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THE MODAL SWITCH
Jud Evans


THE  MODAL SWITCH

One of the existential modalities of a human can be that of being a doctor, whilst one of the existential modalities of a doctor CANNOT be that of being a human.

The AITist system is connected linguistically and semantically to the very core of the way that the human mind grasps that which is actualised

 

(a) He or she sees that which is experienced as real  in the universe.

 

(b) The linguistic methodology with which he/she describes the way in which that presence is experienced whilst he/she and 'it' exists. The 'modal switching' that goes on in language is actually a transfer of the attributed predicational information, which is in effect the existential modality of the subject - to the object and vice versa. The keys that open this particular door are:

 

(1) The strange use of the: "there is/there are. . . " mechanism to avoid the ambiguous modal toggle effect of attribution transfer.

 

(2) The inadmissibility of semantic toggling, as in the admissible sentences: "A cat is an animal" or "An elephant is an animal," but we cannot throw the semantic switch and reverse the relationship to say: "An animal is a cat" or "An animal is an elephant. " or "A doctor is a human, "because plainly there are millions of other animals that fall into this animal classification which are not cats or elephants, and therefore the sentence: "An animal is a cat" is flawed, because an animal could be a snake or a chipmunk. Similarly there are thousands of other humans who are not doctors, and therefore to say that a doctor is a human being is to subsume the whole class as being doctors and to suggest that the 'doctor class' is just another name for the 'human class.'

 

Everybody knows that the world is not populated by animals all of which are squirrels and monkeys acting as doctors, but by human beings some of whom enjoy or suffer the occupational existential modality of doctorhood.

 

I have come to understand that the whole concept of AITism is actually subconsciously 'felt' by humanity, and that many of the linguistic mechanisms are already recognised and are responsive to specific linguistic stimuli but have not been comprehended sufficiently to have been explicated. Languages have however automatically adjusted themselves to accommodate many glaring existential conflicts. In formal writing. For example 'passivity' is condemned in the interests of 'forceful writing and objectivity, ' but the reason for this instinctive distaste is little understood - though some feminists see it as a manifestation of a male dominated literary establishment in the past. Now that 'model switching' is comprehended, the implications of toggling between: 'Josephine was beaten by the policeman" and: The policeman beat Josephine" are suddenly thrown into clear focus, for the modal switch changes the existential experiential modality of Josephine to that of the policeman. In other words from the point of view of emphatic 'masculine' narrative - a story which is carried along by the unfolding of fresh energetic and 'vigorously expatiated' events, the passivity often shown by the more sensitive male and female writers and poets is condemned as 'passive, ' and as demonstrating inactiveness, inertia and submissiveness, and as concentrating too much on the 'feelings' of the main protagonist or hero and heroines of the story, rather than in 'the job at hand. ' A modal shift into a passive existential configuration is thought to bestow a manner of torpidity, submissive fecklessness upon Josephine's existential modality, and hand the baton of pragmatic experiential modality to the macho and 'objective' policeman, [who we may have never encountered before in the story. ]

How do we know a doctor is a human being? We know that a doctor is a human being because ONLY human beings can be doctors. Squirrels and monkeys can't be doctors. When the day arrives when we have computers sufficiently well programmed to diagnose and treat and dispense pills etc to human beings, it may well be that those machines will have the appellation 'Doctor' bestowed upon them, but I am contradict that the 'machine doctor' will have some designatory title to differentiate it from its human equivalent. For me being human could never be classified or construed as being one of the existential modalities of being a doctor. Being human is certainly an existential modality of all the constituent atoms that form a human and being a doctor is ONE of many existential modalities of being a human. As I see it this is definitely a 'bottom up' classificatory system from the point of view of logic. Being a human is NOT one of the classificatory preconditions for being a doctor because if the entity wasn't a human [if it were a squirrel for example] or it didn't exist at all, then there would be no question of it being considered for the title of DOCTOR, or being admitted to medical school whether he/she/it was educationally and legally qualified or not - because it would be a squirrel or not exist in the first place.

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