FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY ACCORDING TO NAKPIL-ZIALCITA AND ABULAD

For students and scholars who are interested with the current concerns of Filipino philosophy, there are two illuminating essays that can satisfactorily answer their queries. One is entitled Mga Anyo ng Pilosopiyang Pilipino, written by Fernando Nakpil-Zialcita in 1971, and the other is entitled Contemporary Filipino Philosophy, written by Romualdo Abulad in 1988. While Nakpil-Zialcita talked about Filipino philosophy, as he saw it in the 70's, Abulad talked about the same thing from an evolutionary and developmental point of view taking the ecclesiastical Thomism as his starting point and the developments in the late 80's as his end point. Though these essays came out seventeen years apart, and seem to have a very divergent view on the historical status of Filipino philosophy, a careful comparative reading would actually reveal a handful of convergent opinions on the state of affairs and problems of Filipino philosophy.

According to Nakpil-Zialcita there are three forms of Filipino philosophy. He wrote:

Maaring maging Pilipino ang pilosopiya sa pamamaraan o kalamnan. Ang kalamnan ay maaaring maging isang pagsusuri sa pananaw ng Pilipino sa daigdig o dili kaya'y isang pagsusuri sa mga saligan sa pulitika at sa ekonomiya ng bansa. Kayat masasabing tatlo ang maaaring maging anyo ng pilosopiyang Pilipino: 1) Isang pamamaraan Pilipino sa pilosopiya; 2) Isang pagsusuri sa mga saligan ng pulitika at ekonomiya ng lipunang Pilipino; at 3) Isang interpretasyon ng pananaw-sa-mundo ng Pilipino.¹

Graphically, what he asserted can be represented by the following figure.

For him, Filipino philosophy as a methodology could be a promising hallmark of what Filipino philosophy should be. Unfortunately owing to the relative youth of such a collective discourse, this form of Filipino philosophy is yet an undelineated and protean mass. "Dahil wala pa ni kalahating dantaon ang ating tradisyon sa pilosopiya, hindi pa lumilitaw ang pamamaraang ito. Ngunit ito'y tiyak na lilitaw gaya na sa pintura at eskultura, sa musika at sa sayaw."² Filipino philosophy as a critique of the political and economic structures of Philippine society can be traced back as early as the enlightenment-style critical activities of the propaganda movement, and finds its fullest manifestation during the advent of Marxist inspired critical theory spawned by the socialist movements. However, this second form of Filipino philosophy, as thoroughly dependent on the imported philosophies of Karl Marx (1818-1883), Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924), and Mao Zedong (1893-1976) among others, attracted the radical question of its being Filipino in the first place. Hence, whereas the first form of Filipino philosophy can be a hallmark of being Filipino philosophy, its existence is strictly speaking still something hypothetical; while the second form of Filipino philosophy has an unquestionable existence, it is considered as definitely not a hallmark of being Filipino philosophy. The third form of Filipino philosophy, that is Filipino philosophy as interpretation of the Filipino world-view, transcends the problems of both the first and second forms, in the sense that this third form really exists and can surpass even the first form in being a hallmark of Filipino philosophy. Nakpil-Zialcita stressed: "Mas maliwanag ang pagka-Pilipinong sa ganitong anyo ng Pilosopiya kaysa sa unang dalawang nabanggit na."³ However, this third form of Filipino philosophy generated another theoretical problem. Nakpil-Zialcita pointed out: "Ang may kalabuan ay ang layunin ng ganitong pilosopiya."⁴ While it is true that the third form of Filipino philosophy exists, in fact it actually proliferates, and while it is true that its being Filipino is unquestionable, what remains to be pondered is its purpose. "Matapos niyang maitanghal ang pananaw-sa-mundo ng Pilipino, mayroon pang dapat gawin ang pantas," argues Nakpil-Zialckita, "dapat niyang isipin kung paano itong magamit sa kasalukuyan at sa hinaharap. Ito ang lalong magpapabigat sa kangyang katungkulan."⁵ For him, Filipino philosophy as interpretation of the Filipino world-view must not end with the interpretation but must theorize further on the impact of such a world-view on the present and the future of the Filipinos.

Abulad, on the other hand, did not look only on the present concerns of Filipino philosophy, but on the group of concerns the preoccupied the history of Filipino philosophy. Using an evolutionary schema, he demonstrated that the history of Filipino philosophy has four stages: 1) the first colonial phase, which is characterized by the unchallenged predominance of Thomistic philosophy; 2) the second colonial phase, which is characterized by the influx of contemporary philosophical theories brought home by western-trained Filipino academicians; 3) the phase of early indigenization, which is characterized by the Filipino academicians' concern over the existence and progress of Filipino philosophy, and the quest for a Filipino philosophy, identity and world-view; and 4) the beginnings of the late indigenization, which is characterized by Filipino academicians' distantiation from the agenda of the early phase of indigenization. Graphically, what he stated can be represented by the following figure:

The most obvious difference between Nakpil-Zialcita's morphology and Abulad's scheme is that the former is synchronic in its approach-that is, Nakpil-Zialcita froze time, and took a slice of it for analysis-while the latter is diachronic-that is, Abulad did not freeze time but instead analyzed Filipino philosophy along time's trajectory. Divergence in approach, however, does not automatically spell out divergence in findings. In fact a closer comparative reading on the two papers would reveal some very striking convergences. What may be contemporaneous to Nakpil-Zialcita, writing in the early 70's, could easily correspond to the third and fourth phases of Abulad in the late 80's. Thus, it would not be illogical at all to superimpose their thoughts over each other, as illustrated by the following figure:

Nakpil-Zialcita's third form of Filipino philosophy corresponds neatly with Abulad's third stage of Filipino philosophy. The former's second form of Filipino philosophy more or less falls on the latter's fourth stage of Filipino philosophy. While the former's first form of Filipino philosophy is more or less spread of over the latter's third and fourth stages. A deeper comparative reading on the two classifications will reveal another more important convergence that is suggestive of a crisis in Filipino contemporary philosophy.

A CRISIS IN CONTEMPORARY FILIPINO PHILOSOPHY

Nakpil-Zialcita has unmasked the radical problems nestled within each form of Filipino philosophy, namely: 1) the hypothesized existence of the first form, which in effect did not materialize neither during the time of Abulad's writing nor in our own time; 2) the being Filipino of the second form of Filipino philosophy; and 3) the unfinished task of the third form of Filipino philosophy, which for all practical considerations failed in its mission of interpretation and much more in its greater mission of theorizing further on the impact of such a world-view on the present and future of the Filipinos. Abulad, on his part, talked about the gradual transition of Filipino philosophy from the early indigenous phase to the beginnings of the late indigenous phase. This transition was merely marked by an uneventful and disillusioned distantiation by the Filipino academicians from the agenda of the early phase of indigenization. In Nakpil-Zialcita's morphology this distantiation would mean the abandonment of the third form of Filipino philosophy.

Whereas in the more global history of philosophy an abandonment of a given collective philosophical agendum in favor of a new agendum happens whenever that given agendum is saturated by the over-proliferation of works-making the abandonment a normal sign of healthy philosophical activities-in the context of the still youthful Filipino philosophy a similar abandonment may not signal good health but an incipient crisis. The reasons for this negative diagnosis are the following. First, a healthy abandonment of agendum presupposes at least an adequately answered agendum. An over-proliferation of works on a given agendum specifically means over-proliferation of answers and debates on the same agendum. In our context, the abandonment of the agenda of the early indigenous phase of Filipino philosophy might have happened with the over-proliferation of works but not necessarily with the over-proliferation of answers. Second, Filipino philosophy's failure to effectively close the agenda of its early indigenous phase strongly signals the Filipino philosophers' collective methodological incompetence. Third, Nakpil-Zialcita suggested that the interpretation of the Filipino world-view is just a prelude to the real philosophical task of theorizing further on the impact of such a world-view on the present and future of the Filipinos. Thus, Filipino philosophy's failure to conclude even this prelude ridicules the Filipino philosophers' collective capacities to tackle real philosophic projects. Fourth, many of the pioneering senior Filipino philosophers had devoted their respective careers to the agenda of the early indigenous phase. The unhealthy abandonment of these agenda had in effect severed the intellectual moorings and linkages of the younger breed of Filipino philosophers on and with the pioneering and senior Filipino philosophers, making the younger breed of Filipino philosophers virtually floating intellectuals. Lastly, the agenda of the early indigenization are not a purely academic concern for philosophers that can be tackled and abandoned at their will, but have important and real implications on nation building as well as on the Philippine social sciences. Thus, in this particular case the abandonment of a collective philosophical agenda could not be understood as a signal of good health, but rather of an incipient crisis.

The incipient crisis revealed by the deeper comparative reading of Nakpil-Zialcita and Abulad's papers is characterized by the lack of collective agenda of contemporary Filipino philosophy. Nakpil-Zialcita's remaining second form-having failed to predict the emergence of the first form, and having an abandoned third form-is too narrow to constitute the agenda, and moreover has become a fast waning way of philosophizing in as far as the Philippine intellectual landscape is concerned; while Abulad's mention of a sheer distantiation from the previous agenda is too hazy to be defined as an agendum. This incipient crisis is certainly a grave threat to the progress of Filipino philosophy for the reason that without a clear collective agenda, Filipino philosophy can readily slide back to the concerns of the second colonial phase, where Filipino academicians can take the easy way again of preoccupying themselves with the purposeless expounding of one foreign philosophical theory after another. The absence of a collective philosophical agenda will not only stall the development of Filipino philosophy, but will literally catalyze the latter's devolution, for in this critical moment there is no such thing as status quo. It is either Filipino philosophy evolves otherwise it devolves. It is the contention of this paper that this incipient crisis in and lack of collective agenda of contemporary Filipino philosophy are to a very large extent effects of the intellectual baggage that is the unfinished agenda of the early indigenous phase. Hence, by implication it is also the contention of this paper that in order for Filipino philosophy to develop further, it has to effectively close the agenda of its early indigenous phase.

But what hindered Filipino philosophy from successfully closing the agenda of its early indigenous phase? There are enough reasons for us to think that Filipino philosophy failed in this particular project because of its arrogant, and maybe at the same time indolent, refusal to benchmark on the rigor and methodologies of the social sciences. Nakpil-Zialcita was very right in questioning the philosophic nature of the concerns of his third form of Filipino philosophy. Having doubted its philosophic nature, he placed its being philosophic on its purpose which is to theorize further on the impact of the Filipino world-view on the present and future of the Filipino. Thus, being marked as strictly speaking not philosophic, the agenda of the early indigenous phase can actually be assigned to the jurisdiction of the social sciences, and therefore can only be effectively dealt with using the methodologies of the social sciences. From this perspective it would appear natural and expected that with a Filipino philosophy that has refused to dialog with the social sciences the sociological agenda of the early indigenous phase could not be successfully closed.

The most significant contention of this paper is to propose a powerful methodology that can very potentially conclude the unfinished agenda of the early indigenous phase of Filipino philosophy.

In the sphere of the social sciences, there recently emerged a powerful theoretical brew from a number of disciplines ranging from the natural, human, and computer sciences as well as from the humanities that shared a common interest in the study of human cognition through a meticulous analysis of language. Cognitive anthropology, or cognitive studies, as this emergent discipline came to be called, focuses its investigations on the intellectual, mental and rational aspects and profiles of a given culture. More specifically, Roy D'Andrade in his synthesizing work The Development of Cognitive Anthropology defines it as "the study of the relation between human society and human thought," and looks into "how people in social groups conceive of and think about the objects and events which make up their world-including everything from physical objects like wild plants to abstract events like social justice."⁶ Cognitive anthropology has four basic concerns: semantics, the study of knowledge structures, the study of models and systems, and discourse analysis. By applying cognitive anthropology on Filipino languages, as well as Filipino narrative practices and cultural texts, the interpretation of the Filipino world-view and the mapping out of the Filipino Identity and systems of thought would no longer be an insurmountable agenda to be accomplished.

THE EARLY COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY

Linguistic anthropologists are still debating the nature of the relationship between linguistic concepts and a culture's capacity for cognitive, or mental, clarity and precision. One camp claims that the conciseness and clearness of thinking of a certain people are dependent on their language. "The ease with which in our modern European languages we express wide abstract ideas by a single term, and the facility with which generalizations are cast into the frame of a simple sentence," the American ethnographer, Franz Boas, polemically wrote, "have been claimed to be one of the fundamental conditions of the clearness of our concepts, and the logical force of our thought, and the precision with which we eliminate in our thoughts irrelevant details."⁷ Though the other camp agrees that indeed there are differences between concepts, logic and grammar between languages, its proponents argue that these differences would not amount to an obstacle in the formation of generalized ideas and cognitive development of culture that is seemingly deficient in abstract concepts as well as seemingly riddled with imprecision in its logic and grammar. "Primitive man, when conversing with his fellow man," Boas wrote further, "is not in the habit of discussing abstract ideas. His interests center around the occupations of his daily life; and when philosophic problems are touched upon, they appear either in relation to definite individuals or in the more or less anthropomorphic forms of religious beliefs."⁸ Some cultures seem to be deficient in linguistic forms for the mere reason that such forms are not needed in these cultures. It is not the intention of this paper to argue for or against any of the competing camps and in the process get entangled in the polemics of the still wrangling debate. This paper is contented with the piece of assertion that language reflects the interests and pre-occupations of a culture, a claim that happens to be assumed by both debating camps. On this assertion the Filipino philosophers may ground the project of profiling the Filipino world-view, cultural identity and system of thought. Roger Fowler, in his essay Power, summarizes this point rather succinctly:

The vocabulary of a language could be considered a kind of lexical map of the preoccupations of a culture. Whatever is important to a culture is richly lexicalized: detailed systems of term develop for the areas of expertise, the features of habitat, the institutions and relationships, and the beliefs and values of a community. Possessing the terms crystalize the relevant concepts for their uses; using them in discourse keeps the ideas current in the communities' consciousness, helps transmit them from group to group and generation to generation.⁹

A detailed study of the dominant concepts and categories of the Filipinos, therefore, will reveal a 'lexical map' of the Filipino interests and concerns, things that are intimately related to the Filipino world-view, cultural identity and system of thought.

The Inventory of Salient Concepts

The first procedure that Filipino philosophers might deploy in the project of making a profile of the dominant Filipino concepts and categories may be a thorough study of the Filipino salient concepts. This seemingly simplistic operation obviously must not amount into an indiscriminate drag-netting of ideas and terms from the Filipino languages, narrative practices and cultural texts. Hence, such an operation must be governed by some reliable theoretical principles. The first one of these guiding principles is the notion of lexicalization, as developed by the linguist M. A. K. Halliday, which means the provision of an idea with a term or name. "What concepts are furnished with names in the discourse of a particular social group is the is of utmost importance," Fowler explains, "since vocabulary reflects and expresses the interests of the group."¹⁰ The principle is particularly interested with lexicalization's two extreme ends: over-lexicalization, which means the provision of an idea with a good number terms; and under-lexicalization, which means the provision of an idea with very few terms, if not none at all, on the other hand. Whereas, over-lexicalization is taken to be indicative of an idea's relative prominence within a given culture, under-lexicalization is taken to be indicative of an idea's relative insignificance within a given culture. Hence, by telling us which ideas are prominent and which ones are insignificant, the principle of lexicalization can be of great help in the project of identifying the salient Filipino concepts. Another theoretical principle that may guide the Filipino philosophers in the project of making an inventory of Filipino concepts is a system of binary opposites presented by the American linguist George Lakoff in his controversial book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things. Cognitive anthropologists, Lakoff warns, must be sensitive to the big differences between a concept that is used compared to a concept that is merely pondered upon; between a concept that comes out automatically compared to a concept that comes out in a controlled manner; between a concept that is unconscious compared to a concept that is conscious; between a concept that comes out effortlessly compared to a concept that comes out effortfully; between a concept that is already fixed compared to a concept that is novel; and between a concept that is conventional compared to a concept that is personal.¹¹ In addition to this system of binary opposites, cognitive anthropologists, Lakoff asserts further, must also be sensitive to the differences between concepts that are used as substance compared to concepts that are merely used as conceptual scaffolding; between concepts that are believed compared to concepts that are not believed; and between concepts that are lived by compared to concepts that are merely used in understanding.¹² Lakoff's systems of binary opposites will goad the Filipino philosophers to search for the more significant concepts which are automatic, unconscious, effortless, fixed, conventional, substantial, believed and lived by. Aside from these principles coming from cultural linguistics, there is another one offered by the Marxist literary critic Raymond Williams. In his essay Dickens and Social Ideas, Williams noted that a concept can be present in a cultural text in a number of modes. "I have distinguished then. . . seven kinds of relations between fiction and ideas," he says, "works in which ideas are propagated; in which ideas are embodied; in which ideas are argued; in which ideas are conventions; in which ideas emerge as characters; in which ideas are dissolved into a whole fictional world; and in which, over and above the real action and its values, ideas are present as what can be properly be called a superstructure (standing outside the fictive world, standards used in critiquing/disapproving the fictive world)."¹³ Though like Lakoff, Williams is also inviting our attention to the different possible modes of presence of concepts in a cultural text, the latter is specifically warning that there are modes of presence other than the physical or actual presence of concepts in language or a text. The inventory of salient concepts, therefore, must consider also those concepts that are embodied by, dissolved into, and superstructurally related to Filipino languages, narrative practices and cultural texts. Thus, very briefly, the Filipino philosophers' procedure of thoroughly studying the salient Filipino concepts may be goaded by Halliday's principle of lexicalization, by Lakoff and Williams' respective theories concerning the different modes of conceptual presence.

The Universe of the Unsaid

The founder of the sociology of knowledge, Karl Mannheim, was the first one to suggest that method of making an inventory of concepts within a system is the most direct way of doing sociology of knowledge. Yet he made the stern warning that an inventory of concepts must not focus only on concepts that are present but also those concepts that are absent. "The absence of certain concepts," he argued, "indicates very often not only the absence of certain points of view, but also the absence of a definitive drive to come to grips with certain life-problems."¹⁴ His statement, however, reveals that his program is quite clouded by a western ethnocentrism, that was yet largely unchecked during his time. Mannheim's study of conceptual absence necessitates another culture-his western culture, which he presumed to be more conceptually comprehensive-as a point of comparison. But the developments in linguistic anthropology, stemming from the thoughts of Boas, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, concerning linguistic relativity, and the steady rise of post-colonial sentiments, have already cast an unfavorable shadow on any Eurocentric comparative ethnology. Though in fairness to Mannheim, his comparative study of conceptual absence has potentials in profiling the collective representation of a culture, there has to be some other less controversial and more effective ways of studying such absence.

Lakoff had already briefed us about the different modes of conceptual presence and Williams-when he talked about concepts that are dissolved into, and concepts that are superstructural in relation to, the fictive world-suggested that such presence may sometimes mean physical absence. A promising doorway that may lead the Filipino philosophers to the darker side of Filipino language, narrative practices and cultural texts, would be the idea that conceptual presence must not be equated with actual or physical presence of a concept within a text or discourse. "The unsaid, the already said, the presupposed," asserts the cultural linguist Norman Fairclough, "is of particular importance in ideological analysis, in that ideologies are generally embedded within the implicit meaning of a text rather than being explicit."¹⁵ This assumption is rather widely accepted in the field of ideological discourse analysis. The French philosopher and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu renders a very lucid theoretical explanation when he speculated about the cognitive struggle between social classes for legitimation. For him, though there is a conflict, or tension, between the orthodox discourse of the dominant class and the heterodox discourses of the dominated classes, such a conflict, or tension, is possible only if we assume the presence of an underlying field of consensus that frames up the conflicting discourses. Without this underlying consensual field any conflict would not even be thinkable, for the diverse discourses would just be a collection of unconnected and non-interacting discourses. Bourdieu calls this underlying frame doxa. David Swartz, in his introductory monograph to the thoughts of Bourdieu, illustrates the relationship between orthodoxy, heterodoxy and doxa in the following diagram.

"The doxa," clarifies Swartz, "refers to the fundamental assumptions and categories that shape intellectual thought in a particular time and place and which are generally not available to conscious awareness of the participants."¹⁶ Thus, Bourdieu's doxa roughly corresponds with Emile Durkheim's notion of cultural unconscious as well as with Frederic Jameson's political unconscious. In addition, therefore, to the mode of absence argued by Mannheim's Eurocentric methodology, there is another type of absence that is in fact a deeply concealed presence. The second procedure that the Filipino philosophers might deploy in the study of the dominant Filipino concepts and categories may utilize both Mannheim's comparative methodology as well as that discourse analysis implied by both Jameson, Fairclough and Bourdieu, and foreshadowed as early as Durkheim.

Categories

After studying the concepts that are present or absent in Filipino languages, narrative practices and cultural texts, the Filipino philosophers may push further their cognitive anthropological investigation by looking into the Filipino languages, narrative practices and cultural texts' categories and systems of ordering. In Mannheim's program, this procedure, that will methodically analyze a culture's systems of ordering of its material perceptions and experiences, is intended to explain the fact that people from different societies or classes think differently. In the field of semantics within cognitive anthropology, this same procedure is known as taxonomic study. The term taxonomy refers to the ordering of terms and concepts in some sort of hierarchy from the most inclusive to the least, with the terms and concepts at each hierarchical level grouped into mutually exclusive classes. Classically, taxonomic studies were interested with the folk taxonomies of plants, animals and family members, but now there are more recent studies that are concerned with illnesses and their corresponding cures, with the creatures that populated a culture's spirit-world, with anatomical lexicon and a lot more. Taxonomic studies stands on two conflicting philosophical foundations: one of which can be traced back to the epistemological theory of categories of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and the other to the sociological theories of Durkheim and Marcel Mauss. The Kantian theory of categories is both innatist and universalist. Its followers, says Bruce Lincoln in his book Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification, "maintain that taxonomy is primarily an epistemological instrument, that is, a means of gathering, sorting, and processing knowledge about the external (especially the natural) world: a 'science of the concrete' in which the infinite atomized data of experience are organized and given a form in which they become knowable and manipulable."¹⁷ Durkheim and Mauss, on the other hand, were the first ones who insisted that folk taxonomies have no innate and universal bases in the human mind, but are founded on social reality and practices. Boas followed this line of thought, and recently, Lincoln asserts, Bourdieu "contributed to our understanding of the ways in which taxonomic systems provide ideological msytification for socio-political realities."¹⁸ When taxonomies and categories impose their order on reality, they become involved in the processes of ideology. Gunther Kress and Robert Hodge in their work Language as Ideology explain that "classification is an instrument of control in two directions: control over the flux of experience of physical and social reality, in a 'science'; and society's control over conception's of that reality."¹⁹ It is in their being a collective cognitive control that taxonomies and categories are ideological, and by studying them closely, therefore, it is possible to access the world-view, identity and system of thought of a given culture.

The first way that Filipino philosophers may proceed with the interpretive study of taxonomies and categories is the reconstruction of some of the more prominent taxonomic modules that are either manifest or latent in Filipino languages, narrative practices and cultural texts. In the work of Lincoln, a taxonomic module is a chart that lays out the hierarchical structure of a given taxonomy, together with the culture's ranking of the terms and concepts within the hierarchy, and together with the implicit principles that organize the hierarchy as well as the process of ranking. He calls these implicit principles, the taxonomizers. For the reason that taxonomizers are principles of ranking and valuation within a taxonomic module, by identifying them it is possible to take a glimpse on a culture's ideological concerns and valuation system.

The second way that the Filipino philosophers may proceed with their interpretive study of taxonomies and categories will be the reconstruction of some of the more prominent paradigmatic structures that are either manifest or latent in Filipino languages, narrative practices and cultural texts. A paradigmatic structure is very similar to a taxonomic module, in the sense that it also lays out the culture's ranking of the terms and concepts. Reconstructing a paradigmatic structure is classic way of doing taxonomic research with kinship as its classic subject. The use of paradigmatic structural analysis will give a panoramic overview of the parameters, as well the structural organization, of a given complex cognitive or ideological theme.

The third way that the Filipino philosophers may proceed with their interpretive study of taxonomies and categories will be the analysis of assymetries between classes within taxonomic systems that are either manifest or latent in Filipino languages, narrative practices and cultural texts. The analysis of assymetries presume that within a given category there is a particular class or member that is provided with a cognitive or evaluative priority. There are at least three major approaches in this type of analysis. The first one is the study of markedness. "The term markedness," says Lakoff, "arises from the fact that some morphological categories have a mark and others are unmarked. Take the category of number in English. Plural number has a mark, the morpheme -s, as in boys, while the singular number lacks any overt mark, as in boy. The singular is thus the unmarked member of the morphological category number in English."²⁰ The implication for such a fact in linguistic anthropology is that the unmarked singular form in its cognitive simplicity is cognitively prior to the plural form. This means that the unmarked class is considered the default value, or "the member of the category that occurs when only one member of the category can occur and all other things are equal."²¹ A second approach to the study of markedness is the identification of prototypes within a given taxonomy. A prototype is the best example, or the most typical instantiation, of a given taxonomy. Robertson and Beasley say that "prototypes are used as a reference point in making judgments of the similarities and differences in other experiences and things in the world." Lakoff, asserts for instance that robins are prototypical birds while penguins are not, just as desk chairs are prototypical of chairs where electric chairs or rocking chair may be not. Again, prototypes possess certain cognitive priority over the rest of the types. A third approach to the study of assymetries is the analysis of neutralization of contrasts. Lakoff says: "Consider contrasts like tall-short, happy-sad, etc. These pairs are not completely symmetric. For example, if one asks How tall is Harry? One is not suggesting that Harry is tall, but if one asks how short is Harry? One is suggesting that Harry is short. Only one member of the pair tall-short can be used with a neutral meaning, namely, tall. Since it occurs in cases where the contrast is neutralized, tall is referred to as the unmarked member of the tall short contrast set."²² This implies that words occurring in neutral contexts are cognitively basic and therefore has cognitive priority over its contrast.

THE LATER COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY

Within the field of cognitive anthropology, the person who was responsible for initiating Mannheim's classic concern for the study of concepts, categories and systems of ordering was the anthropologist and ethnographer Franz Boas. During the first decades of the 20th century, Boas made some notable as well as inspiring studies on tribal categories of sense and perception that eventually became the foundational thrust for the early period of cognitive anthropology. However, during the second half of the same century, more specifically in the 1960s and 1970s, another ground-breaking development happened that brought cognitive anthropology further than Boas' initial preoccupations. In this development, though the analysis of language remained the methodological staple for accessing the cognitive processes of tribal people, the new focus is no longer the isolated concepts, categories and systems of ordering, but the analysis of the same things in terms of the tribal people's-or any other people's-mental processes.²³ The impact of such a theoretical development pushed cognitive anthropology from its initial concern on semantics to the study of knowledge structures, cultural models and cultural systems. The Filipino philosophers must not only follow the Mannheimian and Boasian study of concepts, categories and systems of ordering, but also venture into further and deeper study of the Filipino knowledge structures, cultural models and cultural systems.

Cognitive Schemas and Cultural Models

One major area within the cognitive anthropology's concern for knowledge structures, models and systems is the analysis of cognitive schemas and cultural models. The idea of cognitive schema was first proposed by Frederic Bartlett in his 1932 work Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. In this work, it was understood as a mental structure that actively organizes past reactions and experiences, for the latter to be recalled to memory. Bartlett's concept was then appropriated, though modified slightly, by cognitive anthropology, such that in the 1980s it had become the primary means of peering into the psychological aspects of a given culture. To date, cognitive schema is considered one of the most important and powerful concepts in cognitive anthropology. Robertson and Beasley explains:

Prior to schema theory, the major pieces of culture were thought to be either material or symbolic in nature. Culture, as conceptualized by anthropologists, started to become thought of in terms of parts instead of wholes. . . Through the use of schemata, culture could be placed in the mind, and the parts became cognitively formed units.²⁴

Ronald Casson, in his essay Schemata in Cognitive Anthropology that extensively reviews the usage of the same concept, explains that cognitive schemas "are conceptual abstraction that mediate between stimuli received by the sense organs and behavioral responses," and that they "serve as the basis for all human information processing, e.g., perception and comprehension, categorization and planning, recognition and recall, problem solving and decision making."²⁵ Casson further specified that cognitive schemas are organic wholes composed of smaller units, and that they are autonomous, automatic, generally unconscious, non-purposive and irreflexsive.²⁶ D'Andrade clarifies further that a cognitive schema is "the organization of cognitive elements into an abstract mental object capable of being held in working memory with default values or open slots which can be variously filled in with appropriate specifics."²⁷ He clarifies that these schemas are of different types: event schemas, orientational schemas, narrative schemas, propositional schemas, metaphoric schemas, and image schemas.²⁸ Using cognitive schema as the main analytic and theoretical frame, there have been interesting researches done on the Trobriand Islander's model of land tenure rights, Mexican men and women's outlook concerning the course of gendered life, North American schema of romance, marriage and environmental care/movement.

How can this analytic and theoretical concept be used in the profiling and analysis of the Filipino world-view, cultural identity and system of thought? In as far as the anthropological approach to the study of world-view as system of beliefs and valuations, as well as of cultural identity and system of thought, are concerned, the theory of cognitive schema is not only useful but is a major breakthrough in the sense that anthropology now can handle world-view, cultural identity and system of thought no longer as a mere collection of concepts but as a bigger cognitive system. As Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn, in their illuminating work A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning, stressed: "The essence of schema theory in the cognitive sciences is that in large measure information processing is mediated by learned or innate mental structures that organize related pieces of our knowledge. . . . schemas, as we think of them, are not distinct things but rather collections of elements that work together to process information at a given time."²⁹ They likewise emphasized the culturally bound sharedness of these things.³⁰ Hence, as far as world-view and cultural identity, as systems of beliefs, are concerned, the theory of cognitive schema is anthropologically indispensable. Moreover, in as far as world-view and cultural identity are also systems of valuations, the theory of cognitive schemas would also be of great service. Martin Cortazzi, in his book Narrative Analysis, enumerates some five properties of a cognitive schema:

First, a schema represents a prototypical abstraction of the concept it represents, encoding constituent properties that define a typical instance of its referent. Then, schemata are hierarchically organized in memory, according to different degrees of specificity. Thirdly, the properties that characterize a schema are represented as variables or slots that can be filled whenever the schema is used to organize information. This means, fourthly, that schemata are used predictively, guiding the interpretation of incoming information, supporting inferences and matching input to expectation. Where expected information does not appear it may be filled in by default. Lastly, schemata are formed by induction from numerous previous experiences.³¹

The first property mentioned by Cortazzi points out the cognitive schema's concern for the prototypical, which he further explained in the third and fourth properties as a mechanical system with slots being filled-in with prototypical elements, making the schemas useful in "predictively, guiding the interpretation of incoming information," in "supporting inferences" and in "matching input to expectation."³² D'Andrade points out that this is what precisely makes a cognitive schema highly schematic in the sense of a framework devoid of much content. They leave "unspecified a number of 'slots' which can be filled in by context or by additional information from the speaker."³³ Whenever a slot has an unspecified content, hearers and interpreters may have the 'burden' of filling it up with a content that matches their normal expectations, which cognitive anthropologists call the 'default values'.

There are a number of cognitive anthropologists who do not make distinctions between cognitive schema and the next theoretical concept that can aid the Filipino philosophers, the cultural model. Indeed the difference between the two is a little too subtle. Strauss and Quinn mentions that "another name for cultural schemas (especially the more complex sort) is cultural model."³⁴ In the bottom-line, the difference between them lies in complexity. "Models are not schemas," D'Andrade explains, "when the collection of elements is too large to hold in short-term memory (by definition, a schema, as bounded, distinct, and unitary representation, must fit into short-term memory)."³⁵ The study of cultural models, therefore, may lead the Filipino philosophers towards a more effective profiling and analysis of bigger systems of cognitive structures, such as the world-view, cultural identity and system of thought, especially cognitive structures that are not well articulated in the level of conscious culture. Robertson and Beasley asserts that these models

generally refer to the unconscious set of assumptions and understandings members of a society or group share. They greatly affect people's understanding of the world and of human behavior. Cultural models can be thought of as a loose interpretive frameworks. They are both overtly and unconsciously taught and are rooted in knowledge learned from others as well as from accumulated personal experience...³⁶

Robertson and Beasley also point out that most often these models also have emotional links with particular experiences that create judgments as regards to what is normal, natural, and expected on the one hand, and abnormal, unnatural, and unexpected on the other. Like cognitive schemas, therefore, cultural models can lead the Filipino philosophers towards the analysis of world-view and cultural identity as systems of valuations. Another feature of cultural models that make them very significant for the Filipino philosophers' project is the role they play in mental processing, that is in representing something, in reasoning with or calculating from the mental manipulation of its elements to solve a given problem. D'Andrade in fact would emphasize the deeply rooted relationship between human reasoning and cultural models.

the relation between reasoning and cultural models is a two way street; that the ability to reason works to form cultural models, while at the same time cultural models make possible complex reasoning. Or, to put it another way, because we can reason we need cultural models, and because we have such models, we can reason.³⁷

Scripts and Scenarios

The anthropological study of scripts and scenarios was inaugurated by Roger Schank and Robert Ableson's 1977 work Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding: an Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structure. Schank and Abelson defined script as "a predetermined, stereotyped sequence of actions that defines a well-known situation," and claimed that a human person is endowed with thousands of these scripts to be deployed reflexively and unconsciously whenever circumstances dictate.³⁸ Script for all practical consideration is similar to cognitive schema. They are like social and behavioral recipes for the appropriate action in a given social circumstance. Gary Palmer, in his book Towards a Theory of Cultural Linguistics, says that "A script may be a song, a prayer, a dinner, a wedding, a manual technique, a robbery-murder, or any other frame were a sequence of ideas is well-defined."³⁹ The difference between a cognitive schema and cultural model on one hand, and scripts and scenarios on the other, seem to lie in that the former is in the sphere of thought, while the latter is in the sphere of action, the former is concerned with understanding, reasoning and knowing, while the latter is concerned with doing and performance.

Cultural Postulates and Folk Theories

Another major area within cognitive anthropology's concern for the bigger knowledge structures is the study of cultural postulates and their underlying system of cultural knowledge, the folk or cultural theory. A cultural postulate is basically an explicit and verbal predication that is grounded on a more implicit system of cultural and folk theory, making the former highly idiosyncratic to a given culture. Well known examples of cultural postulates are the Christian fundamentalist's faith that 'Jesus saves', the Maasai African's attestation that the object of life is enkishon (fertility), and the Swahili dictum haraka haraka haina baraka (hurry, hurry, has no blessing).⁴⁰ Cultural postulates are verbally expressed through "slogans, aphorisms, rules, maxims, and incantations," and they usually abound in the domains of "religious dogma, folk philosophy, folk law, and folk medicine."⁴¹ Since a cultural postulate is explicit and verbal, it can easily lend itself to reasoning, even following the processes of western prepositional logic and syllogism with ease. If Jesus saves," says Palmer, "then a Christian should surrender herself to his mercy and his dictates. If the object of life is enkishon, then a Maasai man should strive to accumulate larger herds of cattle, more wives, and many children."⁴²

The anthropologist Geoffrey White after examining some cultural postulates reported that though explicitly they appear isolated, they are in fact standing on larger and more complex systems of implicit culturally shared understanding.⁴³ Hence, cognitive anthropology sees the need of addressing this underlying and foundational cultural or folk theories in order to satisfactorily deal with cultural postulates. "In anthropology," Palmer asserts, "the study of postulates is closely tied to the study of cultural themes and axioms, core values, cultural configurations and guiding premises."⁴⁴ A folk theory, or cultural theory, is composed of a collection of interrelated cultural postulates and other propositions that describe the characteristics and nature of a given general phenomenon. Though at first blush, folk or cultural theory appears very similar to cultural model, there are very important differences between these two theoretical concepts. D'Andrade using the etic/emic tension clarifies: "First, the propositions of a cultural theory are statements which are made by the natives, unlike the propositions of many cultural models, which are typically assertions by the analyst of the way people represent something based on the way they reason on their understanding about it, or which is implicit in what they say about it."⁴⁵ Secondly, "while the knowledge which makes up a cultural model often is procedural in character, a cultural theory is made up primarily of declarative knowledge, which means that one can ask directly about the phenomena in question and receive direct answers."⁴⁶ Lastly, "cultural theories are often about very general and abstract topics, like the origin of life or the character of the supernatural. And the propositions which describe this topic may be only loosely related to each other."⁴⁷

Conflict and Consensus

In cognitive anthropology, consensus analysis pertains to a highly empirical method, often using complex computational and computing systems, of ascertaining the degree of sharedness of a given cultural knowledge by directly questioning a determined number of respondents. Such a methodology which presupposes actual interactive field work when transported into the study of narrative practices and cultural texts would create some problems for the obvious reason that researchers cannot methodically question the fictive characters of a given narrative practice or cultural text. But in as far as world-view, cultural identity and system of thought are all culturally shared phenomena, consensus analysis is too valuable a tool to be simply discarded. The Filipino philosophers may opt to adapt and tune this method to the demands and circumstances of a textual research.

Instead of empirically ascertaining what cultural knowledge are shared by the fictive characters from Filipino narrative practices and cultural texts, the Filipino philosophers may proceed with consensus analysis by focusing on fictive conflicts and their subsequent resolution. A modified textual consensus analysis could instead probe on the question how fictive characters build consensus. In the section dealing with the analysis of concepts, this paper had already discussed the ideas of Williams, the ones concerning concepts that are dissolved into and concepts that are superstructural in relation to the fictive world, the ideas of Fairclough about the world of the unsaid, as well as the ideas of Bourdieu on the universe of the undiscussed. It is noticeable that these theorists were concerned with isolated concepts. The textual consensus analysis that this paper is proposing here will focus on bigger knowledge structures that underpin consensus building. A very promising theory for such an enterprise would be Jurgen Habermas thoughts concerning communication, consensus and the life-world. For Habermas, consensus building is a culturally framed negotiation between two agents. In his book Life-World and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, he graphically represented this process.⁴⁸

He explains "the scheme. . . is meant to illustrate that the life-world is constitutive for mutual understanding as such, whereas the formal world-concepts constitute a reference systems for that about which mutual understanding is possible: speakers and hearers come to an understanding from out of their common life-world about something in the objective, social, or subjective worlds."⁴⁹ When an agent asserts something he would refer to his subjective world, or the objective world, or the social world. By closely studying his pragmatic deployment of language, the Filipino philosophers may be able to reconstruct the commonly upheld cultural premises that are useful in consensus building.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

In summing up, this paper argued that contemporary Filipino philosophy is in crisis that is signaled by its lack of a collective agenda. Such a crisis to a very large extend could have been caused by the intellectual baggage that is the unfinished agenda of the early indigenous phase of Filipino philosophy. Since the agenda of the early indigenous phase of Filipino philosophy is strictly speaking not philosophic but sociological, these agenda could only be properly addressed by the methodologies of the social sciences. One of these promising methodologies is cognitive anthropology. Filipino philosophers who are convinced that Filipino philosophy has to be unburdened with its intellectual baggage may readily apply cognitive anthropology on the various Filipino languages, the various ethnolinguistic narrative practices and the various ethnolinguistic cultural texts in order to map and profile the Filipino world-view, cultural identity and system of thought. The project of closing the agenda of the early indigenous phase of Filipino philosophy needs the collective effort of the younger Filipino philosophers who can pledge a good segment of their intellectual career in studying a particular Filipino ethnolinguistic group.

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