Our brains contain two emotional systems, so to speak – one functions when we do not know what to do, and initiates the (exploratory) process that creates secure territory; the other functions when we are in fact secure. The fact of the presence of these two subsystems, but not their “locale,” has been known for a good while; Maier and Schnierla[8] and Schnierla[9] hypothesized more than five decades ago that mechanisms of “withdrawal” and “approach” (characteristic of animals at virtually all levels of the evolutionary scale) provided the foundation for motivation, as such. The nature of these two systems can best be understood by relating emotional state to motor activity, as we have done previously.Each hemisphere, right and left, appears to have what might be described as a family of related functions, portrayed in Figure 11: The Twin Cerebral Hemispheres and their Functions. The right hemisphere, less language-fluent than its generally more dominant twin, appears specialized for the inhibition and extinction of behavior (and, therefore, for the production of negative emotion), for generation and manipulation of complex visual (and auditory) images, for coordination of gross motor actions, and for rapid and global recognition of patterns.[10] The right hemisphere appears to come “on-line” when a particular situation is rife with uncertainty – appears particularly good at governing behavior when what is, and what to do, has not yet been clearly specified.[11] It might be posited, in consequence, that this hemisphere is still under limbic control – since the limbic system is responsible for detecting novelty and initiating exploratory behavior. This archaic control mechanism would then “drive” the processes of imagistic “hypothesis” generation that constitute the processes of abstract exploration – fantasy – we use to give determinate (and oft-bizarre) form to the unknown.

The left hemisphere, by contrast, appears particularly skilled at linguistic processing and communication, at detailed, linear thinking, at fine motor skill, and at the comprehension of wholes in terms of their constituent elements.[12] The left hemisphere – particularly its frontal or motor (sub)unit – also governs approach behavior,[13] in the presence of cues of satisfaction, is integrally involved in the production of positive affect, and appears particularly good at carrying out practiced activities, at applying familiar modes of apprehension. The left seems at its best when what is and what should be done are no longer questions; when tradition governs behavior, and the nature and meaning of things has been fixed. The dual specialization of the left – for what has been practiced, and for what is positive – can be understood, in part, in the following manner: positive affect rules in known territory, by definition: a thing or situation has been explored most optimally (and is therefore most well known) if it has been transformed by behavioral adaptations manifested in its presence into something of determinate use (or satisfaction) or into potential for such (into promise).

The right hemisphere, in contrast to the left, appears to have remained in direct contact with – appears specialized for encounter with – the unknown and its terrors, which are apperceived in the domain of instinct, motivation, and affect, long before they can be classified or comprehended intellectually. The right hemisphere’s capacity for inhibition and extinction of behavior (for inducing caution during exploration, for governing flight, for producing negative affect) ensures that due respect is granted the inexplicable (and therefore dangerous) when it makes its appearance. The right’s aptitude for global pattern recognition (which appears as a consequence of its basic neurophysiological structure[14]) helps ensure that a provisional notion (a fantastic representation) of the unknown event (what it is like, how action should be conducted in its presence, what other things or situations it brings to mind) might be rapidly formulated. The right hemisphere appears integrally involved in the initial stages of analysis of the unexpected or novel – and its a priori hypothesis is always this: this (unknown) place, this unfamiliar space, this unexplored territory is dangerous, and therefore partakes in the properties of all other known dangerous places and territories, and all those that remain unknown, as well. This form of information-processing – “a” is “b” – is metaphor; generation of metaphor (key to the construction of narratives – dreams, dramas, stories and myth) might well be regarded as the first stage of hypothesis construction. As situation-specific adaptive behaviors are generated, as a consequence of exploration, this provisional labelling or hypothesis (or fantasy) might well undergo modification (assuming nothing actually punishing or determinately threatening occurs); such modification constitutes further and more detailed learning. Anxiety recedes, in the absence of punishment or further threat (including novelty); hope occupies the affective forefront, accompanied by the desire to move forward, and to explore (under the governance of the left hemisphere).

The right hemisphere appears capable of dealing with less determinate information; can use forms of cognition that are more diffuse, more global,[15] and more encompassing to come to terms initially with what cannot yet be understood, but which undeniably exists. It uses its capacity for massive generalization and comprehension of imagery to place the novel stimulus in an initially meaningful context, which is the a priori manner of appropriate categorization. This context is defined by the motivational significance of the novel thing, which is revealed first by the mere fact of novelty (which makes it both threatening and promising) and then in the course of its detailed exploration – and not by its objective sensory qualities (at least not primarily). The right hemisphere remains concerned with answering the questions: “what is this new thing like?” and this means – “what should be done in the presence of this unexpected occurrence?” not “what is this thing objectively?” “What is the new thing like?” (which is a question about its fundamental nature) means “is it dangerous, or threatening (first and foremost), satisfying or promising?’ [although each of these basic categories of affective value can be subdivided more particularly (can it be eaten? can it eat me? will it serve as mate?)]. Categorization according to valence means that the thing is what it signifies for behavior.

The chaos that constitutes the unknown is rendered predictable – is turned into the “world” – by the generation of adaptive behaviors and modes of representation. It is the process of novelty-driven exploration that, in the individual case, produces such behaviors and strategies of classification. However, we are not only individuals; we exist in a very complex social environment – an environment characterized by the constant exchange of information, regarding the means and ends of “proper” adaptation. The human capacity for the generation of self-regulatory behavior and representation has been expanded immensely – expanded in some ways, beyond our own comprehension – by our capacity for verbal and non-verbal (primarily mimetic[16]) communication. We can mimic – and learn from – everyone who surrounds us, and who we can directly contact. In addition, we can obtain information from everyone who can write – assuming we are literate – or who could write, when they were alive. But there is more – we can also learn from everyone who can act, in the natural course of things, or dramatically, and we can also store the behaviors of individuals we come into contact with (directly, by copying them; or indirectly, through the intermediation of narrative and dramatic art forms). Furthermore, our capacity for copying – for mimesis – means that we are capable of doing things that we do not necessarily “understand” (that is, cannot describe explicitly). It is for that reason, in part, that we need a “psychology.”

Patterns of behavioral and representational adaptation are generated in the course of active exploration and “contact with the unknown.” These patterns do not necessarily remain stable, however, once generated. They are modified and shaped – improved and made efficient – as a consequence of their communicative exchange. Individual “a” produces a new behavior; “b” modifies it, “c” modifies that, “d” radically changes “c’s” modification – and so on, ad infinitum. The same process applies to representations (metaphors, say, or explicit concepts). This means that our exploratory assimilative and accomodative processes actually extend over vast periods of time and space (as anyone who has had a document-mediated “conversation” with a great figure of the past is sure to appreciate). Some of this “extension” – perhaps the most obvious part – is mediated by literacy. An equally complex and subtle element, however, is mediated by mimesis.

Patterns of behavioral adaptation and schemas of classification or representation can be derived from the observation of others (and, for that matter, from the observation of oneself). How we act in the presence of things, in their constantly shifting and generally social context, is what those things mean (or even what they are), before what they mean (or what they are) can be more abstractly (or “objectively”) categorized. What a thing is, therefore, might be determined (in the absence of more useful information) by examination of how action is conducted in its presence – which is to say that if someone runs from something it is safe to presume that the thing is dangerous (the action in fact defines that presumption). The observation of action patterns undertaken by the members of any given social community – including those of the observing subject – therefore necessarily allows for the derivation and classification of provisional value schema. If you watch someone (even yourself) approach something then you can assume that the approached thing is good, at least in some determinate context – even if you don’t know anything else about it. Knowing what to do, after all, is classification, before it is abstracted: classification in terms of motivational relevance, with the sensory aspects of the phenomena serving merely as a cue to recall of that motivational relevance.[17]

It is certainly the case that many of our skills – and our automatized strategies of classification – are “opaque” to explicit consciousness. The fact of our multiple memory systems, and their qualitatively different modes of representation – described later – ensures that such is the case. This opaqueness means, essentially, that we “understand” more than we “know”; it is for this reason that psychologists continue to depend on notions of the “unconscious” to provide explanations for behavior. This unconsciousness – the psychoanalytic god – is our capacity for the implicit storage of information about the nature and valence of things. This information is generated in the course of active exploration, and modified – often unrecognizably – by constant, multigenerational, interpersonal communication. We live in social groups; most of our interactions are social in nature. We spend most of our time around others and, when we are alone, we still wish to understand, predict and control our personal behaviors. Our maps of the “understood part of the world” are therefore in large part maps of patterns of actions – of behaviors established as a consequence of creative exploration, and modified in the course of endless social interactions. We watch ourselves act; from this action, we draw inferences about the nature of the world (including those acts that are part of the world).

We know that the right hemisphere – at least its frontal portion – is specialized for response to punishment and threat. We also know that damage to the right hemisphere impairs our ability to detect patterns and to understand the meaning of stories.[18] Is it too much to suggest that the emotional, imagistic and narrative capabilities of the right hemisphere play a key role in the initial stages in the process of transforming something novel and complex – such as the behaviors of others (or ourselves) and the valence of new things – into something thoroughly understood? When we encounter something new, after all, we generate fantasies (imagistic, verbal) about its potential nature. This means we attempt to determine how the unexpected thing might relate to something we have already mastered – or, at least, to other things that we have not yet mastered. To say “this unsolved problem appears to be like this other problem we haven’t yet solved” is a step on the way to solution. To say, “here is how these (still essentially mysterious) phenomena appear to hang together” is an intuition, of the sort that precedes detailed knowledge – is the capacity to see the forest, though not yet differentiating between the types of trees. Before we truly master something novel (which means, before we can effectively limit its indeterminate significance to something predictable, even irrelevant) we imagine what it might be. Our imaginative representations actually constitute our initial adaptations – constitute part of the structure that we use to inhibit our responses to the a priori significance of the unknown – even as they precede the generation of more detailed and concrete information. There is no reason to presuppose that we have been able to explicitly comprehend this capacity – in part because it actually seems to underly (to serve as a necessary or axiomatic precondition for) our ability to understand, explicitly.

It appears that the pattern-recognition and spatial capacities of the right hemisphere appear to allow it to derive from repeated observations of behavior images of action patterns that the verbal left can arrange, with increasingly logic and detail, into stories. A story is a map of meaning, a “strategy” for emotional regulation and behavioral output – a description of how to act in a circumstance, to ensure that the circumstance retains its positive motivational salience (or at least has its negative qualities reduced to the greatest possible degree). The story appears generated, in its initial stages, by the capacity for imagery and pattern recognition characteristic of the right hemisphere, which is integrally involved in narrative cognition,[19] and in processes that aid or are analogous to such cognition: the ability to decode the nonverbal and melodic aspects of speech, to empathize (or to engage, more generally, in interpersonal relationships), and the capacity to comprehend imagery, metaphor, and analogy.[20] The left-hemisphere “linguistic” systems “finish” the story: adding logic, proper temporal order, internal consistency, verbal representation, and possibility for rapid abstract explicit communication. In this way, our explicit knowledge of value is expanded, through the analysis of our own “dreams.” Interpretations that “work” – that is, that improve our capacity to regulate our own emotions (to turn the current world into the desired world, to say it differently) qualify as valid. It is in this manner that we verify the accuracy of our increasingly abstracted presumptions.

The process of creative exploration – the function of the knower, so to speak, who generates explored territory – has as its apparent purpose increase in the breadth of motoric repertoire (skill) and alteration of representational schema. Each of these two purposes appears served by the construction of a specific form of knowledge, and its subsequent storage in permanent memory. The first form has been described as knowing how. The motor unit, charged with origination of new behavioral strategies when old strategies fail (when they produce undesired results), produces alternate action patterns, experimentally applied, to bring about the desired result. Permanent instantiation of the new behavior, undertaken if the behavior is successful, might be considered development of new skill. Knowing how is skill. The second type of knowing, which is representational (which is an image or model of something, rather than the thing itself) has been described as knowing that[21] – I prefer knowing what. Exploration of a novel circumstance, event, or thing, produces new sensory and affective input, during active or abstracted interaction of the exploring subject and the object in question. This new sensory input constitutes grounds for the construction, elaboration and update of a permanent but modifiable four-dimensional (spatial and temporal) representational model of the experiential field, in its present and potential future manifestations. This model, I would propose, is a story.

It is the hippocampal system – [an integral component of the neuropsychological subsystems that regulate anxiety]– that is critically involved in the transfer of information from observation of ongoing activity to permanent memory,[22] and that provides the physiological basis (in concert with the higher cortical structures) for the development and elaboration of this mnestic representation. It is the right hemisphere, which is activated by the unknown, and which can generate patterns rapidly, that provides the initial imagery – the contents of fantasy – for the story. It is the left hemisphere that gives these patterns structure and communicability (as it does, for example, when it interprets a painting, a novel, a drama, a conversation – or a dream). The hippocampus notes mismatch; this disinhibits the amygdala (perhaps not directly). Such disinhibition “releases” anxiety and curiosity, driving exploration. The right hemisphere, under these conditions of motivation, derives patterns relevant to encapsulation of the emergent unknown, from the information at its disposal. Much of this information can be extracted from the social environment, and the behavioral interactions and strategies of representation – emergent properties of exploration and communication –that are “embedded” in the social structure. Much of this “information” is still implicit – that is, coded in behavioral pattern. It is still knowing how, before it has been abstracted and made explicit as knowing what. The left-hemisphere gets increasingly involved, as translation “up the hierarchy of abstraction” occurs.

Knowing-how information, described alternatively as procedural, habitual, dispositional, or skilled, and knowing-what information, described alternatively as declarative, episodic, factual, autobiographical, or representational, appear physiologically distinct in their material basis, and separable in course of phylo- and ontogenetic development.[23] Procedural knowledge develops long before declarative knowledge, in evolution and individual development, and appears represented in “unconscious” form, expressible purely in performance. Declarative knowledge, by contrast – knowledge of what – simultaneously constitutes consciously accessible and communicable episodic imagination (the world in fantasy) and subsumes even more recently developed semantic (linguistic) knowledge, whose operations, in large part, allow for abstract representation of the contents of the imagination, and communication thereof. Squire and Zola-Morgan[24] have represented the relationship between these memory forms according to the schematic of Figure 12: The Multiple Structure of Memory.[25] The neuroanatomical basis of knowing how remains relatively unspecified. Skill generation appears in part as the domain of the cortical pre/motor unit; “storage” appears to involve the cerebellum. Knowing what, by contrast, appears dependent for its existence on the intact function of the cortical sensory unit, in interplay with the hippocampal system.[26] Much of our knowing what, however – our description of the world – is about knowing how, which is behavioral knowledge – wisdom. Much of our descriptive knowledge – representational knowledge – is representation of what constitutes wisdom (without being that wisdom, itself). We have gained our description of wisdom by watching how we act, in our culturally-governed social interactions, and by representing those actions.

We know how, which means how to act to transform the mysterious and ever-threatening world of the present into what we desire, long before we know how we know how, or why we know how. This is to say, for example, that a child learns to act appropriately (assuming it does) long before it can provide abstracted explanations for or descriptions of its behavior.[27] A child can be “good,” without being a moral philosopher. This idea echoes the developmental psychologist Jean Piaget’s notion, with regards to child development, that adaptation at the sensorimotor level occurs prior to – and lays the groundwork for – the more abstracted forms of adaptation that characterize adulthood. Piaget regarded imagistic representation as an intermediary between sensorimotor intelligence and the (highest or most abstract) stage of “formal operations”; furthermore, he believed that imitation – the “acting out” of an object – served as a necessary prerequisite to such imagistic representation (portrayal in image or word, instead of behavior). The process of play appears as a higher-order, or more abstract form of imitation, from this perspective. Piaget presents two main theses:

“The first is that in the field of play and imitation it is possible to trace the transition from sensory-motor assimilation and accomodation to the mental assimilation and accomodation which characterize the beginnings of representation…. [The second is that] the various forms of representation interact. There is representation when an absent model is imitated. There is representation in symbolic play, in imagination and even in dreams, the systems of concepts and logical relations, both in their intuitive and operational forms, implies representation.”[28]

Piaget believed that imitation could be described in terms of accomodation: “… if there is primacy of accomodation (matching of behavior) over assimilation (altering of schemas)… the activity tends to become imitation.”[29] This implies that the imitating child in fact embodies more information than he “understands” (represents). He continues: “representation… can be seen to be a kind of interiorized imitation, and therefore a continuation of accomodation.”[30] [With regards to the three-memory-system model (which Piaget is of course not directly referring to): “… even if there were justification for relating the various stages of mental development to well-defined neurological levels, the fact remains that, in spite of the relative discontinuity of the structures, there is a certain functional continuity, each structure preparing for its successors while utilizing its predecessors.”[31]]

What can be said of children appears true, more or less, phylogenetically: our cultures (which we absorb as children, through the processes of imitation) consist primarily of patterns of activity, undertaken in a social context. As parents are to children, cultures are to adults: we do not know how the patterns we act out (or the concepts we utilize) originated, or what precise “purposes” (what long term “goals”) they currently serve – these patterns are in fact “emergent properties” of long-term social interactions. Furthermore, we cannot describe such patterns well, abstractly (explicitly, semantically) – even though we duplicate them accurately (and unconsciously) in our behavior (and can represent them, episodically, in our literary endeavors). We do not know why we do what we do – or, to say the same thing, what it is that we are (all ideological theories to the contrary). We watch ourselves, and wonder; our wonder takes the shape of the story or, more fundamentally, the myth. Myths describing the known, explored territory, constitute what we know about our knowing how, before we can state, explicitly, what it is that we know how. Myth is, in part, the image of our adaptive action, as formulated by imagination, before its explicit containment in abstract language; myth is the intermediary between action, and abstract linguistic representation of that action. Myth is the distilled essence of the stories we tell ourselves about the patterns of our own behavior – and about the inevitable consequences of those patterns, as they play themselves out in the social and impersonal worlds of experience. We learn the story, which we do not understand (which is to say, cannot make explicit), by watching. We represent the action patterns we encounter in action – that is, in ritual – and in image, and word: we act, then represent our behavior, ever more abstractly (ever more explicitly, “consciously”).

The central features of our (socially-determined) behavior thus become key elements – characters – in our stories (just like the procedural elements of the emergent games of interacting children become explicit “rules” later in development). The generation and constant refinement of these stories, told and retold over centuries, allows us to determine ever more clearly just what it is that proper (and improper) behavior consists of, in an environment permanently characterized by the interplay between security and unpredictability. We are extremely (uncontrollably) imitative, appallingly social, and interminably exploratory. These characteristics allow us to generate and communicate represented images, and, simultaneously, serve as the focal point of inquiry for those images. Our capacity for creative action frees us, constantly, from the ever-shifting demands of the “environment.” The ability to represent creative action – to duplicate observed creativity in our own actions, and to represent that creativity in detail and essence – allows everyone to benefit from the creative action of everyone else (at least everyone with whom communication might conceivably take place). The fact of our sociability ensures that our adaptive behaviors are structured with the social community in mind – at least in the long run – and increases our chances of exposure to creative intelligence. We observe others acting, in a manner we find admirable, and duplicate their actions. In this manner, we obtain the skills of others. Our capacity for abstraction allows us to take our facility for imitation one step farther, however: we can learn to imitate not only the precise behaviors that constitute adaptation, but the process by which those behaviors were generated. This means – we can learn not only skill, but meta-skill (can learn to mimic the pattern of behavior that generates new skills). It is the encapsulation of meta-skill in a story that makes that story great.

Our imitative proclivity, expressed in behavior, appears to find its more abstracted counterpart in the ability to admire, which is a permanent, innate or easily acquired constituent element of our intraspsychic state. This capability for awe, this desire to copy, often serves to impel further psychological and cognitive development. The worshipful attitude that small boys adopt towards their heroes, for example, constitutes the outward expression of the force that propels them towards embodying, or incarnating (or even inventing) oft ill-defined heroic qualities themselves. The capacity for imitation surfaces in more abstract guise in the human tendency to act “as-if”[32]– to identify with another – to become another, in fantasy (which means, to ritually identify with or unconsciously adopt the story of another). (This means – the ability to adopt someone else’s goal, as if it were yours.[33]) The capacity to act “as if” expresses itself in admiration (ranging in intensity from the simple respect accorded a competent other, to abject worship) and, even more abstractly, in ideological possession. No independent “instinct” necessarily needs to be postulated, to account for this mimetic ability (although one may well exist): all that may be necessary is the capacity to observe that another has obtained a goal that is also valued by the observer (that observation provides the necessary motivation), and the skill to duplicate the procedures observed to lead to such fulfillment.

Mimetic propensity, expressed in imitative action, provides for tremendous expansion of behavioral competence[34]; allows the ability of each to become the capability of all. Precise duplicative facility, however, still retains pronounced limitations. Specific behaviors retain their adaptive significance only within particular, restricted environments (only within bounded frames of reference). If environmental contingencies shift (for whatever reason), the utility of strategies designed for the original circumstance (and transmitted through imitation) may become dramatically restricted, or even reversed. The capacity for abstraction of imitation – which is, in the initial stages, capability for dramatic play – overcomes the specific restrictions of exact imitation, elaborating reproduction of particular acts, removing the behavior to be copied from its initial specific context, establishing its first-level declarative representation and generalization. Play allows for the permanent extension of competence and confidence through pretence, which means through metaphoric and symbolic action (which is semantic use of episodic representation), and for natural expansion of behavioral range from safe, predictable, self-defined contexts, out towards the unknown world of experience. Play creates a world in “rule-governed” fantasy – in episodic or imagistic representation – in which behavior can be rehearsed and mastered, prior to its expression in the real world, with real-world consequences. Play is another form of “as-if” behavior, that allows for experimentation with fictional narratives: pretended descriptions of the current and desired future states of the world, with plans of action appended, designed to change the former into the latter. To play means to set – or to fictionally transform – “fictional” goals. Such fictional goals give valence to phenomena that would, in other contexts, remain meaningless (but valence that is informative, without being serious). Play allows us to experiment with means and ends themselves, without subjecting ourselves to the actual consequences of “real” behavior – and to benefit emotionally, in the process. The goals of play are fictional; the incentive rewards, however, that accompany movement to a fictitious goal – these are real (although bounded, like game-induced anxieties). The bounded reality of such affect accounts, at least in part, for motivation to play – for the intrinsic interest that accompanies play (or immersion in any dramatic activity).

Play transcends imitation, in that it is less context-bound; it allows for the abstraction of essential principles from specific (admirable) instances of behavior – allows for the initial establishment of a more general model of what constitutes allowable (or ideal) behavior. Elaboration of dramatic play into formal drama likewise ritualizes play, abstracting its key elements one level more, and further distills the vitally interesting aspects of behavior – which are representative (by no mere chance) of that active heroic/social (exploratory and communicative) pattern upon which all adaptation is necessarily predicated. Theatrical ritual dramatically represents the individual and social consequences of stylized, distilled behavioral patterns, based in their expression upon different assumptions of value and expectations of outcome. Formal drama clothes potent ideas in personality, exploring different paths of directed or motivated action, playing out conflict, cathartically, offering ritual models for emulation or rejection. Dramatic personae embody the behavioral wisdom of history. In an analogous fashion, in a less abstract, less ritualized manner, the continuing behavior of parents dramatizes cumulative mimetic history for children.

Emergence of narrative – which, paradoxically, contains much more information than it explicitly presents – further disembodies the knowledge extant latently in behavioral pattern. Narrative presents semantic representation of play, or drama – of essentially abstracted episodic representations of social interaction and individual endeavor – and allows behavioral patterns contained entirely in linguistic representation to incarnate themselves in dramatic form on the private stage of individual imagination. Much of the information derived from a story is actually already contained in episodic memory. In a sense, it could be said that the words of the story merely act as a retrieval cue for information already in the mnestic system (of the listener), although perhaps not yet transformed into a form capable either of explicit (semantic) communication, or alteration of procedure.[35] [36] It is for this reason that Shakespeare might be viewed as a precursor to Freud (think of Hamlet): Shakespeare “knew” what Freud later “discovered” – but he knew it more implicitly, more imagistically, more procedurally. (This is not say that Shakespeare was any less brilliant – just that his level of abstraction was different.) Ideas, after all, come from somewhere – they do not arise, spontaneously, from the void. Every complex psychological theory has a lengthy period of historical development – development that might not be evidently linked to the final emergence of the theory.

Interpretation of the reason for dramatic consequences, portrayed in narrative – generally left to the imagination of the audience – constitutes analysis of the moral of the story. Transmission of that moral – that rule for behavior, or representation – is the purpose of narrative, just as fascination, involuntary seizure of interest, is its (biologically-predetermined) means. With development of the story, mere description of critically important (and therefore compelling) behavioral/representational patterns becomes able to promote active imitation. At this point the semantic system, activating images in episodic memory, sets the stage for the alteration of procedure itself. This means establishment of a “feedback loop,” wherein information can cycle up and down “levels of consciousness” – with the social environment as necessary intermediary – transforming itself and expanding as it moves. Development of narrative means verbal abstraction of knowledge disembodied in episodic memory and embodied in behavior; means capability to disseminate such knowledge widely and rapidly throughout a communicating population, with minimal expenditure of time and energy; means intact preservation of such knowledge, simply and accurately, for generations to come. Narrative description of archetypal behavioral patterns and representational schemas – myth – appears as an essential precondition for social construction and subsequent regulation of complexly civilized individual presumption, action and desire.

It is only after behavioral (procedural) wisdom has become “represented” in episodic memory, and portrayed in drama and narrative, that it becomes accessible to “conscious” verbal formulation (procedural knowledge is not representational, in its basic form) and to (potential) modification, in abstraction. Knowing how information, generated in the course of exploratory activity, can nonetheless be transferred from individual to individual, in the social community, through means of imitation. Piaget points out, for example, that children first act upon objects, and determine object- “properties” in accordance with these actions, and then almost immediately imitate themselves, turning their own initial spontaneous actions into something to be represented and ritualized.[37] The same process occurs in interpersonal interaction, where the other person’s action rapidly becomes something to be imitated, and then ritualized (and then abstracted and codified further). A shared rite, where each person’s behavior is modified by the other, can therefore emerge in the absence of “consciousness” of the structure of the rite; however, once the social ritual is established, its structure can rapidly become described and codified (presuming sufficient cognitive ability and level of maturation). This process can in fact be observed during the spontaneous construction (and then codification) of children’s games.[38] It is the organization of such “games” – and their elaboration, through repeated communication – that constitutes the basis for the construction of culture itself.

Behavior is imitated, then abstracted into play, formalized into drama and story, crystallized into myth and codified religion – and only then criticized in philosophy, and provided, post-hoc, with rational underpinnings. Explicit philosophical statements regarding the grounds for and nature of ethical behavior, stated in a verbally comprehensible manner, were not established through rational endeavor – their framing as such is (clearly) a secondary endeavor, as Nietzsche recognized:

“What the scholars called a ‘rational foundation for morality’ and tried to supply was, seen in the right light, merely a scholarly expression of the common faith in the prevalent morality; a new means of expression for this faith.”[39]

Explicit (moral) philosophy arises from the mythos of culture, grounded in procedure, rendered progressively more abstract and episodic through ritual action, and observation of that action. The process of increasing abstraction has allowed the knowing what “system” to generate a representation, in imagination, of the “implicit predicates” of behavior governed by the knowing how “system.” Generation of such information was necessary to simultaneously insure accurate prediction of the behavior of others (and of the self), and to program predictable social behavior through exchange of abstracted moral (procedural) information. Nietzsche states, further:

“That individual philosophical concepts are not anything ca­pricious or autonomously evolving, but grow up in connection and relationship with each other; that, however suddenly and arbi­trarily they seem to appear in the history of thought, they never­theless belong just as much to a system as all the members of the fauna of a continent – is betrayed in the end also by the fact that the most diverse philosophers keep filling in a definite funda­mental scheme of possible philosophies. Under an invisible spell, they always revolve once more in the same orbit; however inde­pendent of each other they may feel themselves with their critical or systematic wills, something within them leads them, something impels them in a definite order, one after the other – to wit, the in­nate systematic structure and relationship of their concepts. Their thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a recognition, a remem­bering, a return and a homecoming to a remote, primordial, and inclusive household of the soul, out of which those concepts grew originally: philosophizing is to this extent a kind of atavism of the highest order.”[40]

The knowing what system, declarative (episodic and semantic), has developed a description of knowing how activity – procedure – through a complex, lengthy process of abstraction. Action and imitation of action developmentally predates explicit description or discovery of the rules governing action. Adaptation through play and drama preceded development of linguistic thought, and provided the ground from which it emerged. Each developmental “stage” – action, imitation, play, ritual, drama, narrative, myth, religion, philosophy, rationality – offers an increasingly abstracted, generalized and detailed representation of the behavioral wisdom embedded in and established during the previous stage. The introduction of semantic representation to the human realm of behavior allowed for continuance and ever-increasing extension of the cognitive process originating in action, imitation, play, and drama. Language turned drama into mythic narrative, narrative into formal religion, and religion into critical philosophy, providing for exponential expansion of adaptive ability. Consider Nietzsche’s words, yet again:

“Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.”[41]

The procedural system provides (constitutes?) memory for behavior. Such memory includes imitative representation of behaviors generated spontaneously in the course of creative individual action, whose precise circumstance of origins have been lost in the mists of history, but which have been integrated into a consistent behavioral pattern, over time – integrated into culturally-determined character. Integration means active balance of competing subjectively-grounded motivational demands within the context of the social environment; means internalization of socially-regulated behavioral expression of subjective desire. Such internalization constitutes construction of a value (dominance) hierarchy – determination of the relative contextual propriety (morality) of imitated or otherwise incorporated patterns of action. Such construction inevitably “precedes” episodic or semantic representation of the basis of the construction, although such second-order representation, once established, becomes capable (indirectly) of modifying procedure itself (as what is imagined can then be acted out). This is the loop that feeds the development of explicit “consciousness” itself: procedure is established, then represented, then altered in abstraction, then practiced; the procedure changes, as a consequence of the abstracted and practiced modification; this change in turn produces an alteration in its representation, and so on, and so on, from individual to individual, down the chain of generations. This process can occur “externally,” as a consequence of social interaction, or “internally,” as a consequence of word and image-mediated abstract exploratory activity (“thought”). This interactive loop – and its putative relationship to underlying cognitive/memory structures – is represented schematically in Figure 13: Abstraction of Wisdom, and the Relationship of Such Abstraction to Memory. (Only a few of the interactions between the “stages” of knowledge are indicated, for the sake of schematic simplicity.)

Behavioral knowledge is generated during the process of creative exploration. The consequences of such exploration – the adaptive behavioral patterns generated – are imitated, and represented more abstractly. Play allows for the generalization of imitated knowledge, and for the integration of behaviors garnered from different sources (one “good thing to do” may conflict in a given situation with another; “good things to do” therefore have to be ranked in terms of their context-dependent value, importance or dominance). Each succeeding stage of abstraction modifies all others, as our ability to speak, for example, has expanded our capacity to play. As the process of abstraction continues – and information vital for survival is represented evermore simply and efficiently – what is represented transforms from the particulars of any given adaptive actions to the most general and broadly appropriate pattern of adaptation – that of creative exploration itself. This is to say: individual acts of “heroism,” so to speak (that is, acts of voluntary and successful encounter with the unknown) might be broadly imitated; might elicit spontaneous imitation. But some more essential (“prototypical”[42]) feature(s) characterize all acts of heroism. With increasing abstraction and breadth of representation, the essential features comes to dominate the particular. As Eliade[43] points out: traditional (that is, nonliterate) cultures have a historical memory that may be only three generations long – that is, as long as the oldest surviving individual is old. Events that occurred previous to this are telescoped into something akin to the aboriginal Australian’s “dreamtime”: into the “trans-historical” period when ancestral heroes walked the earth, and established the behavioral patterns that constitute the present mode of being. This telescoping is the “mythologization” of history – and is very useful, from the perspective of efficient storage. We learn to imitate (and to remember) not individual heroes – not the “objective” historical figures of the past – but what those heroes represented: the pattern of action that made them heroes. That pattern is – to say it once again – the act of voluntary and successful encounter with the unknown: the generation of wisdom through exploration. (I am not trying to imply, either, that the semantic or episodic memory systems can directly modify procedure; it is more that the operations of the semantic/episodic systems alter the world, and world-alterations alter procedure. The effect of language and image on behavior is generally secondary – mediated through the environment – but is no less profound for that).