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These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
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The Origin of Communication Where does language come
from is a question that does not only apply to humans, but to all species, each
species having its own "language". One might as well ask the
question, "Where do bee dances come from"? The bees are extremely
good at providing details about the route and the location of food. They do so
not with words but by dancing. The origins of bee dances are no less intriguing
than the origins of human language. The point is that most
species develop a social life and the social life depends on a mechanism of
communication, and in humans that mechanism is language. But language may be
viewed as a particular case of a more general process of nature, the process by
which several individuals become aggregated in a group. There is a bond within the
members of a species, regardless of whether they are cooperating or competing:
they can communicate. A dog cannot communicate much to a cat. A lion cannot
communicate with an ant. And the greatest expert in bees cannot communicate
much with a bee. Communication between members of different species is close to
impossible. But communication within members of a species is simple, immediate,
natural, and, contrary to our beliefs, does not require any advanced skills.
All birds communicate; all bees communicate. There is no reason to believe that
humans would not communicate if they were not taught a specific language. They
might, in fact, communicate better: hand gestures and facial expressions may be
a more efficient means of communication among humans than words. Again, this efficiency is
independent of the motives: whether it is for cooperation or for aggression. We
can communicate with other members of our species. When we communicate for
cooperation, the communication can become very complex and sophisticated. We
may communicate that a herd is moving east, that clouds are bringing rain, that
the plains are flooded. A bee can communicate similar information to another
bee. But an ant cannot communicate this kind of information to a fish and a
fish cannot communicate it to a bird. Each species has developed a
species-specific form of communication. The origin of language is
but a detail in a much more complex story, the story of how intra-species
communication evolved. If all species come from a common ancestor, there must
have been only one form of communication at the beginning. Among the many
traits that evolved over the ages, intra-species communication is one that took
the wildest turns. While the genetic repertoire of bees and flies may be very
similar, their system of communication is quite different. The fact that communication
is different for each species may simply be due to the fact that each species
has different kinds of senses, and communication has to be tailored to the
available senses. A reason for this social
trait to exist could be both sexual reproduction and altruism. The Origin of Cellular
Communication Even before social behavior
was invented, there was a fundamental language of life. Living cells
communicate all the time, even in the most primitive organisms: cell
communication is the very essence of being alive. There are obvious parallels
between the language of words and the language of cellular chemicals. Two cells
that exchange chemicals are doing just that: "talking" to each other,
using chemicals instead of words. Those chemicals are bound in molecular
structures just like the words of human language are bound in grammatical
structures. The forms of communication
that do not involve chemical exchange still cause some chemical reaction. A bee
that changes course or a human brain that learns something have undergone
chemical change, that has triggered changes in their cognitive state. From this point of view,
there are at least three main levels of communication: a cellular level, in
which living cells transmit information via chemical agents; a bodily level, in
which living beings transmit information via gestures; and a verbal level, in
which living beings transmit information via words. Each level might simply be
an evolution of the previous one. At the same time, the
Norwegian mathematician Nils Barricelli("The Functioning of
Intelligence Mechanisms Directing Biologic Evolution," 1985) warned that
the kind of communication occurring at the cellular level is different from the
kind of communication occurring among animals: "If humans, instead of
transmitting to each other reprints and complicated explanations, developed the
habit of transmitting computer programs allowing a computer-directed factory to
construct the machine needed for a particular purpose, that would be the
closest analogue to the communication methods among cells of various
species." Who Invented Language? Linguists, geneticists and
anthropologists have explored the genealogical tree of human languages to
determine where human language was invented. Was it invented in one place and
then spread around the globe (why then so many languages rather than just one?)
or was it invented in different places around the same time? (What a
coincidence that would be). The meta-issue with this
quest is the role of free will, i.e. whether we humans have free will and
decide what happens to us. We often assume that somebody invented something
and then everybody started using it. The truth could be humbler: all humans
share pretty much the same brain, and that brain determines our behavior. We
all sleep, we all care for our children, and we all avoid danger. Not because
one human invented these behaviors, but because our brains are programmed to
direct us to behave that way. Our free will (if indeed we have any) is limited
to deciding which woman to marry, but the reason we want a wife is sex and
children, a need that is programmed in our brain (and, of course, one could
claim that the choice of the specific wife is also driven by our brains
circuits). In fact, we consider sick
or abnormal any human being who does not love her/his children, any human who
does not like sex, etc. Asking who invented language
could be like asking who invented sex or parenting. It may just come with the
race. We humans may be programmed to communicate using the human language. It
didnt take a genius to invent language. We started speaking, worldwide, as
soon as the conditions were there (as soon as we started living in groups, more
and more heterogeneous groups, more and more collaborative groups). The mystery may not be who
invented language, but why we invented so many and so different languages.
There are striking differences between Finnish and Chinese, even though those
two peoples share pretty much the same brain. The effect of the environment on
the specific language we start speaking must indeed be phenomenal. What Are Jokes And Why Do We
Make Them Language developed because
it had an evolutionary function. In other words, it helped us survive. For
example, language enabled humans to exchange information about the environment.
A member of a group can warn the member of another group about an impending
danger or the source of water or the route taken by a predator. This may be true, but it
hardly explains the way we use language every day. When we write an essay, we
may be matter of factual, but most of the day we are not. For example, we make
jokes all the time. A human being who does not make jokes, or does not laugh at
jokes made by others, is considered a case for a psychoanalyst. Jokes are an
essential part of the use of language. Nonetheless, jokes are a
peculiar way to use language. We use words to express something that is not
true, but could be true, and the brain somehow relates to this inconsistency
and we laugh. There must be a reason why
humans make jokes. There must be a reason why we use language to make jokes. Upon closer inspection, we
may not be so sure that the main function of language is communicating
information about the environment. If a tiger attacks you, i
will not read you an essay on survival of the fittest: i will just scream,
"Run!" We don't need the complex, sophisticated structure of language
to "communicate" about the environment and us. If you are starving, I
may just point to the refrigerator. For most practical purposes, street signs
communicate information about locations better than geography books. It is at
least debatable whether we need language to communicate information about the
environment that is relevant to survival. We can express most or all of that
information in very simple formats, often with just one word or even just a
gesture. On the other hand, if we
want to make a joke, we need to master the whole power of the language. Every
beginner in a foreign language knows that the hardest part is to understand
jokes in that language, and the second hardest is making them. Joking does
require the whole complex structure of language, and, at closer inspection, it
is the only feature of human life that requires it. Jokes are probably very
important for our survival. A joke is a practice: we laugh because we realize
that something terrible would happen in that circumstance: the logic of the
world would be violated, or a practical disaster would occur. The situation is
"funny" because it has to be avoided. Being funny helps remember that
we should avoid it. Joking may well be an
important way to learn how to move in the environment without having to do it
first person, without having to pay the consequences for a mistake. In that case, it would be
more than justified that our brain evolved a very sophisticated tool to make
jokes: language. Ultimately, language may
have evolved to allow us to make more and more useful (funnier and funnier)
jokes. Tools The British psychologist
Richard Gregoryhas shown how language is but one particular type of
"tool". The human race, in general, is capable of making and using
tools, and language happens to be one of them. Gregoryclaims that "tools are
extensions of the limbs, the senses and mind." The fundamental difference
between humans and apes is not in the (very small) anatomical differences but
in language and tools. Man is both a tool-user and a tool-maker. Gregoryshows that there are
"hand" tools (such as level, pick, axe, wheel, etc) and
"mind" tools, which help measuring, calculating and thinking (such as
language, writing, counting, computers, clocks). Tools are extensions of the
body. They help us perform actions that would be difficult for our arms and
legs. Tools are also extensions of the mind. Writing extended our memory. We
can make a note of something. So do photographs and recordings. This book
extends my mind. It also extends your mind. Tools like books create a shared
mind. Gregoryqualifies information as
"potential intelligence" and behavior as "kinetic
intelligence". Tools increase intelligence as they enable a new class of
behavior. A tool "confers" intelligence to a user, meaning that it
turns some potential intelligence into kinetic intelligence. A person with a tool is a
person with a potential intelligence to perform an action that without the tool
would not be possible (or much more difficult). Behavior is often just using
that tool to perform that action. It may appear that intelligence is in your
action, but, actually, intelligence is in the tool, not in your action. Or,
better, they are two different types of intelligence. And words are just one
particular type of tool. There is also a physical
connection in our body between language and tool usage: the same hemisphere
controls them both. Tools as Intentionality The US philosopher Daniel
Dennettadvanced a theory of language
based on his theory of intentionality (the ability to refer to something).
Basically, his idea is that different levels of intentionality correspond to
different kinds of minds. The intentional stance is
the strategy of interpreting the behavior of something (a living or non-living
thing) as if it were a rational agent whose actions are determined by its
beliefs and desires. This is the stance that we adopt, for example, when dealing
with ourselves and other humans: we assume that we and the others are rational
agents whose actions are determined by our beliefs and desires. Intentional systems are those to which the
intentional stance can be applied, and they include artifacts such as
thermostats and computers, as well as all living beings. For example, we can
say that "This computer program wants me to input my name," or that
"The tree bends south because it needs more light," (both
"wants" and "needs" express desire). The intentional stance makes
the assumption that an intentional system has goals that it wants to achieve;
that it uses its own beliefs to achieve its own goals, and that it is smart
enough to use the right ones in the appropriate way. It seems obvious that artifacts
possess only "derived" intentionality, i.e. intentionality that was
bestowed on them by their creators. A thermostat measures temperature because
that is what the engineer designed it for. The same argument, though, applies
to us: we are artifacts of nature and nature bestows on us intentionality. (The
process of evolution created our minds to survive in an environment, which
means that our mind is about the environment). Dennettspeculates that brains evolved
from the slow internal communication systems of "sensitive" but not
"sentient" beings when they became equipped with a much swifter
communication agent (the electro-chemicals of neurotransmitters) in a much
swifter communication medium (nerve fibers). Control was originally distributed
around the organism in order to be able to react faster to external stimuli.
The advent of fast electro-chemicals allowed control to become centralized,
because now signals traveled at the speed of electricity. This also allowed
control to become much more complex, as many more things could be done in a
second. "Evolution embodies
information in every part of every organism". And that information is
about the environment. A chameleon's skin, a bird's wings, and so forth, they
all embody information about the medium in which their bodies live. This
information does not need to be replicated in the brain as well. The organ
already "knows" how to behave in the environment. Wisdom is not only
in the brain; wisdom is also embodied in the rest of the body. Dennettspeculates that this
"distributed wisdom" was not enough: a brain can supplement the
crudeness, the slowness, and the limitations of the organs. A brain can analyze the environment on a
broader scale, can control movement in a much faster way and can predict
behavior over a longer range. As George Millerput it, animals are
"informavores". Dennettbelieves in a distributed
information-sucking system, each component of which is constantly fishing for
information in the environment. They are all intentional systems, which get
organized in a higher-level intentional system, with an "increasing power
to produce future". This idea, both
evolutionarily and conceptually, can be expressed in a number of steps of
intentionality, each of which yields a different kind of mind. First there were
"Darwinian creatures", that were simply selected by trial and error
on the merits of their bodies' ability to survive (all living organisms are
Darwinian creatures). Then came "Skinnerian creatures", which were
also capable of independent action and therefore could enhance their chances of
survival by finding the best action (they are capable of learning from trial
and error). The third stage of mind, "Popperian creatures", were
able to play an action internally in a simulated environment before they
performed it in the real environment and could therefore reduce the chances of
negative outcomes (information about the environment supplemented
conditioning). Popperian creatures include most mammals and birds. They feel
pain, but do not suffer, because they lack the ability to reflect on their
sensations. Humans are also
"Gregorian creatures", capable of creating tools, and, in particular,
of mastering the tool of language. Gregorian creatures benefit from
technologies invented by other Gregorian creatures and transmitted by cultural
heritage, unlike Popperian creatures that benefit only from what has been
transmitted by genetic inheritance. A key step in the evolution
of minds was the transition from beings capable of an intentional stance
towards others to beings capable of an intentional stance towards an
intentional stance. A first-order
intentional system is only capable of an intentional stance towards
others. A second-order intentional
system is also capable of an intentional stance towards an intentional
stance. It has beliefs as well as
desires about beliefs and desires. And
so forth. Higher-order intentional
systems are capable of thoughts such as "I want you to believe that I know
that you desire a vacation". This was not yet conscious
life because there are examples, both among humans and among other animals, of
unaware higher-order intentionality.
For example, animals cheat on each other all the time, and cheating is
possible only if you are capable of dealing with the other animal's intentional
state (with the other animal's desires and beliefs), but Dennettdoes not think that animals are
necessarily conscious. In other words, he thinks that one can be a psychologist
without being a conscious being. Dennettclaims that our greater
intelligence is due not to a larger brain but to the ability to "off
load" as much as possible of our cognitive tasks into the environment. We
construct "peripheral devices" in the environment to which those
tasks can be delegated. We can do this because we are intentional: we can point
to those things that we left in the environment. In this way the limitations of
the brain do not matter anymore, as we have a potentially infinite area of
cognitive processing. Most species rely on natural landmarks to find their way
around and track food sources. But some species (at least us) have developed
the skills to "create" their own landmark, and they can therefore
store food for future use. They are capable of "labeling" the world
that they inhabit. Individuals of those species alter the environment and then
the altered environment alters their behavior.
They create a loop to their advantage. They program the environment to
program them. Species that store and use
signs in the environment have an evolutionary advantage because they can
"off-load" processing. It is
like "taking a note" that we can look up later, so we don't forget
something. If you do not take a note, you may forget the whole thing. Thanks to these artifacts,
our mind can extend out into the environment. For example, the notepad becomes
an extension to my memory. These artifacts shape our
environment. Our brains are semiotic devices that contain pointers and indices
to the external world. Tools Created the Brain An even more radical theory
of how important tools have been for human evolution was advanced by the
British archeologist Timothy Taylor. Humans are the weakest of
the great apes. We cannot survive without clothes and houses. It seems
irrational that the one ape that is so vulnerable ended up dominating every
other species. In fact, humans should not have survived evolution at all
because reproduction is so dangerous, complicated and (in the past) lethal (for
both baby and mother), and then because children require so much attention and
dedication lest they die of the silliest causes (compare with the cubs of other
mammals that are self-sufficient within weeks if not days). Taylorargues that technology is the
solution to this apparent contradiction. Evolution is not only biological. The
cultural-technological component is equally important, and it vastly favored
humans over any other species. Technology is very much part of what we mean by
"being human". Darwin's theory of evolution needs to be complemented with a story of how
technology allowed humans to violate the very rules that Darwin found embedded
in all other species. According to Darwin's blind algorithm of natural
selection, humans should have gone extinct very quickly. Biological evolution
(or, better, biological accident) accounts for humans developing the upright
posture. That posture freed the hands, and allowed humans to make tools. That
situation completely altered the normal course of biological evolution because,
from that point on, technology introduced a parallel (non blind) algorithm.
Humans started evolving not based on biological laws of evolution but based on
technological factors. Taylor claims that "technology evolved us". Taylorpoints out that humans seem to
go against evolution: we are "biologically reduced". Our bodies have
weakened since the Stone Age and keep weakening. We are less strong, less
agile, less fast, etc than our prehistoric ancestors were. Something similar
happens to wild animals when they get domesticated. By analogy, Taylor calls
"self-domestication" the process by which humans got weaker while
becoming more dependent on technology, i.e. while developing a smarter brain.
This is another strange loop: it could be that brains got smarter as bodies got
weaker, or it could be that bodies got weaker as brains got smarter. In fact,
it is not even true that human brains got larger since prehistory: the human
brain has shrunk by about 10% over the last ten thousand years. The Neanderthal
man was not only stronger than Homo Sapiens, it also had a bigger brain and
perhaps was in many ways smarter. But it was Homo Sapiens that survived, and
went on to rule the planet. Taylor calls it "survival of the
weakest". Taylor is convinced that tools, the great invention of Homo
Sapiens, dramatically altered the terms of evolution. This, however, leads to a
vicious loop. Technology requires a smart brain to design it and build it; but
a smart brain requires a lot of proteins which come from hunting, fire and
cooking, which are made possible by technology. Therefore technology requires a
brain that is made possible by technology. It is a "chicken and egg"
kind of problem: one cannot exist without the other, but one must have come
first. Taylorargues that humans did not
evolve the ability to make tools (which requires big brains which require
tools) but tools caused humans to evolve that way. Chimps don't have big brains
because they need the skull configured in such a way to allow for their
powerful jaws. Having fire and tools, humans did not need those powerful
features of the head and therefore lost them and therefore space was left over
for a big brain to grow. He points out that there is a gap beween the date of
the oldest chipped stone tool (2.5 million years ago) and the first hominids
(2.3 million): 200 thousand years, a very long period of time. However, there is a problem
with big brains: they should be physically impossible. As a consequence of
standing upright, bipedal beings have a smaller pelvis, and therefore a larger
head for babies makes no sense. The chances of miscarriage increase
dramatically. Therefore the babies with large heads should have been eliminated
by natural selection. For a while our bipedal ancestors continued to have small
heads, as one would expect, but then suddenly hominids began to develop large
heads, and that sounds like a physical impossibility. It gets worse. Human babies
are incapable of walking upright for a long time. They are in fact incapable of
doing most of the things required to survive. In a sense, all human babies are
born prematurely, they are extra-uterine foetuses. In fact, the brain of human
babies keeps developing at lightning speed during the first year (as opposed to
the brain of the chimp, that is pretty much done and ready to go at birth). Taylorconcludes that something was
needed to make all of this not only possible but inevitable. Females were the
first tool-makers: the need for tools to carry plant food predates the need for
hunting tools; and the need for carrying their babies around probably predates
both. Bipedalism created the need for carrying babies and for carrying goods, a
need that other apes solve by moving on all four. Women were constantly on the
move and there were no kindergartens: they had to carry their babies with them
all the time. In every single culture women have solved this problem in the same
way: every single culture developed tools to carry babies (from a simple sling
to the stroller). Hence the first tools were probably made by women who were
the ones who had the mother of all problems to solve: protect your babies.
Those first tools triggered the expansion of the human brain. The brain of human babies is
still so plastic that it can absorb whatever technology is available in a way
that no other species can. Other species are condemned to use the brain they
get at birth, whereas human children can adapt their brain to the civilization
they find. Once invented, a tool can last forever, passed from one generation
to the next simply by exposing the new-born babies to it. Brain size started
increasing, according to Taylor, after technology happened. And bodies started getting weaker because
technology made it unnecessary to be strong and big. Taylor speculates that the
rapid growth of the human brain was due to competition for technological
supremacy. And it all started with the baby-carrying sling. It is not intelligence that
gave us tools because the earliest tools predate the rapid expansion of the
brain that led to modern hominids. Brains began to grow in size after (not
before) the first tools were invented. Tools made possible larger brains. Tools
made possible intelligence. Tayloralso advances a theory about
the first symbolic art: he thinks that ancient statuettes were the equivalent
of today's mannequins in department stores (they were meant to exhibit clothes);
and he thinks that cave paintings were meant to express the belief in divine
creation, a rational consequence of knowing that someone makes something
therefore someone must have made us. Whatever the original purpose, the
beginning of symbolic art (40000 years ago) also marks the moment when human
brains started "outsourcing" intelligence to our tools. Taylor claims
that it also accounts for the reason that human brains have stopped expanding
since that age: the need for brains decreases as technology gets smarter. Technology has become the
main driver of human evolution. We are our technology. Humans increasingly
depend on technology. Technological change is accelerating. Eventually machines
might get so smart that humans will not be able to comprehend them anymore. Ray
Kurzweiltermed it the
"singularity". That singularity will allow humans to extend not only
human intelligence but also the life expectancy of humans because it will
overcome the material constraint of the human body in the form of artificial
intelligences and avatars. Whether we will reach that singularity or not,
Kurzweil starts the process leading to it from very recently. Taylordoes something similar but
places it at the very beginning of the evolution of Homo Sapiens: there would
be no Homo Sapiens without that symbiosis between body and tools, between
biology and technology. The life expectancy of Homo Sapiens would have been
virtually zero because of the material limitations of the human body. The futuristic
visions of people like Ray Kurzweil are actually naive: they assume that this
will happen in the future, when in fact it has already happened, and it has
always been the case. Both mentally and physically humans have been shaped by
technology. The Evolution of Technology The US journalist Kevin
Kellypoints out that there is
another evolution at work. Kellydraws drawing a parallel
between organic life and the life of technology. More precisely, he compares
the biosphere with the "technium", the set of all interconnected
technologies collectively created by humans. He argues that the evolution of
the technium is driven by forces that are similar to the ones that drive the
evolution of life. He disagrees with Gould: biological evolution does have a direction. The direction is towards
complexity. Kelly believes the same kind of law and direction is at work in the
technium. Technology is inevitable.
Many inventions were "invented" at the same time by different people
in different places: those people were just the practical vehicle that
technology used to emerge; but it would have emerged anyway. Basically,
technology parasites on human minds in order to survive, reproduce and evolve,
just like memes do. The supremacy of technology
is becoming obvious: we depend on technology. Our extended phenotype (to use
another biological concept) contains an increasing component of technology
without which we would not survive. However, the net effect of
the growing complexity and diversity of technology is, in Kelly's opinion, positive. What technology "wants" is progress
towards more and more freedom for us. The more technology we have, the more
choices we have, and the more freedom we enjoy. Technology increases our free
will. Technology, in fact, allows human genius to emerge and prosper. Without
technology the human race would not have had Mozart and VanGogh. Kellyeven develops a sort of ethics
for technology. A technology can never be bad just like an animal species
cannot be bad: they are the product of evolution. It makes no sense to ask
whether a species is good or bad. It makes no sense to ask whether a technology
is good or bad. Kelly thinks that we have a duty to maximize technologies in
society at large, i.e. to invent everything that can be invented, because
technology gives us more freedom. Semiotics: Signs and
Messages Semiotics provides a
different perspective to study the nature and origin of language. Semiotics, founded in the
1940s by the Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev, had two important precursors in the US philosophers Charles Peirce(whose writings were
rediscovered only in the 1930s) and Charles Morris(who in 1938 had formalized a
theory of signs). Peircereduced all human knowledge to
the idea of sign and identified three different kinds of signs: the index (a
sign which bears a causal relation with its referent); the icon (which bears a
relation of similarity with its referent); and the symbol (whose relation with
its referent is purely conventional). For example, the flag of a sporting team
is a symbol, while a photograph of the team is an icon. Movies often make use of
indexes: ashes burning in an ashtray mean that someone was recently in the
room, and clouds looming on the horizon mean it is about to rain. Most of the
words that we use are symbols, because they are conventional signs referring to
objects. Morris defined the
disciplines that study language according to the roles played by signs. Syntax
studies the relation between signs and signs (as in the is an article,
meaning is a noun, of is a preposition, etc.). Semantics studies the
relation between signs and objects (Piero is a writer means that somebody
whose name is Piero writes books). Finally, Pragmatics studies the relation
between signs, objects and users (the sentence Piero is a writer may have
been uttered to correct somebody who said that Piero is a carpenter). The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussureintroduced the dualism of signifier (the word actually uttered)
and the signified (the mental concept). ("Semiology" usually refers
to the Saussure-an tradition, whereas "semiotics" refers to the
Peirce-an tradition. Semiotics, as opposed to Semiology, is the study of all
signs). The Argentine semiotician
Luis Prietostudied signs, in particular, as means of communication. For example,
the Braille alphabet and traffic signs are signs used to communicate. A code
is a set of symbols (the alphabet) and a set of rules (the grammar). The
code relates a system of expressions to a set of contents. A message is a set of symbols of the
alphabet that has been ordered according to the rules of the grammar. This is a
powerful generalization: language turns out to be only a particular case of
communication. A sentence can be reduced to a process of encoding (by the
speaker) and decoding (by the listener). The Hungarian linguist
Thomas Sebeokviews semiotics as a branch of communication theory that studies
messages, whether emitted by objects (such as machines) or animals or humans.
In agreement with Ren Thom, Sebeok thinks that human sign behavior has nothing special that can
distinguish it from animal sign behavior or even from the behavior of inanimate
matter. The US linguist Merlin Donaldspeculated on how the human
mind developed. He argued that at the beginning there was only episodic
thinking: early hominids could only remember and think about episodes. Later,
they learned how to communicate and then they learned how to build narratives.
Symbolic thinking came last. Based on this scenario, the Danish semiotician
Jesper Hoffmeyerdrew his own conclusions: in
the beginning there were stories, and then, little by little, individual words
rose out of them. Which implies that language is fundamentally narrative in
nature; that language is corporeal, has to do with motor-based behavior; and
that the unit of communication among animals is the whole message, not the
word. Hoffmeyerintroduced the concept of
"semiosphere", the semiotic equivalent of the atmosphere and the
biosphere that incorporates all forms of communication, from smells to waves:
all signs of life. Every living organism must adapt to its semiosphere or die.
At all levels, life must be viewed as a network of sign processes. The very
reason for evolution is death: since organisms cannot survive in the physical
sense they must survive in the semiotic sense, i.e. by making copies of
themselves. "Heredity is semiotic survival". Rene' Thom, the French mathematician who invented catastrophe theory, aimed to
"geometrize thought and language". Thomwas envisioning a Physics of
meaning, of significant form, which he called "Semiophysics". Following in this
generalization of signs, James Fetzer(Signs and Minds, 1988) even
argued in favor of extending Newelland Simons theory to signs: the mind not as a processor of symbols, but as a
processor of signs. Collective Cognition What is, ultimately, the
function of language? To communicate? To think? To remember? All of this and
more. But, most likely, not only for the sake of the individual. Language's
crucial function is to create a unit out of so many individuals. Once we learn
to speak, we become part of something bigger than our selves. We inherit other
people's memories (including the memories of people who have long been dead)
and become capable of sharing our own memories with other people (even those
who have not been born yet). Thanks to language, the
entire human race becomes one cognitive unit, with the ability to perceive,
learn, remember, reason, and so forth. Language turns the minds of millions of
individuals into gears at the service of one gigantic mind. As the US neuroscientist
Paul Churchlandonce pointed out, language
creates a collective cognition, a collective memory and intelligence. Back to the beginning of the chapter "The History of Language: Why We Speak" | Back to the index of all chapters |
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