and dialogical
modes (essay no.7).