10/31/24

Looking at N. J. Enfield’s Book (2022) “Language vs. Reality” (Part 1 of 23)

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.

What will this examination reveal?

10/5/24

Looking at N. J. Enfield’s Book (2022) “Language vs. Reality” (Part 23 of 23)

1060 Chapter eleven completes Part III. This chapter concerns sense making.

How am I to make sense of the inverted interscope that arrives after the story of Adam and Eve enters into Enfield’s science-inspired interscope?

1061 How do I capture the Gestalt shift in speech-alone talk?

For Enfield’s scientific frame, the perspective-level contiguity is [translates into].

For the inverted frame, the perspective-level contiguity is [transubstantiates into].

Does this suffice?

The Gestalt switches from one to the other interscope.

1062 What else?

The change of Gestalts reconfigures the title.

1063 What Enfield cannot say is this.

Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

In 2022, he simply is not aware of the hypothesis of the first singularity.

1064 What Enfield cannot say may be formulated in terms of science, as an evolutionarily recent cultural transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk, starting with the emergence of the Ubaid culture of southern Mesopotamia, nominally 7824 years ago.

One day, science may present how hand and hand-speech talk potentiates constrained social complexity and speech-alone talk potentiates unconstrained social complexity.

Science may investigate how hand and hand-speech talk facilitates implicit abstraction and how speech-alone talk has a unique ability to label anything, even referents that cannot be pictured or pointed to, even referents that are quite fantastic and alluring and that exist only in the realm of possibility.

1065 Perhaps, explicit abstraction is more cunning than any animal that the Lord God creates.

Like sin, it couches at our door. It is our job to tame it.

1066 In conclusion, Enfield’s well-written book testifies to what he is not aware of.

The background Gestalt of his scientific discourse is a story, and this story steps forward in this examination of Part III, entitled “Reality Made By Language”. But, the inversion does not manifest a full Gestalt shift, because that is precisely what Enfield wants to avoid. He wants to remain a scientist, speaking the disciplinary languages of linguistics and cognitive psychology, as if they could warn us about the near impossibility of practicing Wittgenstein’s rule, because our kind evolves the trait of ‘agreeability’_1a, so that our ‘imaginations’_1b may align in the virtual normal context of ‘coordination’_1c.

1067 Enfield’s interscope is beautiful to behold.

His interscope appears in the mirror of science. I say this while casting a glance at Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Arc of Inquiry (2019-2024) by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues. Portions appear in Razie Mah’s blogs for April through June, 2024. When a theologian looks at Enfield’s interscope, shimmering in the mirror of science, he responds with a theological question, asking, “What is this image revealing?”

The answer cries out for a Gestalt inversion.

One Gestalt hinges on the contiguity, “translates”.

The other Gestalt hinges on the contiguity, “transubstantiates”.

1068 The invert interscope is a wonder to behold.

Saint Thomas Aquinas might chuckle. Aquinas coined the word, “transubstantiates”.

Note how a physical reality, as simple as water, poured over the head of a baby or a child or a repenting adult,transubstantiates into the social reality of washing away the stain of original sin_2c. Water is more than physical reality. Washing the stain of original sin is more than social reality.

1069 This is what the theologian projects into the mirror of theology, standing in the jurisdiction of science, as he contemplates the implications of what Enfield has written.

1070 In the sacrament of baptism, everyone in the ritual co-ordinates, in one particular recitation, starting with an answer to the question, “Do you reject Satan?”

Lucifer is an angel of light. Everything that Lucifer says tells more about Lucifer than the referent that Lucifer’s words conjure. Indeed, the referent that Lucifer’s words conjure is a lie. Just look at the seven of cups in a deck of illustrated Tarot cards and tell me that Lucifer’s words do not conjure this image in the mind of poor, unsuspecting Eve, who, after all, is only trying to be agreeable.

1071 Perhaps, this examination is an invitation for Dr. Enfield and other linguists and cognitive psychologists, to realize that their science has isolated us in rigid containers of empirio-schematic thought. We are creatures who evolved to live as images of God, not as subjects for the psychometric sciences.

Do not let your scientific commitments get in the way of an origin story of the ancient Near East_2a, rising through the observable and measurable use of spoken words_2b, and blossoming into a sacrament instituted during the most amazing revelation coming from the promised land_2c.

When John the Baptist pours the waters of the Jordan over the head of Jesus, the heavens rejoice.

Here is what we evolved to be, standing at the confluence of language and reality.

1072 John Deely, the author of Four Ages of Understanding (2001), offers a label for this new world view. Welcome to the Age of Triadic Relations.

1073 My thanks to Dr. N. J. Enfield for his book, written at the cusp (yet without awareness that there is a cusp) of a new age of understanding.

05/31/24

Looking at Mariusz Tabaczek’s Book (2021) “Divine Action and Emergence” (Part 1 of 22)

0155 I turn to the book that follows Emergence (2019).

The book before me is titled Divine Action and Emergence: An Alternative to Panentheism (2021, Notre Dame Press). The book divides into two parts. Part one concerns emergent phenomena (and looks back upon the previous book). Part two covers divine action in emergence.

But, is not there already a number of theories in our Age of Ideas concerning the topic of divine action in a world full of truncated material and efficient causalities?

0156 Oh, there is more than a number, which reminds me of the earnestness and ambition of Tabaczek’s graduate project.

Most graduate students, after being lured into an advanced program in science by the philosophical side of Tabaczek’s mirror, figure out that the noumenon, the thing itself, is an inaccessible reflection of the agent-side of science, the side where all the difficult and detail-oriented laboratory work gets done. That realization takes one or two years. Then, the rest of one’s graduate career consists of grinding out the data and wondering why doing science is not as fun as thinking about doing science.

In short, most graduate students in the natural sciences learn to live as agents on the science side of Tabaczek’s mirror.

0157 I suspect that the same process should have happened to Tabaczek, entering a graduate program in philosophy of science and getting introduced to diverse machinations of science-agent philosophers, explaining how the hylomorphe on the science side is reflected by the noumenon side of Tabaczek’s mirror as a sort of “cloud of unknowing”, that conforms to the ghost of the positivist intellect.

But, it does not.

0158 Perhaps, it is a miracle that those agents of science who supervise his doctoral studies do not sabotage and destroy this creature, who seems to absorb the soul-breaking literature, yet remains eerily constant in his vision.

Perhaps, Tabaczek holds the element of surprise because he stands in a tradition that loves science, yet despises the positivist’s intellect, which has one rule. Metaphysics is not allowed.

Most students coming out of the Christian tradition simply get confused and wander into specialized technical fields of either science or modern philosophy. Will they ever get the memo? The positivist intellect is dead.

05/6/24

Looking at Mariusz Tabaczek’s Book (2021) “Divine Action and Emergence” (Part 22 of 22)

0331 My sudden turn to semiotics does not occur in Tabaczek’s text.

Such is the examiner’s prerogative.

At this point, I stand at the threshold of section 1.3.4, almost precisely in the middle of the book.

My commentary on this book is significant.

Shall I review?

I represent the Positivist’s judgment as a content-level category-based form and discuss how it might be situated (points 0155 to 0184).

I suggest how reductionists can game emergent phenomena. Plus, I follow Tabaczek back to the four causes (points 0185 to 0239).

I present a specific example of an emergent phenomenon, building on the prior example of a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell. Then, I return to Deacon’s general formula for emergence (points 240 to 0276).

Finally, I examine Tabaczek’s “philosophical history of panentheism” up to the section on Hegel (points 0277 to 0330).

0332 These are notable achievements.

But, my commentary is not more significant than Tabaczek’s text.

At this point, it is if I look through Tabaczek’s text and see something moving, something that catches my eye. It is not for me to say whether it is an illusion or a registration. It is enough for me to articulate what I see.

0333 At this point, I draw the veil on Razie Mah’s blog for April and May of 2024 and enter the enclosure of Comments on Tabaczek’s Arc of Inquiry (2019-2024), available at smashwords and other e-book venues. Comments will cover the rest of Part Two of Divine Action and Emergence. June 2024 will look at the start of Tabaczek’s next book, Theistic Evolution and Comments will complete the examination.

My thanks to Mariusz Tabaczek for his intellectual quest.

0334 But, that is not to say that I abandon Tabaczek’s text.

No, my slide into sign-relations is part of the examiner’s response.

This occurs in Comments.

There is good reason to wonder whether the response is proportionate.

I let the reader decide.

04/30/24

Looking at Mariusz Tabaczek’s Book (2019) “Emergence” (Part 1 of 22)

0001 Philosophers enamored of Aristotle and Aquinas tend to make distinctions. So, what happens when such philosophers wrestle with modern science as it confronts the realness of apparently irreducibly complex systems, such as um… hydrogen-fuel cells and the Krebs cycle, which serves as the “fuel cell” for eukaryotic cells?

On the surface, Tabaczek fashions, yet does not articulate, a distinction between… hmmm…

0002 Consider a sentence, found on page 273 of Emergence, midway in the final chapter, seven, saying (more or less), “I hope that my re-interpretation of downward causation and emergent systems, in terms of old and new Aristotelianism, will help analytical metaphysicians sound more credible to scientists and philosophers of science, who employ, analyze and justify methodological reductionism.”

….what?

Philosophers of science and analytialc metaphysicians?

0003 Philosophers of science attempt to understand the causalities inherent in the ways that each empirio-schematic discipline applies mathematical and mechanical models to observations and measurements of particular phenomena. In terms of Aristotle’s four causes, their options are few. Science is beholden to material and efficient causalities, shorn of formal and final causation. So, they end up going in tautological circles. What makes a model relevant? Well, a model accounts for observations and measurements of phenomena. What are phenomena? Phenomena are observable and measurable facets of their noumenon. What is a noumenon?

Ugh, you know, the thing itself.

If I know anything about the Positivist’s judgment, then I know this. Science studies phenomena, not their noumenon.

Everybody knows that.

Except, of course, for those pathetic (analytical) metaphysicians.

0004 …what?

A noumenon and its phenomena?

0005 Tautologies are marvelous intellectual constructions.

In a tautology, an explanation explains a fact because the fact can be accounted for by the explanation. For modern science, mathematical and mechanical models explain observations and measurements because observations and measurements can be accounted for by mathematical and mechanical models.

Scientific tautologies are very powerful. Important scientists ask for governments to support their empirio-schematic research in order to develop and exploit such tautologies… er… technologies. Philosophers of science tend to go with the flow, so they end up employing, analyzing and justifying the manners in which mathematical and mechanical models account for observations and measurements, along with other not-metaphysical pursuits. One must tread lightly. First, there is a lot of money on the line. Second, the positivist intellect has a rule. Metaphysics is not allowed.

0006 …hmmm…

Does Tabaczek offer a way out of the rut of not-metaphysics, without noticing that the rut is what distinguishes scientific inquiry from experience of a thing itself? Aristotle will tell me that the rut is not the same as the world outside the rut. The scientific world is (supposedly) full of mind-independent beings. Ours is a world of mind-dependent beings.

0007 …aha!

Now, I arrive at the yet-to-be-articulated distinction between what science investigates and what we experience.

For the modern philosopher of science, models are key. Disciplinary language brings mathematical and mechanical models into relation with observations and measurements of phenomena.

For the estranged modern metaphysician, the thing itself is key. The thing itself, the noumenon, gives rise to diverse phenomena, facets that are observable and measurable.

Consequently, the distinction that Tabaczek does not name looks like this.

Figure 01

04/5/24

Looking at Mariusz Tabaczek’s Book (2019) “Emergence” (Part 22 of 22)

0149 In chapter five, Tabaczek starts to develop the noumenal side of his mirror, beginning with dispositions and powers. Tabaczek wants to use these terms interchangeably. Perhaps, it is better to regard them as two contiguous real elements, where the contiguity is [properties].

Disposition [property] power is a hylomorphe that is slightly different than Aristotle’s hylomorphe, matter [substance] form. Even though they differ, they both belong to Peirce’s category of secondness.

To me, Peirce’s secondness opens the door to expressions of causality that reflect Aristotle’s hylomorphe in so far as they have the same relational structure.

Currently, no modern philosopher views Aristotle’s hylomorphe as a prime example of Peirce’s category of secondness.

How so?

As soon as a modern philosopher recognizes the point, then he or she becomes a postmodern philosopher.

Labels can be slippery.

0150 In chapter six of Emergence, Tabaczek introduces forms and teleology (that is, formal and final causes). The operation of these causes within the category-based nested form has already been presented.

0151 In chapter seven, Tabaczek labors to apply his dispositional metaphysics to Deacon’s formulation of dynamical depth. Perhaps, the results are not as coherent as the application found in this examination, but his efforts are sufficient to earn him his doctorate in philosophy.

Amen to that!

0152 Overall, Emergence is a testimonial to the resilience of a graduate student who completes his doctorate in philosophy of science without knowing that the model and the noumenon are two (apparently competing) illuminations within the Positivist’s judgment.

0153 Why doesn’t he know?

Well, no one knows, because philosophers of science are not paying attention the traditions of Charles Peirce or of Jacques Maritain. As noted in Comments on Jacques Maritain’s Book (1935) Natural Philosophy, Maritain uses the scholastic tool of three different styles of abstraction to paint a picture of science displaying the structure of judgment. Peirce’s semiotics and categories clarify Maritain’s painting by resolving two integrated yet distinct judgments: the Positivist’s judgment and the empirio-schematic judgment.

Plus, another reason why no one knows is because philosophers of science still think that the positivist intellect is alive. All laboratory scientists obey the dictate of the positivist intellect. Metaphysics is not allowed. So, if well-funded scientists are correct, then philosophers of science must project what is for the Positivist’s judgment from science into their own image in Tabaczek’s mirror. They do not realize that Tabaczek inadvertently de-defines the positivist intellect by not getting the Positivist’s memo and regarding a noumenon as the thing itself and its phenomena as manifestations of dispositions [properties] power.

0154 Say what?

Tabaczek’s “dispositional metaphysics” disposes with the positivist intellect by vaporizing the relation of the Positivist’s judgment and condensing what ought to be (the empirio-schematic judgment) and what is (the noumenon [cannot be objectified as] its phenomena) as two distinct illuminations. Both enter secondness. Two hylomorphes stand juxtaposed. In Tabaczek’s mirror, each hylomorphe sees its own image in the other.

03/26/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality” (Part 1 of 22)

0389 The book before me published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The question? What makes humans unique? The approach is scientific. Humans think differently than great apes, their closest biological kin. One way to understand that difference is to observe and measure the cognitive capacities of human newborns and infants, as well as the cognitive abilities of adult great apes.

This book belongs to a decades-long arc of inquiry by the author. During much of this time, Michael Tomasello serves as co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. I cover two decades in my examinations. Here is the fourth book in the list.

0390 What has this semiotician found so far?

First, from the very start of his journey, the content-level of Tomasello’s vision corresponds to the situation-level of Razie Mah’s hypothesis. The ultimate human niche consists of the potential of triadic relations.

Razie Mah’s hypothesis applies the two-level interscope for Darwin’s paradigm to human evolution.

0391 First, the general Darwinian paradigm looks like this.

0392 In The Human Niche (available at smashwords and other e-book venues), Razie Mah proposes that the ultimate human niche_1b is the potential of triadic relations.

Tomasello’s hypothesis that joint attention_2b and shared intentionality_2b are behavioral and cognitive adaptations to the niche of sociogenesis_1b reconfigures the situation-level of Darwin’s paradigm, resulting in what I call the “Tomasello-Mah synthesis”.

0393 Yes, fortune turns her wheel. Tomasello does not know Mah’s hypothesis. Tomasello’s arc of inquiry is underway in 1999. Mah’s hypothesis first appears online in 2018. So, Tomasello configures his insight, corresponding to the situation-level of the Darwinian paradigm, as the content-level of his vision.

Tomasello’s vision offers a way to bring a phenotype (of human ontogeny_2c’) into relation with a foundational adaptation (of joint attention_2a’). But, according to Mah, phenotype and adaptation are two independent fields of evolutionary inquiry. One does not situate or contextualize the other. Rather, the two intersect.

Consequently, Tomasello’s vision resolves the internal contradictions of the intersection of genetics and natural history,by assigning the phenotype to the category of thirdness and the adaptation to the category of firstness, while maintaining the actuality of both.

0394 Here is a picture of Tomasello’s vision.

0395 Of course, this examination appears precisely 25 years after Tomasello’s vision is cast in 1999 AD.

His vision is maintained throughout his arc of inquiry.

Consequently, his conclusions carry an awkward emptiness. The emptiness compares to the basement of a house. The basement is dark, cool, foundational and ignored, until of course, one must seek refuge in a storm.

0396 The previous examinations of Tomasello’s works demonstrate that the house, the abode of his vision, is furnished with morality.

Tomasello can ignore the basement, haunted by immaterial beings called, “triadic relations”. Yet, in that place, where a family might store potatoes, onions, smoked meat, along with luggage and Christmas ornaments, dwells something that Tomasello may safely ignore. I call that ghost, “religion”.

03/1/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality” (Part 22 of 22)

0588 The Tomasello-Mah synthesis shows the ghost in the basement of the house of Tomasello’s vision.

Indeed, as this version of Darwin’s paradigm begins to haunt the entire edifice of human evolution, then Tabaczek’s housebecomes more than a house with a basement. If sociogenesis_1b is the potential_1b of triadic relations_2a, then Tomasello’s arc of inquiry may be re-articulated using triadic relations.

0589 For example, Razie Mah’s Primer on Sensible and Social Construction may be used to re-label the eras of individual, joint and collective intentionality. Individual construction associates to the category-based nested form. Sensible construction associates to the two-level interscope, containing content and situation levels. Social construction associates to the three-level interscope, containing content, situation and perspective levels.

Here is a list of what that might look like.

0590 To continue, the re-labeled eras may be regarded in terms of the evolution of talk.

The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language. Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk.

0592 Next, I would like to focus attention on the era of collective intentionality.

Here is a list depicting the timeframe.

0593 Before the era of collective intentionality, hand talk is confined team activities. Hand talk produces sensible constructions. Each team develops its own way of hand talking.

After the domestication of fire, team-tradition hand talk starts to be used generally, eventually producing fully linguistic hand talk.

The situation is very dynamic. Since cooking with fire increases the number of teams, fully linguistic hand-talk is re-appropriated for specialized use in more and more teams. Fully linguistic hand-talk influences all social circles. In some of these circles, grammatically correct, yet apparently nonsensible statements, generate social constructions that open new cognitive spaces. These novel cognitive spaces become sites for more sensible construction.

0594 The voice comes into play during community meetings (150), seasonal mega-band round-ups (500) and special occasion tribal pow-wows (1500). The voice is used for synchronization. Song brings a large gathering of hominins into synchronization. Once this cultural habit starts, then singing joins other traits in sexual selection. The voice comes under voluntary control.

0595 Most likely, the early speciations of late Homo erectus produced species that could sing and hand-talk. But, they could not speak.

Speech is added to hand-talk with Homo sapiens. Anatomically modern humans practice a dual-mode of talking, hand-speech talk, for the next two hundred-thousand years.

0596 Hand-speech talk would still be practiced by anatomically modern humans today, were it not for the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia. The hypothesis of the first singularity proposes that the Ubaid is the first culture on Earth to practice speech-alone talk.

Here is a picture of the era of social construction.

0598 Today, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

This brings me to the limit of Tomasello’s vision. I open the door, and step out into the realization that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. I step into the vision of Razie Mah.

0599 The arc of Tomasello’s inquiry, spanning from 1999 to 2016, opens onto three masterworks by Razie Mah. These electronic books are available at smashwords and other e-work venues. This examination relies primarily on The Human Niche, along with books contained in the series, A Course on The Human Niche. A related series is titled, Buttressing the Human Niche.

Here is a list of Mah’s masterworks.

Still, there is more.

A Commentary on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) is available at smashwords and other e-book venues. This commentary includes Mah’s blogs for January, February and March, 2024, along with an examination of Becoming Human (2019), the fifth book in a sequence of five books.

0600 My thanks to Michael Tomasello, who writes the books under examination while Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, for conducting a scientific inquiry, from which I have examined only several works.

02/29/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2014) “A Natural History of Human Thinking” (Part 1 of 22)

0187 In the preface, the author notes that this book is a prequel to The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (1999, Harvard University Press). The question is the same. What makes humans unique? The answer is the same. Humans think differently than great apes, their closest biological kin.

In 1999, researchers in evolutionary anthropology could say, “Only humans think of other humans as intentional agents. Plus, my cat and my dog are intentional operators, as well, say nothing of the weather.”

Okay, I added the second sentence for dramatic effect.

Unfortunately, research conducted after 1999 introduces a problem. It turns out that great apes recognize intentionality in others.

Uh oh.

0188 This book is the third marker in Tomasello’s intellectual journey. I start following his trek with Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (1999) “The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition” (appearing in Razie Mah’s January 2024 blog). The second marker that I examine may be found in Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2008) “Origins of Human Communication” (appearing later in the same blog for the same month).

0189 In the publication before me, A Natural History of Human Thinking (2014, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts), Tomasello explicitly abstracts three cognitive processes in order to distinguish humans from apes. The processes are cognitive representation, inference and self-monitoring. He then proposes that all three components were transformed in two key steps during hominin evolution. He labels his claims, “the shared-intentionality hypothesis”.

0190 Does this follow the trajectory set by previous works?

Here is a theme that appears in the second marker, pre-emptively modified with the above propositions in mind.

0191 This modified picture allows me to offer slogans for movements zero and one.

For zero, the slogan is “I work for food.”

For one, the slogan is “We work for food.”

01/31/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (1999) “The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition” (Part 1 of 12)

0001 In 1999 AD, Michael Tomasello, then co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, publishes the work before me (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts).

To me, this work marks the start of the author’s twenty year journey, culminating in a theory of human ontogeny, published in 2019. The word, “ontogeny”, refers to human development and associates to the human phenotype.

0002 What interests me in Tomasello’s journey?

As noted in Comments on Dennis Venema and Scot McKnight’s Book (2017) Adam and the Genome (available at smashwords and other e-book venues), “phenotype” and “adaptation” are not the same. Instead, these labels apply to distinct actualities that coalesce into a single actuality. One may call that single actuality, an individual, a species or a genus. One may also call that single actuality, “a mystery”.

I am interested in the natural history side of the mystery of human evolution. However, the genetic (or ontogenetic) side cannot be ignored. Plus, natural history cannot be reduced to genetics, or visa versa

0003 Chapter one of Tomasello’s book is titled, “A Puzzle and a Hypothesis”.

Of course, a puzzle is not a mystery. A puzzle can be resolved. A mystery cannot.

The puzzle starts with genetics. Geneticists have examined the DNA of chimpanzees, bonobos and humans and predict that the last common ancestor lives 6 or 7 Myr (six or seven million years ago).

In contrast, physical anthropologists (natural historians) propose the fossil record noted in the following figure. With terminological sleight of hand, they refer to human ancestors as “hominins”, even though the old term for any bipedal primate (ape or human) is “hominid”.

0004 Hmmm. Does the puzzle concern time?

According to genetics, the last common ancestor (LCA) between chimpanzees and humans lives 7 Myr (millions of years ago). But, little significant shows up in the fossil record until 4 Myr. Our lineage obviously evolves feet first. As it turns out, starting around 5 Myr, the extent of tropical vegetation in Africa decreases due to desiccation. Bipedality is an adaptation to mixed forest and savannah.

0005 The fossil record provides other clues, especially stone tools.

The first stone tools are Oldowan. Oldowan stones tools are constructed on site. They are used to scrape meat off of bone and to crack long bones (that are full of fatty marrow).

Acheulean stone tools appear later in the archeological record. Acheulean stone tools are made beforehand and carried with some intention in mind. They have the appearance of a giant tooth. Notably, Acheulean stone tool technology remains unchanged for over a million years. Innovations in stone-tools follow the domestication of fire.

0006 Surely, these two tables are puzzling. In the first, the fossil record pertains to changes in hominin phenotypes. In the second, the fossil record pertains to hominin adaptations, but these adaptations are not phenotypic. They are artifacts. Are these adaptive artifacts cultural? Are they behavioral? I wonder, “Do the words, ‘culture’ and ‘behavior’, capture the matter and the form of these artifacts?” It is as if an adaptation recognizes matter and generates form.

0007 What is the nature of the adaptation that maintains (and occasionally changes) artifacts, as if these artifacts are phenotypes?

Tomasello suggests that an adaptation is a novel form of social cognition. Our lineage adapts to a new way of thinking about one another, eventually allowing sociogenesis, new styles of learning and cultural evolution.

0008 Tomasello proposes that there is one adaptation that potentiates subsequent adaptations.

Razie Mah proposes that there is one ultimate niche for our lineage. The hypothesis is presented in the e-book, The Human Niche (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

0009 Do Tomasello (in 1999) and Mah (in 2018) propose that our lineage is defined by the same adaptation… er… niche?

What is the difference between an adaptation and a niche?

To these questions, I next attend.

An Archaeology of the Fall

A Horror Story by Razie Mah

Category Archives: Interscope & Intersection