0177 In chapter 5, Daniel Houck reviews how several modern theologians approach the topic of original sin.
He wonders (more or less), “How can the concept of a historical Fall be compatible with evolutionary theory of the twentieth century?”
The first singularity answers this question. Human evolution comes with a twist. The first singularity potentiates history.
As soon as the Ubaid appears in the archaeological record, this culture manifests the potential of unconstrained complexity. Hand-talk facilitates implicit abstraction. Implicit abstraction constrains social complexity. Speech-alone talk allows explicit abstraction. Explicit abstraction opens the door to unconstrained social complexity.
0179 Here is a picture of the timeline for southern Mesopotamia.
0180 What about the other hand-speech talking cultures?
What do the cultures adjacent to the Ubaid witness?
They see a culture increasing in wealth and power. They also see a people who do not talk with their hands.
In terms of natural signification, the lack of hand talk cannot be ignored. Does their lack of hand talk account for their obvious success?
Imitation is the highest form of flattery.
0181 Dismissing one’s hand talk does not come lightly. Timeless traditions are passed on with hand talk.
Ah, but hand talk words already have equivalent speech words. So, maybe the loss of hand talk does not appear significant.
Perhaps, one can translate certain manual-brachial word-gestures into speech-alone talk.
0182 But, a silence is missing. Commitment2c is silent. It2c signifies through the person’s actions.
Surely, hand-speech talking shamans sense the implications. They fight against adopting the ways of the neighboring Ubaid. Little do they realize, they are only postponing the inevitable. No one can stop the march of increasing labor and social specialization. The Ubaid sends missionaries, traders and warriors. They say, “Look at our wealth and power.”
0183 Exposure to speech-alone talk spreads along paths of down-the-line trading, westwards, toward Egypt and the Aegean, eastwards into the valleys of the Zagros Mountains and on to the hills surrounding the Indus River Valley, and northwards, to the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains.
In far northern Mesopotamia, a tribe adopts the new way of talking. That tribe migrates over the Caucasus mountains and onto the steppes of Russia. Then, it transforms into diverse roving chiefdom-based cultures, all speaking the same language. Then, these cultures migrate, west into Europe and southwards into Iran and India, spreading Indo-European languages through elite dominance.
0184 Speech-alone talk spreads to the corners of the world.
In the process, what happens to original justice2c?
I read the stories that begin at Genesis 2:4.
Do these tell me ‘something’ about the emergence of unconstrained social complexity during the Ubaid (and Uruk) archaeological periods of southern Mesopotamia?
0185 The substitution of speech-alone talk for hand-speech talk is so simple to achieve. Then, what the culture then achieves seems amazing (at least compared to constrained social complexity). And yet, ‘something’ is lost. Houck’s packaging of Aquinas’s position holds. Evil is a privation of a good. Original sin is the privation of original justice.
0186 Original justice does not simply disappear.
It is rejected, just like the shamans who stood in the path of um… “progress”.
0187 Original justice2c, commitment2c, true and honest word-gestures2c and openness to the One-Who-Signifies2cmanifest only when we cannot pick their inherent triadicity apart. A triadic relation is composed of three elements. One stands in thirdness. One secures secondness. The other appears in firstness. The triadic relation cannot be pictured or pointed to in hand-speech talk. Each element maintains its integrity within the whole.
Speech-alone talk is purely symbolic. It can symbolize the relation. It can attach a label to each element. Spoken words do not respect wholeness. Spoken words can privilege parts over the whole.
0188 In modern and postmodern times, a major philosophical problem concerns how parts constitute a whole. Most everything can be taken apart. When that thing is alive, such disassembly proves fatal. At some point, the scientist no longer works with a living creature, but a dead one. Wholeness is lost.
0189 Death is the loss of the wholeness of life.
Evil is the privation of good.
0190 No wonder original sin and original death are mentioned, by Saint Paul, in a single sentence. As soon as we speak of what puts human subjectivity into perspective2c, we cannot help labeling the term. We are soon dissecting it2c. Wholeness is lost. Sin takes the scalpel. Death is the consequence.
0191 The semiotics of hand-speech talk images and indicates a whole. Sometimes, a feature of the whole inspires the word-gesture. The part represents the whole.
The semiotics of speech alone talk allows explicit abstraction of the parts from the whole. Sometimes, the whole is composed of its parts. Is the whole nothing more than the sum of its parts?
0192 I can go farther and say, along with most modernists, “The thing itself, the noumenon, cannot be objectified as its observable and measurable facets, its phenomena.”
And, some triumphalist scientist will chuckle and reply, “No, we build our models based on observations and measurements of phenomena, and these models are more illuminating than their respective noumena.”
0193 In terms of semiotics, speech-alone talk is radically different from hand-speech talk.
In terms of evolution, our current Lebenswelt is radically different from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
In terms of sociology, unconstrained social complexity is radically different from constrained social complexity.
0194 I have drawn the circle. Now, I find one point and proceed along a tangent.
What is a commitment2c?
A commitment2c derives from a judgment2c.
A judgment is a triadic relation, composed of three elements: relation, what is and what ought to be.
Here is a picture.
Uh oh. What happened to intelligibility and universality?
Forget that! This judgment is not holistic. It is whatever I say it is.
0195 And, here is what I say.
A commitment consists of anested form derived from the triadic structure of judgment, where the intellect (relation) brings together phantasms (what ought to be) and sensations (what is).
0196 From the point of view of a holistic intellect, hand talk cannot picture or point to any of these elements, much less the relation as a whole. Hand talk can image and indicate sensations (such as warm or cold) and phantasms (such as symptoms of emotions). But, hand talk cannot convey how sensations and phantasms pass into the intellect as what is and what ought to be. Hand talk cannot discuss the intellect.
Commitment2c must be lived.
0197 From the point of view of my fallen intellect, speech-alone talk can not only label the relation, it can also independently symbolize all three elements. Once one element is named, then that element is different from another element, and the distinction may stand in the foreground. The remaining element tends to fade into the background and be ignored. As a result, the coherence of commitment2c is lost.
Commitment2c becomes subjectively incoherent.
But, don’t blame me. I am only a messenger.
0198 Consider a pagan religion that preaches that gods are everywhere and in all things. Someone labels this religion, “pantheism”. What is the label hiding?
What is everywhere and in all things?
Signification2c.
Signfication2c produces sensations and feelings2a.
What virtually situates these sensations and feelings2a?
The phantasm2b that gods are everywhere and in all.
But, what is the commitment2c that this phantasm2b inspires?
Apollo rules the sun. The sun is Apollo’s chariot. Apollo drives the chariot of the sun across the sky every day.
0200 Here is a diagram.
0201 Clearly, this pagan judgment2c resonates with the perspective-level actuality of human subjectivity2c.
Why hasn’t it unfolded into a commitment2c?
Ah, the intellect (relation) stands in shadow because the phantasm (what ought to be) and the sensation (what is)constitute a whole within the whole. May I call this partial wholeness, a “tautology”?
This tautology hides the intellect as the relation that brings what ought to be and what is together.
0202 So, how do ancient Greeks respond?
Some claim that Apollo is the god of reason.
Does this claim bring the intellect out of shadow?
Yes, Apollo promotes a certain preternatural awareness. There is more to the sun than a flaming chariot. The sun and Apollo’s chariot are given different names. When both appear in the mirror of the world3a, these names activate our bodily vision and our sensate soul2b. Clearly, we cannot look directly at the sun. We can see what Apollo’s chariotilluminates. The source of illumination is both overwhelming and divine. Perhaps, in the brilliance, past, present and future are revealed.
0203 Apollo’s radiance is the intervention2c that draws us to phantasms and sensations that honors reason2b, if only by way of metaphor. Have ourown intellects fallen into shadow? Or are they blinded by the brilliance of Apollo driving his chariot?
Apollo’s light2c should guide us through our day2b.
Like the path of Apollo’s chariot2c, our day should run a straight course.
0204 Is this evil?
Is this a privation of the good?
Does human subjectivity, in our current Lebenswelt, somehow distort commitment2c into ‘something2a‘ characteristic of… what?
0205 We name and foreground some elements. We fail to notice other elements. We construct artifacts that validate our idols. As long as the artifacts are salient, as long as they guide our sensations and engage our phantasms, our idolatries persist. Yet, a disturbing element always hovers in the shadows. And when we can see it, we lose our perspective. We lose our minds.
0206 One of the ancient Greek plays to survive the gauntlet of time is the Bacchae, by Euripides. It tells a tale about an unfortunate city, where the citizens, possessed by Dionysius, the personification of the intellect in shadow, withdraw. The king, Apollo personified, takes rational action. He goes out to spy on what they are doing. The mob sees a wild lion, kills him, cuts off his head, and brings the trophy back into the city. Only then does Dionysius step back into the shadow.
The mob carries the head of the king.
0207 Oh, the play is far worse than my telling.
When Dionysius steps into the minds of the mob, he stands as an intellect unable to ascertain what is or what ought to be. He arrives as the most intoxicating idea that anyone can imagine. His wine tells my mind that what ought to be no different than what is. Or, is it the other way around?
Apollo, the god of reason, is eclipsed.
0208 What does this imply?
Is tautology better than disorientation?
Does a tautology appear like reason compared to the madness of disorientation?
Is Apollo’s tautology a privation of the commitment2c that corresponds to original justice2c?
Is Dionysian disorientation a privation of Apollo’s tautology?
0209 I need not explore the permutations of tautologies and fixations.
I need only establish that the ability of speech-alone talk to name elements of the perspective level actuality2c of human subjectivity ends up foregrounding some elements and backgrounding others.
0210 So, I return, with Houck, to Aquinas, who makes a simple extrapolation.
If evil is the privation of good, then original sin is the privation of original justice2c.
0211 At this juncture, I find it necessary to emphasize the novelty of my non-theological assessment. I follow Houck in using concepts and terminology of Aquinas’s theology of original justice and original sin. At the same time, I hold the hypothesis of the first singularity, corresponding to the historical event that the fairy tales about Adam and Eve picture and point to.
0212 Small details loom large.
Why does the Genesis Story of the Fall feature a talking serpent, who ends up crawling on its belly like a snake?
Well, such a creature cannot possibly engage in hand talk. It must talk in speech alone.
Why is there a the tree of life in the Garden of Eden along with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?
Well, the tree of life represents original justice2c.
0213 Aquinas’s formulations are welcome because we currently have few cognitive tools for articulating the characteristics of our current Lebenswelt and the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
On top of that, the philosophy of Charles Peirce, the ground for the category-based nested form and the triadic structure of judgment, may be construed as a historical re-emergence of the Baroque scholastic tradition. Peirce’s writings are sort of like an academic re-enactment of the movie Jurassic Park. Modern Positivists think that scholasticism is extinct and then, in Peirce’s seminal act, it hatches from an apparently infertile egg. And, it has teeth.
American philosopher, Charles Peirce (1839-1914), and Baroque scholastic, John Poinsot (1589-1644), arrive at the same definition of sign.
Now, the theology of Aquinas provides unanticipated insights into the consequences of the first singularity.
How much longer will modernism, and faux postmodernism, find safety in the hotel?
0214 This brings me to infant baptism, a source of theological controversy and perhaps, a source of further insight about our current Lebenswelt.
According to Houck, Aquinas offers an account of original guilt. An infant should be heir to original justice2c. But, “he” is not. So, a privation (or evil) accrues just by entering into the world.
Here is the world that each infant innately expects to encounter.
0215 An infant should inherit the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. This is our originating niche. But, the babe is born into our current Lebenswelt. So, the infant is accused from the very start, charged with the crime of a change in Lebenswelt. The child must suffer the penalty.
The transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt is called, “the first singularity”.
The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the scene of the crime.
0216 Saint Paul, while trying to explain the implications of the life, death and resurrection of Christ, stumbles upon this um… revelation. Christ redeems what Adam binds. Adam digs a privation and Christ fills the hole with abundance, so to speak. This implies that the Christian believer attains a good that is even better than original justice2c.
0217 However, this implication hides in the background of controversies about infant baptism in the early Church.
Certainly, when an infant dies, the loss cannot be put into spoken words. Plus, this loss becomes entangled in procedural issues. Is the deceased infant heir to the good that is even better than original justice2c? Two issues are entangled. Both concern the infant’s human subjectivity. The infant as subject enters into a fallen world. What are the mechanics connecting the Fall to the subject? What are the conditions in which these mechanics operate?
0218 The early Church Fathers focus on conditions. Adam, the first man, and Eve, the first woman, eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Thus, the human condition changes soon after Adam and Eve are fashioned from dust and rib, respectively.
0219 Saint Augustine of Hippo offers a mechanism. Since Adam and Eve are the first man and first woman, they are the ancestors of all humans. So, the mechanics must have something to do with reproduction.
Well, Augustine certainly comes up with ‘something’ implicated in procreation. Indeed, ‘something’ is a little embarrassing to talk about.
0221 Funny, desire is the only thing that postmodernists want to talk about. Why? Forcing others to confess their desiresconstitutes a form of bureaucratic control. Libido Dominandi.To talk about desire is to conjure phantasms2b without sensations2a, or maybe, in search of sensations2a. The reactive body1b becomes habituated to act out certain sensations and feelings2a, making the fantasy what it ought to be2c.
0222 How do post-modern academics fixate on desire?
0223 Well, what ought to be looks vaguely pornographic.
What better way than to stimulate the limbic system, than with a promise of sexual liberation…
…and political control.
Ah, what year does America’s supreme court redefine pornography as “free speech”?
Here is a ruling that no one wants to talk about.
0224 Postmodernism defines what ought to be.
Academic discussions center on confession and fantasy. Confession is demanded even of the befuddled. Fantasy is also required. If I cannot fantasize my victimhood, then I must be a perpetrator. Ask Clarence Thomas. Ask Brett Kavanaugh. Confession of one’s victimhood is prized. The rational intellect is openly disregarded as a co-conspirator in thought-crimes or as a self-imposed denial of the pain. Sensations and feelings are salient when they enhance the fantasy of victimhood.
The academic wants to know. What is your desire? What are you guilty of? What do you accuse others of?
Cupid’s arrows carry twisted barbs. Ask Jacques Lacan. Ask Michel Foucault.
0225 Augustine comes up with ‘something’ quite similar. He calls it “concupiscence”. The term translates literally into “the state of being with Cupid”. Cupid is the passion child of Venus, the goddess of love, and Mars, the god of war. What better companion to have in party town? Cupid’s quiver is full of arrows of desire.
Augustine claims that original sin passes from Adam to us (today) through the act of conception. Conception entails “free speech”, if you know what I mean. Procreation is entangled with concupiscence. The two (or is it three, considering the natural consequence?) cannot be separated.
Augustine provides a mechanism for how Adam’s rebellion places the infant in the condition of original sin.
0226 The infant is subject to the actuality portrayed in the above figure, postmodern fixation 3. Yes, the infant must confess that his parent’s fantasies inform their reactive bodies, habituating them, so that their actions are never innocent. The lack of innocence transmits from parent to babe. The infant bears the guilt of “his” own conception.
0227 Am I surprised that the site of naming in postmodern fixation 3 coincides with Augustine’s concupiscence?
Perhaps, not. After all, what ought to be associates to desire. Power demands that desire reveal itself. Only through confession and fantasy can desire be managed by experts. Postmodern academics are not “judgmental”. They are managerial.
0228 Postmodernism takes the dyadic actuality, confession & fantasy [informs and habituates] reactive body2, in directions that Augustine never anticipated. The educated can name their desires. The uneducated brutes cannot.
How do the educated know the spoken words appropriate to this or that combination of perceptive soul [informing and habituating] reactive body?
0229 They have the information. They have created a cognitive framework from their fevered imaginations.
The postmodern academic constructs terms that apply to the contiguity between perceptive soul and reactive body. Only the educated can label their phantasms, thereby honoring themselves as star-filled perceptive souls, elevated above the mundane reactionaries who remain reticent to name their desires. The reactionaries are full of fear. They are deplorable. They ought to be ground into dust.
0230 Disorientation transubstantiates into utopia.
Utopia represents the trans-substantiation of a dyadic element in judgment into a full-fledged triadic structure. Here, what ought to be moves from realness (secondness) to judging reality (thirdness).
Yet, it remains in place as an element of a larger judgment.
What ought to be becomes a sick imitation of original justice2c.
0231 Three hundred years after Saint Paul writes a letter to the Romans, Augustine formulates his mechanism for original sin.
A thousand years after Saint Augustine writes of original sin, Thomas Aquinas formulates the concept of original justice, as the good that original sin fails to deliver.
Eight hundred years after Saint Thomas writes of original justice, these comments propose that Augustine’s concept of concupiscence is the substrate for a bureaucratic formulation that socially constructs a utopia, a judgment that malignantly parodies original justice2c, coinciding with the ministrations of a modern religion, Big Government (il)Liberalism.
Houck never gives us a clue as to how horrifying our substitutes for original justice2c can be.
Or, how relevant.
It is as if original sin cuts original justice down to whatever it can namewith speech-alone words, then sears this reduction with a flame of madness.
0232 If the what ought to beof original justice is named, “desire”, then those who construct the name and those who are indoctrinated into the expressions of the name stand against those who do not. This judgment evokes an ideal, a utopia, where the believer apparently achieves what is lost in Adam’s rebellion, the wholeness of commitment2c, the fruit of the tree of life.
Within this utopia, there is a stain that must be rooted out.
The uneducated must be purged.
So-called “liberalism” becomes illiberal.
But, no one can say that, without banishment.
So, the (il) is silent.
0233 Here is a picture of a Big Government (il)Liberal postmodern academic utopia, within its larger setting.
Don’t be taken aback. This is only theoretical. There is no real-world academic who idealizes to such an extent that what ought to be trans-substantiates into a judgment that then takes the place of commitment2c.
Is there?
0234 In the Story of the Fall, small details loom large.
After God drives the man and the woman from the Garden of Eden, He places a cherubim, and a flaming sword that turns every direction, to guard the way back to the tree of life (Genesis 3:22).
In the utopia of postmodernism, the virtuous have celestial perceptive souls. They apply their swords of spoken names. Their swords turn in all directions. They have a label for every opponent. If the uneducated person is not this, then the uneducated person must be that.
The utopians savor their fixation on what ought to be2c. In order to complete their vision, death must prevail over the mundane reactionaries, just like death prevailed over the shamans who wanted to retain the old, timeless traditions of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
Cherubim holding flaming, swerving swords stand in the mirror of the world3a.
When we see their reflections1a, we see ourselves.
0235 I guess, I got this section turned around.
I should be asking, “What does original justice tell me about the consequences of the first singularity?“
0236 Augustine’s mechanism captures the essence of the first singularity. It does not capture the esse_ce. Augustine treats the Garden of Eden as if it is a real story. Instead, the fairy tales of Adam and Eve point to the first singularity.
Similar mythologies from the ancient Near East, revealed during the past three centuries from archaeological excavations, give the same impression. Humans do not have a deep past. Humans are recently manufactured by differentiated gods, who arise out of a foggy, undifferentiated nowhere.
0237 These ancient writings are not known during the Latin Age, so the scholastics do not contest Augustine’s mechanism. Yet, they find that the mechanism is not sufficient, because of those damned dead infants. How can infants express concupiscence?
The concern is both mechanistic and conditional. It can be portrayed as a dyad in the realm of actuality. This actuality corresponds to original sin2.
0238 How to describe the contiguity?
Houck lists three scenarios that gain prominence during the Latin Age: disease theory, a legal connection, and a realist view.
These three approaches tie into the above actuality.
0239 Augustine’s conflation of concupiscence and procreation provides a disease mechanism for how Adam’s rebellion infects us.
The legal framework corresponds to God’s Will, which is contained in the command, not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The status of humanity changes from blessed to cursed. A change in legal status puts Augustine’s conflation into context3.
The realist view is that humans lost something with Adam’s rebellion. The Story of the Fall indicates that humans lost access to the tree of life. A better way to put it is: The tree of life is no longer a possibility1. The Garden of Eden is no longer possible. So, God is no longer present as He once was.
0240 In sum, the scholastics, following Aristotle’s four causes, place Augustine’s mechanism into a complete category-based nested form.
0241 Perhaps, the reader can predict my next move.
I wonder, “Can this nested form go into the perspective level of divine suprasubjectivity?”
Or, does it correspond to what Christian doctrine projects into perspective-level elements?
Here is how the perspective level changes.
Note how the normal context3c and potential1c have changed character, they are now qualified.
Note how the judgment of original justice2c (belonging to thirdness) changes into a mechanistic dyad2c (belonging to secondness).
What are the implications?
0242 A change in perspective for God passes into a change of perspective for humans.
Our commitment2c does not make sense without God’s orientation (grace).
0243 Adam disobeying God’s command changes our legal status3c.
The ejection of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden changes God’s Presence1c from open to hidden.
And worse, a mechanism connects Adam’s rebellion to our own lives2c. Augustine’s hybridization of concupiscence and procreation is one mechanism that captures crucial features of the contiguity. However, modern evolutionary science argues for its implausibility. Adam and Eve are not the first human beings. Therefore, they are not the parents of all humans today.
0244 Is there a mechanism that will meet the qualifications of cause-and-effect and offer us (in our current Lebenswelt) a glimpse into who we evolved to be?
Augustine’s mechanism coheres to a literal interpretation of the Story of the Fall. Consequently, the mechanism is not independent of the biblical text.
The mechanism of the first singularity coheres with an interpretation of the Story of the Fall that is appropriate for the genre. The stories of Adam and Eve are fairy tales. Fairy tales are stories that are told to children. Often, they are preserved with remarkable precision over hundreds (and for these stories, thousands) of years. They may point to some primal event. That event cannot be reconstructed from the fairy tale itself. That event must be postulated independently of the fairy tale.
The hypothesis of the first singularity fits the criteria of (1) cause-and-effect and (2) a connection to the Genesis text. But, it does not allow us to appreciate how the twist in human evolution touches base with the doctrine of original sin.
0245 This is why Aquinas’s postulation of original justice2c is so crucial.
Original justice2c pertains to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
Original sin2c pertains to our current Lebenswelt.
Original sin2c is the privation of original justice2c.
Speech-alone talk is the privation of the hand-component of hand-speech talk.
Speech-alone talk attaches labels to the elements within the perspective-level actuality2c.
Why stop there?
Spoken words can label every element on the perspective level, as well as the situation level, as well as the content level.
This is not possible in iconic and indexal hand-speech talk.
0246 The Story of the Fall tells a tale, rich in details that call to mind the first singularity.
With the assistance of the serpent, Eve attaches spoken labels to the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then, her spoken words generate the reality of Adam’s rebellion.
0247 Thousands of years later, scholastics refine the Story of the Fall into a perspective-level category-based nested form for original sin.
They know nothing about the content level, as it currently is configured by modern science.
They know that the content level pertains to crucial questions, “Where does the world come from? Where do we humans come from?”
They know that the situation-level addresses the question, “What went wrong?”
They figure that we cannot return to the Garden of Eden. We cannot go back to the original justice2c, enjoyed by Adam before his rebellion.
This explains why revelation is necessary.
0248 Jesus Christ fills the emptiness inherent to original sin. No one, not even infants, can avoid that emptiness. Original sin is the privation of original justice.
From this, Latin-Age scholastics cobble together a normal context3c and a potential1c for the mechanism connecting Adam’s rebellion to our current lives2c.
0249 Speech-alone talk facilitates the scholastic’s exercise in exemplar extrinsic formal causality. Speech-alone talk permits the articulation of exemplar signs.
The sign-vehicle (SVe) consists of phantasms that arise from the recitation of the Story of the Fall2b.
The sign-object (SOe) is the perspective-level actuality2c.
The sign-interpretant (SIe) is as shown below.
0250 In this exemplar sign, Augustine’s version of original sin2c initially stands where original justice2c used to be. Original sin2c overwrites original justice2c. This is what spoken words do. Our verbal rhetoric can never recapture the wholeness of the commitment2c that we evolved to sense and feel2a. But, it sure can trigger our longing for that wholeness.
Yet, Augustine’s vision captures an essential feature of our own lives2c. We are fallen.
0251 Similarly, the proposed confluence of Adam’s rebellion and a change in Lebenswelt may occupy the contiguity in the dyad where original justice2c used to be. Again, this proposal somehow distorts the judgment. But, it does so in a way that scientists cannot dismiss out of hand. The hypothesis of the first singularity is not the second doctrine of original sin. However, it offers a mechanism that reflects quite nicely in the mirror of theology.
See Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Arc of Inquiry (2019-2024) by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues (also appearing in Razie Mah’s blog from April through June 2024).
0252 Not unlike Augustine’s first version of original sin, the first singularity offers a suite of insights that are difficult to ignore. First, it is mechanistic in the way that science is mechanistic. Second, it challenges current paradigms on human evolution, but not the data that support them. Neodarwinism has not come to grips with the possibility that the human niche is not material. Modern evolutionary science has yet to entertain the idea that human evolution comes with a twist. Plus, the twist is metaphysical.
And, what better place to look for the metaphysical tools to construct the second doctrine of original sin, than those formulated by Thomas Aquinas and re-formulated by Charles Peirce, who is about to be baptized in the same way that Aquinas baptized Aristotle and Averroes?
0253 So, I conclude my comments on Daniel Houck’s Book (2020) Aquinas, Original Sin, and the Challenge of Evolution. My thanks to the author and apologies for wandering far and wide.
0254 And, what about the turtle?
When I place the apparently dead turtle into the pond. Its head and feet poke out from under the shell. It swims away. The pond is its Umwelt.
We (humans) are not so fortunate. We can never return to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. Nor can we create our own utopia. The most we can hope for is some miraculous redemption of our current Lebenswelt. This is precisely what God delivers.
0841 This is an encore performance to the sequence of blogs on the post-truth condition.
As such, this examination wraps up Part Two of Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).
Take a gander at the full title of Enfield’s text, Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good For Lawyers and Bad For Scientists.
Surely, that sounds like a book that belongs to a set of books on the post-truth condition.
So, the numbers continue to build from the last examination.
0842 The book is published by MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The author is a professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney and the Director of the Sydney Centre for Language Research.
0843 The title of the book is a play on John B. Carroll’s (editor) collection of essays by Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941 AD), published in 1956 under the title, Language, Thought and Reality.
To me, this implies that “thought” has transubstantiated into “versus”. The substance of the word has changed, so to speak. The word, “versus”, derives from the same root as the word, “adversary”. So, if “thought” once used to nominally stand between “language” and “reality”, then today, “thought” is confounded with “adversary”, and that might serve as a hint concerning the nature of our adversity.
Perhaps, this is not the only notable feature of the title.
Then again, a book titled, Language, Adversary and Reality, might not fly off the shelves in feel-good book-outlets. It is not as if, next to the Self-Help section, there is a Come To Grips With Your Doom section.
So, expect me to play with the title throughout this examination.
0844 Another notable feature of this book, at least to me, is that the author is not acquainted with Razie Mah’s re-articulation of human evolution, in three masterworks, The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define the Word “Religion” (available at smashwords and other e-book venues). The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language. Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk. Plus, the evolution of talk comes with the twist, humorously called, “the first singularity”.
So, Enfield’s work serves as a marker for the twilight of the Age of Ideas and the dawning of the Age of Triadic Relations.
0845 Okay, let me dwell on the idea that the evolution of language is not the same as the evolution of talk.
Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues, and also, for the most part, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog for January, February and March, 2024) divides the evolution of talk in the following manner.
0846 The first period starts with the divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineage (7 million of years ago) and ends with the bipedalism of the so-called “southern apes” (around 3.5 to 4 million years ago).
In the second period, australopithecines adapt to mixed forest and savannah by adopting the strategy of obligate collaborative foraging. Eventually, Homo erectus figures out the controlled use of fire, leading to the domestication of fire, starting (perhaps) around 800 thousand years ago.
The third period, lasts from the domestication of fire to the earliest appearance of anatomically modern humans. During this period, hand talk becomes fully linguistic, religion evolves as an adaptation to large social circles (of 150 individuals and more) and hominins use the voice for synchronization during seasonal mega-band and occasional tribal gatherings. Then, sexual selection does the rest and the voice comes under voluntary neural control.
0847 The fourth period starts when the voice, now under voluntary control, joins hand-talk, resulting in a dual-mode way of talking, hand-speech talk. Hand talk retains the iconicity and indexality that grounds reference in things that can be pictured or pointed to. But, speech adds a symbolic adornment, which starts as a sing-along and ends up taking a life of its own. Four centuries ago, the North American Plains Indians and the Australian aborigines still practiced hand-speech talk, with full fledged sign and verbal languages. Now, their hand-speech talk is all but dead.
0848 That death, along with the demise of all hand-speech talking languages, comes (and came) due to exposure to speech-alone talk, which has significantly different semiotic qualities than hand-talk and hand-speech talk. Hand-talk is iconic and indexal. The referent precedes the gestural word. Speech-alone talk is purely symbolic. The spoken word labels ‘something’, and sometimes that ‘something’ cannot be imaged or indicated.
Well, it must be real because speech-alone talk provides a label for an explicit abstraction!
0849 Here is a picture of the transition labeled, “the first singularity”.
0850 Consider the words, “language”, “adversary” and “reality”. Each word is a label for ‘something’ that cannot be pictured or pointed to. These words do not exist in hand-talk or hand-speech talk, because the referent cannot be imaged or indicated using a manual-brachial gesture. What does this imply? Does a referent exist because a label has been attached to it? Or, does an explicit abstraction properly label referents that exist irrespective of the spoken word? This type of question is addressed in Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define The Word “Religion”.
Fortunately, the author of the book under examination is unaware of the first singularity and the difficulties that a change in the way that humans talk poses. Human evolution comes with a twist.
0851 So why examine this work?
Well, I expect to see the evolution of talk manifesting in this book, even though the author is not aware of Razie Mah’s academic labors.
Surely, Enfield’s work details recent scientific research in linguistics and cognitive psychology, in an attempt to provide the reader with a coherent view of how language is good for lying lawyers and bad for honest scientists.
0852 Okay, what is this business about a so-called “first singularity”?
The hypothesis claims that the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia, which starts around 7800 years ago, is the first culture to practice speech-alone talk. There are technical reasons for this. In chapter eleven of Enfield’s book, the author mentions Aboriginal stories that tell of the inundation of hitherto dry land by a rising sea, producing the shallow Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne. The event occurs more than 7000 years ago.
Imagine how much larger the infilling of the Persian Gulf would seem.
0853 Indeed, two hand-speech talking cultures are swept up by the infilling of the gorge and estuary of four rivers, including the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and the surrounding low lying broad valley. One is a land-loving Neolithic culture that migrated down from northern Mesopotamia. The other is a water-loving Mesolithic culture that probably migrated west along the coast from India.
As the waters rose, these two cultures were thrown into the same space, and since they engaged in different economies, they fused instead of warred. Each culture was agreeable with respect to the other. Each culture could imagine intermarrying with the other culture. The producers in each culture began to coordinate, through trading before the temple, with the producers of the other culture. In the process, two hand-speech cultures fused into one, the Ubaid.
0854 In terms of talk, when two cultures come into contact like this, the first step is to operate a pidgin, a hybrid of words of two languages. The second step is for the children to reconstitute the pidgin as a creole, a brand new language that is more than a mere hybrid of the two original ways of talking. The notable feature for the Ubaid is that the brand new language practices speech-alone talk, not hand-speech talk.
So, I mark 5800 B.C. as the nominal starting point for the Ubaid, with a new chronological label: 0 U0′ (Ubaid Zero Prime or “uh-oh prime”). At this moment in prehistory, the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is the only speech-alone talking culture in the world. All other contemporaneous cultures practice hand-speech talk.
0855 What happens next?
The Ubaid becomes the first culture in the world showing trends towards unconstrained complex sociality. They are on their way to realizing civilization.
0856 Of course, the surrounding hand-speech talking cultures cannot help but notice that the Ubaid is… well… different. The Ubaid is wealthier and more powerful. They send emissaries that first, want to convert the village to the new system. Then, they send traders, who want to do business. Then, they send soldiers to take over the joint. Around 1300 U0′, the Ubaid town-chiefdoms attempt to take over management in northern Mesopotamia.
0857 How, do the hand-speech talking cultures respond?
Well, imitation is the highest form of flattery. The hand-speech talking cultures drop the hand-component of their hand-speech talk. As soon as their talk is very close to speech-alone talk, they unexpectedly begin to develop labor and social specializations. They become wealthier and more powerful. Soon they are sending missionaries, traders and warriors to proclaim the news to other cultures.
0858 Speech-alone talk travels down established paths of down-the-line trading. Then, it fans out. Somehow, it even crosses the oceans to the Americas. The spread of speech-alone talk is dramatized as angels carrying a cultural change from the Ubaid to all the world in chapter five of the masterwork, An Archaeology of the Fall. Why angels? Jacob presents to an Iranian imam. Imams know all about angels.
0859 So, what about language, adversary and reality?
Villages of the Ubaid are evident by 0 U0′. The town-chiefdoms of the Uruk of southern Mesopotamia follow at around 1800 U0′. The city-states of the Sumerian Dynastic civilization begin around 2800 U0′. That is three thousand years from speech-alone talk adoption to fully unconstrained social complexity. This pattern should be seen repeated around the world. This calls for research. See Razie Mah’s blog for October 1, 2022.
Unlike the languages of other ancient civilizations, Sumerian is unique. Sumerian is unrelated to any family of languages. Why would that be? Sumerian is a creole derived from two hand-speech talking cultures. Sumerian is the first speech-alone talk language.
0860 The lesson is more than the opportunity for a fantastic research project.
The lesson is much more horrifying.
We (hominins) practice hand and hand-speech talk in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
Today we (humans) practice speech-alone talk in our current Lebenswelt.
Astrologers may further refine the nominal date for 0 U0′. Right now, it stands as 5800 B.C.
0862 7822 years after the first singularity starts, N. J. Enfield publishes a book on the nature of language and reality, along with their adversary, the human mind. He has no awareness that his civilization, indeed, all civilizations in all of history, are realities socially constructed using explicit abstraction made possible by speech-alone talk.
0863 Consequently, the foundational distinction that Enfield cannot make is between implicit and explicit abstraction. (For further readings, consider A Primer on Implicit and Explicit Abstraction, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues).
Perhaps, not surprisingly, Enfield offers a second best distinction in his introduction. The distinction between brute (or physical) reality and language (or speech-alone talk) is precisely the cut that separates labor (task-oriented) and social (role-oriented) specialization. Scientists investigate physical reality. Lawyers manipulate social reality.
0864 Here is a map of the two distinctions, one foundational and one next to foundational.
0865 The above distinctions pose a difficulty, because humans evolve in a Lebenswelt of implicit abstraction. Hand-talk pictures and points to its referents. Humans think in the ways of implicit abstraction.
0866 In contrast, speech-alone talk has no iconic or indexal traits. Explicit abstraction derives from the purely symbolic character of speech-alone talk. Speech-alone talk can label anything, including specifics for physical and for social reality, corresponding to labor and role specializations, the foundations of wealth and power.
Yes, speech-alone talk can label anything. Because humans evolved practicing hand-talk, different labels imply different referents. This may seem confusing, but humanity is yet to explore the entire spectrum of confusion that may arise from the fact that speech-alone talk can label anything, even the same thing, as if each label implies its own referent. After all, physical and social realities are labels for the same thing, the consequences of explicit abstraction.
0867 So what about that funny cloud?
While everyone in the social and psychometric sciences worry about the stuff of labor and social specialization, implicit abstraction sits like a fog over the entire discourse, because the terms used by science are… um… explicit abstractions.
How does the inquirer enter into that cloud of unknowing… er… implicit abstraction?
0868 I proceed by way of example.
0869 Imagine that I am the oldest member of a hominin team hunting deer in Eurasia during the time when fire is being domesticated. I am not the leader, per se, but I am old enough to serve in that capacity.
Oh yeah, the spoken-word, “leader”, does not exist in hand-talk.
Yet, leaders exist in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
Since we were successful at driving deer over a cliff the past few days, I think that the expedition today should go well. But, the deer are skittish and will not run in the correct direction when we close in on them.
Then, everyone sees a particular type of cloud that appears after the second full moon after the solstice, portending a brutal storm followed by much colder weather.
0870 We all innately share a common relation in the style of a category-based nested form, where a normal context3brings an actuality2 into relation with the possibility of ‘something1. The subscripts denote Peirce’s categories of thirdness, secondness and firstness, respectively.
Here, the normal context of the weather3 brings the actuality of this particular type of cloud2 into relation with the potential of ‘a sudden storm followed by cold’1.
0871 Surely, this nested form touches base with physical reality.
Here is a picture.
0872 Well, there is a related nested form, corresponding to social reality.
The normal context of a deer-hunting team3 brings particular gazes among team members2 (after I suggest that we make one more attempt at corralling that group of skittish deer towards the cliff) into relation with the potential of ‘going home before the storm hits’1.
0874 Technically, the social nested form virtually situates the physical nested form, producing the following two-level interscope. For details on nested forms, consider A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.
Even though explicitly abstract terms enter into the empty slots of this two-level interscope,the overall structure keys into implicit abstraction. The slots of an implicit relational structure are filled with relevant explicit terms, through the method of association and implication.
Once an association is made, ask “What does that imply?”
0875 Chapter one of Enfield’s book is titled, “Coordinating around Reality”. It is the first chapter in Part I, titled, “Mapped by Language”.
The author tells the reader about Thomas Schelling’s psychological experiments, which found that people can often arrive at the same solution without speaking to one another. If visitors in two locations are given the same map of the city, they will meet at the one bridge, without even talking to one another.
Coordination has two implications. The first is shared attention. Michael Tomasello calls this “joint attention”. The second is a certain type of mind-reading, that may or may not rely on… um… “language”.
0876 Back to the ongoing example. If members of my team look at one another in angst, after I, the ad-hoc leader, point to a group of deer that we could drive over the cliff, then I may come to a judgment that I will express in hand talk. Let us go home. The brute reality of the implications of the cloud weighs against the social reality of what the team is supposed to accomplish.
0877 My judgment reflects the following sensible construction.
0878 The appearance of a particular cloud before the earliest fall storm is universal. It happens most every year. Everyone on the team has seen it in the past. Now, they see it again, the harbinger of the first snow.
Worrying about getting back from the hunt is intelligible. Everyone on the team knows it.
0879 However, in hand talk, there is no way to formulate the words, “universal” or “intelligible”.
What is there to picture or point to?
So, how does everyone on the team fixate, with the similar imaginations, onto the same situation-level potential?
0880 Are “universal” and “intelligible” adaptations, whereby physical universality… er… brute circumstances translate into social intelligibility… er… reality? Are the explicit abstractions of “physical reality” and “social reality” and “translates” built into our bodies and brains?
0881 The relational structure of sensible construction seems to provide an answer, in so far as my judgment is rendered using hand talk. So, I can say that the normal context of language3c brings the actuality of the physical reality of the impending storm [translates into] the social reality of returning empty-handed from the deer hunt2c into relation with the potential of coordination1c.
0882 Yes, the above nested form puts sensible construction into perspective.
But, it cannot be rendered using hand-talk.
Indeed, this nested form lassoes the explicit distinction that Enfield casts in his introduction and places it as the actuality of an implicit perspective-level structure. If brute reality2c is universal, then social reality2c better be intelligible, because intelligibility and universality emerge from and situate the potential of working together in order to survive1c. Yet, even that potential1c requires a normal context, which I would call “talk3c“, but Enfield calls “language3c“.
