0123 Here is a diagram of the interventional sign.

0124 What is included in nature’s broadcast?

Nature’s significations are included, first and foremost.

Body habitus of fellow walking southern apes, now clearly visualized because of posture, is a natural sign.  Apes track one another in team activities.

Manual-brachial gestures are natural significations because they picture and point to their referents.  The referent defines the gesture, not the other way around.  Even when manual-brachial gestures become routinized and increasingly distinct from one another, this principle holds.  Manual-brachial word-gestures are icons and indexes.

0125 Also, natural significations raise the question, “Who am I paying attention to?”

The southern apes do not know how to answer that question.  Early Homo cannot fathom a guess.  If nature is saying something, then who is talking?

Natural significations prepare our ancestors for sensible and social construction.  Events are full of signs.  Sometimes, a sign may be sensibly interpreted with a specifying sign-relation.  Sometimes, the signs demand social construction.  For example, there are a multitude of clues for when a flood is coming.

0126 What do our early ancestors know?

They can approach, avoid or safely ignore.  They can regard the habitus of other members of the team for clues as how to respond.  They can look to others for declarations of intent. They may conclude that the source of a natural sign has its own intentions.

Our ancestors also know that they must work together, in teams, in order to get enough food for every circle of family and friends to survive.  Michael Tomasello calls the strategy, “obligatory collaborative foraging”.  I call it teamwork.

0127 What does this imply about the evolution of the hominin’s active body [substance] sensate soul?

Our lineage adapts to nature’s significations (now broadly defined).  Our sensations (active body) and feelings (sensate soul) are attuned to natural signs.  In particular, we innately anticipate that our manual-brachial word-gestures are natural signs. Why?  Manual-brachial word-gestures are icons and indexes, just like the signs of nature.

0128 What else is implied?

On a deeper plane, natural signification is true, as opposed to false, and honest, as opposed to deceptive.  Even camouflage, designed to deceive, does so plainly.  A natural sign may fool the observer. But, it does so honestly.  Our ancestors learn this lesson early.  We have a sixth sense for danger, in this regard.  Our suspicions are aroused when ‘something’ does not seem quite right, especially in regards to significations.  I call that living world of significations, “Lebenswelt”.

0129 What about the evolution of religion?

The evolution of spiritual traditions is discussed in the chapter on meaning in How To Define the Word “Religion”.  It is also mentioned in The Human Niche, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

Language evolves in the specialized hand-talk of team activities.  Language does not become its own specialized activity until the domestication of fire.  As fire is domesticated, opportunities for conversation arise.  Action-oriented specialized languages contribute to a general hand-talk language, complete with grammar.  Once grammar is habituated, then nonsensical statements can be constructed.

0130 A nonsensical statement in hand talk is a natural sign, because hand talk expresses icons and indexes.  At the same time, a modern anthropologist would call a nonsensical hand-talk sentence “symbolic”.

Why?

Not unlike the spookier instances of natural signs, nonsensical statements cannot be sensibly interpreted.  Social construction is required.  Social constructions create novel cognitive spaces, new niches for hominins to adapt to.

0131 Nonsensical “religious” hand-talk statements_2c (SV_i) trigger sensations and feelings_2a (SO_i) in the normal context of what is happening_3a (SI_i), coherent with ‘something that defies sensible construction’_1a (SI_i).  This ‘something’_1a may be a socially constructed meaning that cannot be explicitly pictured and pointed to with hand talk.

Yet, it (SI_i) can be consistently evoked with a sign-vehicle (SV_i).

0132 Does the interventional sign touch base with preternatural awareness?

If it does, then Aquinas’s formulation of original justice is relevant.