In order to approach the topic of language, I must provide a little background in natural signs.
According to Peirce, there are three types on natural sign. They are distinguished by the categorical qualities of their sign object.
Here is a picture.
0135 The icon refers to the whole by depicting a part. The part may represent the whole. The hand-talk word, [SNAKE], is a wiggling hand moving forward. The image should be fairly recognizable. Pantomime exercises icons.
The index points in the direction of the reference. The hand-talk word, [THERE], can also be [ME] or [YOU]. The referent is real, but may depend on the ongoing situation.
The symbol is real in so far as it is supported by convention and habit. The implication? As iconic and indexal manual-brachial gestures are routinized, they become more and more distinct from one another. They become more and more as symbols. Symbols are real when they are easily distinguished from one another and readily interpreted by convention and habit.
0136 Now, I ask, “Do symbols constitute language?”
Yes, symbols are responsible because each symbol in a finite order is distinct from any other symbol. A finite set of symbols constitutes a symbolic order (from one point of view) or a system of differences (from another point of view).
The term, “symbolic order”, emphasizes the order within the set. Order allows symbolic operations among distinct members, sort of like the formalization of conventions. Formalization allows the construction of complex concepts. The three-level interscope is an example of a purely relational structure that formalizes a symbolic construction. For language, these operations are called “grammar”.
The term, “system of differences”, emphasizes the fact that each symbol is different from any other symbol. Difference speeds up the recognition of each symbol. At the turn of the last century, a scientific linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, recognizes this trait in spoken languages. He technically defines spoken language as two arbitrarily related systems of differences, parole (speech) and langue (the mental processing that occurs in response to talk).
This is sort of confusing.
Who would imagine that language consists in two systems of differences, composed of symbols?
0137 Symbols, by themselves, do not necessarily represent anything real. What do I mean by the term, “real”? The scholastics use the Latin term, “ens reale“, meaning mind-independent being. Icons and indexes picture and point to ens reale. Symbols are ens rationis, or mind-dependent beings. Symbols are testimonials to conventions, laws and traditions. In short, symbols are ens rationis, even though they may conventionalize very real habits of action.
Icons and indexes are natural signs. They touch base with ens reale.
Symbols are natural signs that facilitate ens rationis.
0138 Perhaps, “language” smells like… well… a funky, yet fragrant, perfume named, “Symbolize My Icons and Indexes”.
One cannot picture or point to the smell.
But, the scent clings to every icon and index.
Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk.
Language evolves as the icons and indexes of hand talk operate as symbols in a system of differences.
Icons are sign-relations where the sign-object is based on the principle of similarity. Pantomime in hand talk fits this principle. Pantomime represents ens reale.
Indexes are sign-relations where the sign-object is based on the principles of contact, contiguity and pointing. Pointing and directional manual-brachial gestures fit this principle. Pointing represents ens reale.
Symbols are sign-relations where the sign-object is based on the principles of habit, convention, tradition and law. Symbols do not image or point to ens reale. However icons and indexes take on the character of symbols as they become, as Tomasello puts it, “conventionalized”.
0140 Now, for the next stage of my examination of Tomasello’s argument on language, I return to the scholastic picture for the way humans think.
0141 I know that each actuality may be rendered as a sign-object for one sign and a sign-vehicle for the next sign. A specifying sign-object2b (SOs) induces an exemplar sign vehicle2b (SVe). An exemplar sign-object2c (SOe) induces an interventional sign-vehicle2c (SIs) and so on.
0142 When I consider each actuality as a sign-object of one of the three signs, I draw the following correlation.
0143 The specifying sign comes first. The sign-object (SOs) is perception2b. Perception2b works on icons and indexes in nature as well as in hand talk. Icons and indexes are sensible signs in this regard. They have referents that exist in mind-independent reality, ens reale.
0144 The exemplar sign comes next. The sign-object (SOe) is a judgment2c. Typically, this judgment brings an intelligible aspect of perception2b (what ought to be) into relation with a universal aspect of sensation2a (what is). This judgment2c fits the message of the word, “rational”, because perception2b and sensation2a are brought into balance (that is, into a ratio). In doing so, SOe embodies reason.
Note that I don’t use the term, “manifests”. I use the term, “embodies”.
Reason is built into our bodies and brains.
0145 The interventional sign comes next. The sign-object (SOi) is a symbol, because its sign-vehicle (SVi) is a judgment and judgments are mind-dependent beings (ens rationis). This sign-object (SOi) is decoded into a specifying sign-vehicle (SVs). The specifying sign vehicle (SVs) will be situated as an icon or index (SOs).
0146 Hand talk exemplifies hominin communication.
Tomasello’s argument on language may be re-articulated using Peircean triadic relations, formulated as the scholastic interscope of the way humans think and three interlocking sign-relations, consisting of the specifying, the exemplar and the interventional signs.
0147 In hominin evolution, conventionalization is built into the use of hand talk. Hand talk goes with joint attention. Joint attention is an adaptation to sociogenesis. Sociogenesis is the human niche.
0148 How does this fit into Saussure’s paradigm?
If the interventional sign-object (SOi) and the specifying sign-vehicle (SVs) may be classified as parole, or “talk”, then the remainder of the three-level interscope may be associated with langue, or “language”.
Here is the resulting figure.
0149 The above figure plays into chapter four, titled “Ontogenic origins”, and chapter six, titled “The Grammatical Dimension”.
Once parole and langue satisfy the criteria of two systems of differences, then hand talk meets Saussure’s definition of language, as two related systems of differences.
With speech-alone talk, the relation is arbitrary. Formant frequencies for any particular spoken word are arbitrarily associated to a particular way of decoding the word and placing it in the slot for species impressa2a.
In contrast, with hand talk, each gesture-word carries the natural sign qualities of icons and indexes, so the specifying sign-vehicle is decoded in ways that picture and point to its referent. I call the relation, “motivated”, instead of “arbitrary”.
0150 Tomasello spends a good deal of time discussing the issue of grammar.
To me, the question boils down to the cultivation of symbolic operations among elements within a symbolic order.
Symbolic order pertains to parole, in so far as each gestural word becomes more and more distinct from other gestural words. Symbolic order speeds recognition.
Symbolic order pertains to langue, in that each three-level interscope must be distinct. This is a tall order. Grammarpackages statements in order to assist the specifying sign (which favors icons and indexes), exemplar sign (which favors rational judgments) and the subsequent interventional sign (which expresses a conviction, since hand talk cannot picture or point to the elements of judgment, much less the triadic relation that constitutes judgment).
0151 No wonder Tomasello is so wound up about grammar. Grammar is like a knot that keeps tying itself into a new knot, even while the inquirer is trying to untie it.
Complete sentences (SOi) craft impressions (SVs).
Well-crafted sentences produce impressions2a, that trigger perceptions2b, that call to mind convictions2c.
Just ask Rhett and Rick…
0152 … if you can get their joint attention.
Here is a picture of the pair, as one hand talks to the other, saying “[SNAKE][THERE]”.
0153 This raises the very important question concerns why Rhett and Rick engage in joint attention in the first place.
Joint attention is the adaptation. Sociogenesis labels the corresponding niche.
0154 In order to appreciate the “socio” of “sociogenesis”, I turn to Comments on John Gowlett, Clive Gamble, and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues). Dunbar introduces a breakthrough model in evolutionary anthropology. The brain size to body size ratio associates to group size. Great apes and southern apes have a ratio that corresponds to a group of 50 (a band).
In addition to this, these three anthropologists suggest that there is some sort of structural pattern within the band (50) that magnifies or reduces by a factor of three. They call the structures, “social circles”. The smaller social circles are family (5), intimates (5), and teams (15). The larger social circles (which exist in the realm of potential for the southern apes) are community (150), mega-band (500) and tribe (1500).
0155 So, the answer to the question, asking “Why are Rhett and Rick engaging in joint attention in the first place?”, must concern social circles.
0156 Thinking Big (2014) comes out six years after Origins of Human Communication (2008). The fact that both books appear within a decade of one another shows the ferment in the discipline of evolutionary anthropology.
In philosophy, the discipline of “ontology” studies the “logos” (or “word”) of “ontos”. Ontos? Ontos is esse_ce, that is, being substantiated. Yes, that is “essence without the ‘n'”. The only way to figure out esse_ce (being substantiated) is by considering essence, (substantiated form). This leads to a question, asking, “What discipline studies the nature of essence?”
Who knows the answer to that?
How about aesthetics, the art of appreciation?
0158 Esse_ce and essence participate in Aristotle’s hylomorphe, which happens to exemplify Peirce’s category of secondness. Secondness consists of two contiguous real elements. For Aristotle, the two real elements are matter (or, for relations, being) and form. The contiguity is placed in brackets for clear notation. I select the word, [substance], as a technical term describing the contiguity between being and form.
Here is a picture.
0159 So, “ontogeny”, must mean “the genesis of being”, or something like that. Ontogeny associates with esse_ce and corresponds to the innate development of a phenotype. Since the human phenotype is designed to internalize culture and traditions, disentangling the innate from the cultural is most difficult, except for newborns and infants. Cognitive psychologists study the mental development of these tempermental, yet fascinating, creatues.
0160 “Phylogeny” is in the title of chapter five.
“Phylogeny” is less problematic.
Phylogeny associates to natural history. For biologists, the Darwinian paradigm says, “Descent with modification”. Through natural selection, modifications become adaptations. Adaptations emerge from (and situate) a niche. A niche is a potential independent of the adapting species.
Tomasello identifies a key adaptation characteristic of humans that is not found in the great apes (and presumably, the last common ancestor between the chimpanzees and humans). That adaptation is joint attention. Shared intentionalityemerges from (and situates) sociogenesis, the ability to form societies.
0161 Thus, chapters four and five give me the two real elements in Tomasello’s hylomorphe, pictured below.
I wonder whether the intrepid reader can find a another label for the term, “substance”.
0162 In the chapter on ontogenetic origins, the reader encounters the crux of hominin communication, the ability to inform, request and share content (that is, information)2c, in the normal context of a common cognitive ground3c, on the basis of mutual expectations1c.
0163 To me, this associates to the perspective-level of the scholastic picture of the way humans think, now adjusted for Tomasello’s insights.
Here is a picture.
0164 The perspective level corresponds to the sign-object and the sign-interpretant of the exemplar sign (SOe and SIe). The sign-vehicle (SVe) is perception.
The exemplar sign arises from a specifying sign and leads to an interventional sign.
I conclude that, in terms of phenotype, humans are innately prepared to embody exemplar sign-relations.
0165 So, what about newborns and infants?
Oh, they must first figure out specifying signs. They do so by experiencing the interventional signs of family and friends. As soon as tykes express sensible interventional signs, they have mastered the art of specifying signs and are on their way to developing their own suite of exemplar signs.
On their way?
One never stops developing exemplar signs.
0166 So, that leads me to ask, “Does the above interscope serve as a label for the substance between phenotype and adaptation? Or does the word, ‘culture’?”
0167 What are the phylogenetic origins of human communication?
0168 Tomasello works from two buckets of inquiry.
One bucket is filled with observations of great apes in the wild and in captivity. These observations are modeled by biologists and cognitive scientists. These species represent our last common ancestor (more or less). The great apes do not diverge. Our lineage does.
Biological uniformitarianism predicts that some sort of continuous line connects the last common ancestor (LCA) to ourselves. Tomasello isolates a key feature of hominin communication that corresponds to an early adaptation. Joint attention and shared intentionality are adaptations into sociogenesis, occurring after the genetic divergence between the chimpanzee and human lineages, around 7Myr (million of years ago).
Tomasello’s phylogenetic origins hypothesis proposes that, after this divergence, hominin cooperative behaviors become adaptive in an environment where mutual collaborative activities pay off.
0169 One question is, “When?”
A change in geological eras might do the trick. The Pliocene era begins around 5.3Myr. Bipedal australopithecines(southern apes) appear in the fossil record around 4.2Myr. The adaptation of bipedalism associates to savannah and woodland environments. Hominids walk from one area rich in seasonal resources to another. Do some of the species within this genus develop mutually collaborative activities?
That is…, “Do some australopithecines develop teams?”
I suspect so.
0170 Communication is one aspect of these mutual collaborative activities.
Hominin cooperative communication, what I call “hand talk”, emerges as part and parcel of the adaptation of joint attention and shared intentionality. Hand talk evolves within each of these mutual collaborative activities. Hand talk adapts to teams.
0171 The other bucket is filled with observations of newborns and infants at home and in psychological laboratories. These observations are modeled by cognitive and evolutionary psychologists. These cute little bundles of joy represent later hominins, before civilization, and maybe, before the appearance of our own species, Homo sapiens.
Or, maybe they represent early hominins, like those australopithecines.
Perhaps that is why learning to walk is like the best thing… I mean… the best!
0172 Tomasello’s ontogenetic origins hypothesis states, more or less, “Human newborns and infants cooperate, collaborate and communicate. They display the characteristics of shared intentionality, prior to the acquisition of language.”
0173 Soon after their first birthday, infants start to communicate cooperatively. By three years old, they are aware of language’s normative dimension.
To me, these observations imply that the infant figures out the specifying sign by one year and is uses the interventional sign to communicate. The exemplar sign? Surely, the exemplar sign must be involved in the circuit of sign-processing. Perhaps, it is crucial to hominin cooperativity.
0174 Here is a picture of Tomasello’s hylomorphe, with research into cognitive development substituting for ontogeny (phenotype) and research into the evolutionary psychology of joint attention substituting for phylogeny (adaptation).
0175 Can the substance, the contiguity between these two research programs, be labeled, “culture”?
Yes, labels can be applied to anything.
No, Tomasello’s adjustment to the scholastic interscope for how humans think seems to be a better descriptor for the substance in the above figure.
0176 Once again, here is Tomasello’s adjustment to the scholastic interscope.
Is this the [substance] of Tomasello’s research?
The exemplar sign is foregrounded.
A hominin perception2b (SVe) stands for a judgment2c (SOe) in regards to a common conceptual ground3c operating on the potential of ‘mutual expectations’1c (SIe).
0177 Here is the original scholastic interscope for how humans think.
The exemplar sign is foregrounded.
A species expressa2b (SVe) stands for a species intelligibilis2c (SOe) in regards to what makes sense3c operating on the potential of ‘contextualizing the situation’1c (SIe).
0178 With these two signs in juxtaposition, consider the three processes that Tomasello identifies as basic to the evolution of hominin cooperation: informing, requesting and sharing.
All three processes associate to the exemplar sign.
0179 So, chapter five invites a question, asking, “What are the conditions where exercising the exemplar sign increases reproductive success?”
The answer must be cooperative activities that increase reproductive success.
That is the topic of the next book in this series.
0180 But, before I leave this examination, I would like to return to prior expositions of the three steps of hominin evolution (points 0097 and 0132).
0181 The adaptations of joint attention and mutual intentionality associate to step one in the origins of hominin communication.
0182 The zeroth period stretches from the last common ancestor to the start of the Pliocene, where the first bipedal apesappear in the fossil record. Bipedalism is an adaptation away from tropical forest and into mixed forest and savannah. In these new conditions, collaborative foraging pays off. As soon as cooperation in foraging activities increases reproductive success, the niche of sociogenesis opens up. The team is the first social circle to benefit from joint attention and mutual intentionality.
The last common ancestor dates to around 7Myr (million of years ago). The earliest bipedal apes appear around 4.2Myr. So, I give an additional 0.7 million years for these walking creatures to start to realize that collaboration pays off.
0183 The first period nominally starts at 3.5Myr. During the next 1.7 million years, natural selection explores the adaptive spaces generated by joint attention. This includes the space for the evolution of hand talk within collaborating teams. The Homo genus appears in the fossil record around 1.8Myr. The expansion of the hominin neocortex is testimony to an increasing number of successful teams. For each team tradition that increases reproductive success, subsequent adaptations routinize that success. More common grounds and styles of mutual intentionality are programmed into an expanding brain. Each hominin team becomes better and better at what it does.
The second period begins around 0.8Myr. Homo erectus has already migrated out of Africa and into Eurasia. The domestication of fire ensues. This is the beginning of the next phase, where hominin hand talk becomes fully linguistic.
0184 Even though Tomasello proposes a significantly different timeline, the following list expresses this examiner’s opinion of what Tomasello’s timeline should be.
The discrepancy between Tomasello’s proposed timeline and this examiner’s list needs to be accounted for.
0185 This commentary is not a substitute for Tomasello’s text. It is a complement to his explorations. Tomasello is an excellent, well-organized writer. My examination may be scattered and disorganized, but it adds value by re-articulating his arguments in a semiotic framework.
The term, “semiotics”, does not appear in the index of Tomasello’s book. But, that is not a drawback. That is an opportunity for me, a semiotician, to demonstrate a deep correspondence between Tomasello’s arc of inquiry and Razie Mah’s masterwork, The Human Niche (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).
0186 Sociogenesis is the potential of triadic relations.
0001 The actual title of this blog is Looking at Avoiding Babylon’s 2023 Year in Review Podcast.
0002 One avenue to the podcast is https://spiritustv.com@avoidingbabylon.
At the moment of this writing, these comedic, yet earnest, podcasters are also on youtube and rumble.
0003 The current title employs an Arthurian legend riff, because, if anything, the four interlocutors in this video elaborate a sign-relation specifying what Pope Francis, seemingly simultaneously pope and poseur, means to each one. The appropriate Tarot card is the Hierophant. So, that is what I will label this confluence of fallible human and political position.
0004 In general, the sign is a triadic relation where a sign-vehicle stands for a sign-object in regards to a sign-interpretant.
Here is a picture.
0005 In a specifying sign, a content-based sign-vehicle (SVs) stands for a situation-based sign object (SOs) in regards to the question of what it means to me, operating on the potential of ongoing content (SIs).
The actions of the Hierophant play a prominent role in the year-end review. These actions serve as a specifying sign-vehicle (SVs) that stands for the reviewers drinking from a chalice of unholiness (SOs) in regards to what the news events of 2023 mean to traditional Catholics (SIs).
0006 Here is a picture.
0006 Now, the members of the discussion do not quest for the grail of the unholy. Rather, they suffer it. The elixir that they reluctantly imbibe is a distillate of the rotted fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, vaporized and condensed by nefarious operators similar to those fingered in Charles Theodore Murr’s book (2022) Murder in the 33rd Degree.
0007 Razie Mah offers two snapshots of this distillate.
One is Looking at Sam Smith and Kim Petras’s Music Video (2022) “Unholy”, presented in Razie Mah’s blog on February 11, 2023, several days after the Grammy awards.
Two is Looking at Carlo Vigano’s Speech (2021) “How the Revolution of Vatican II Serves the New World Order”,presented during July 2022, in the same blog.
This is what the talents at Avoiding Babylon taste.
0008 So, what is this distillate?
Well, the answer is obvious.
The distillate is the liquid in the grail of the unholy.
Surely, the elixir is spiritual. But, it is not the blood of Christ. Its mash is stamped from the modern grapes of alienation and resentment.
0009 At this moment, pause, and take a glance at the title of this blog. The title proposes a quest, not for the distillate, but for the grail of the unholy. The grail is the vessel, the cup, the chalice of what is unholy.
0010 Spoken words are so slippery.
Perhaps, the following articulation is more suitable.
I propose a quest for the doctrine of original sin.
0011 The doctrine of original sin is the vessel of the unholy, purchased by Christ in the transaction of all time, bringing good out of the fall of Adam and Eve.
0012 But, has not Augustine’s doctrine of original sin been disproven by modern science?
This is a very good question.
To witness one Christian author caught in the tentacles of this “has not”, consider Looking at Andrew Ter Ern Loke’s Book (2022) “The Origin of Humanity and Evolution”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog between November 30 and 1, 2023.
0013 I propose that Avoiding Babylon pose this question to their audience, in an open forum, along with the following queries. (1) Is Augustine’s doctrine of original sin still valid after modern science demonstrates that there is no genetic bottleneck, as would be expected if Adam and Eve are parents of all humans? (2) Does Augustine’s diagnosis of concupiscence still apply? (3) What about other diagnoses, such as the Protestant’s doctrine of total depravity? Do they still apply? Finally, (4) are there any alternate formulations of original sin proposed after Augustine but before the modern Age of Ideas?
0014 I suspect that the answers will be: (1) No. (2) Yes. (3) Yes, look no further than the demos-racket party members and their rino consorts beholden to the glow-baloney-ists. (4) Yes, Thomas Aquinas proposes that original sin is the deprivation of original justice.
0015 In a subsequent open forum, I propose that the audience of Avoiding Babylon riddle this question. Does Aquinas’s proposal that original sin is the deprivation of original justice apply to human evolution?
In other words, is there a twist in human evolution?
Is human evolution shaken, not stirred?
Has the living world of humanity changed?
Is the German word, “Lebenswelt”, appropriate?
What if our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?
0016 Why stop there?
Can the Lebenswelt that we evolved in correspond to an era of original justice?
Can our current Lebenswelt correspond to an era of original sin?
0017 Of course, with questions like these, an open forum may descend into chaos. To date, no one seems willing to connect the dots, except for Razie Mah. That give this literary figure a certain daring. He even proposes a label for the transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.
The label is “the first singularity”.
Yes, there is an archaeology of the fall.
0018 If Aquinas’s concept of original justice applies to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, then how are we to envision this… um… Edenic existence?
Perhaps, inquirers may consider the lives of newborns, infants, toddlers and young children.
These innocent creatures did not evolve to grow up in civilization, did they?
0019 Two recent blogs by Razie Mah assist in opening the modern mind to the possibility that we evolved to be what children expect us to be, which is nothing like what we adults actually are in today’s unconstrained social complexity.
One is Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010) “Semiotic Animal”, appearing from October 30 to 2, 2023. John Deely (1942-2017 AD) is the only postmodern semiotician buried in the cemetery adjacent to Saint Vincent’s College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. His last student, Brian Kemple, runs the Lyceum website and is worthy of an interview. So are the contributors to his online journal, Reality.
Two is a series of examinations of the works of Michael Tomasello, recently retired Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany (and may be living near Duke University in North Carolina). These will appear from March 31 to January 4, 2024 (and will be wrapped into an e-book titled, Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), soon to be available at smashwords and other e-book venues).
0020 So, the question is, “Are these little tykes expecting us to be, who we evolved to be? And, if so, then why do we seem to fail to live up to their expectations, say nothing of our own expectations for ourselves?”
I suspect that Dr. Tomasello might want to take a swing at that hardball question.
0021 Imagine the implications of associating Aquinas’s original justice to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
0022 As for our current Lebenswelt of original sin, the prior specifying sign says that Pope Francis, as a premier news maker of 2023 (SVs), stands for traditional Catholics being forced to drink elixir from the grail of the unholy (SOs) in regards to the question of what it means to believers, who are concerned about ongoing events (SIs).
0023 Of course, scientists like to call these news items, “memes”, easily transmitted virus-like units of cultural information. Today, memes are everywhere. They are incessantly broadcast. So if the Hierophant employs memes, then what is the nature of memes?
Here, Looking at Daniel Dennett’s Book (2017) “From Bacteria, to Bach and Back”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in December 2023, offers a notion that memes, bits of gossip, pithy justifications of concupiscence, demoralizing proclamations, and label-attaching accusations involve the specifying sign (as already noted) as well as the interventional sign.
0024 The interventional sign?
The interventional sign is like a mirror of the specifying sign.
In a specifying sign-relation, the content-based sign-vehicle (SVs) is picked up by the senses as a mind-independent being. The situation-based sign-object (SOs) is mind-dependent.
In an interventional sign-relation, the content-based sign-object (SOs) is available to the senses as an apparently mind-independent being, which is totally backwards from the specifying sign. The perspective-based sign-vehicle (SVi) is mind-dependent.
0025 For the interventional sign-relation, a perspective-based idea in the mind of someone (or something) (SVi) stands for what the participants sense (SOi) in regards to the content-based question, what is happening, drawing upon the possibility that ‘something’ is happening (SIi).
0026 Here is a picture for the meme at hand.
0027 Note that the sign-object of the interventional sign (SOi) is contiguous with the sign-vehicle of the specifying sign(SVs).
However, the interventional sign-relation is much more difficult to assess than the specifying sign-relation.
0028 The lesson is on display in Avoiding Babylon’s podcast of the year 2023 in review.
The Hierophant offers an elixir that tastes like poison to traditional Catholics and the interlocutors ask what is happening. They cannot figure out the potential of ‘something’ happening’ because they cannot ideate, much less imagine, that the current Hierophant is an object (SOi), called into being by an alien intelligence guiding what is happening and the potential of ‘something’ happening (SIi) in the process of implementing an alien idea, plan or judgment (SVi).
0029 Now, substitute the word, “unholy”, for “alien”.
An unholy idea (SVi) stands for this Hierophant making the news (SOi) in regards to the question of what is happening arising from the potential of ‘something’ happening (SIi).
0030 No, this does not sound like concupiscence.
This sounds like something far more deranged.
0031 Has the Yaltaboath of Modernism found its Voice?
Does the Modern Yaltaboath seek to destroy the chalice of the unholy, which has been disproven, then disregarded, but still retains its power to contain the elixir of whatever idea, plan or judgment that our unconstrained minds can conceive?
Will Avoiding Babylon conduct a quest for original sin?
Will they seek to discover the cup of the unholy capable of containing the juices of Modernism?
0001 The full title of the work before me is The Tower of Babel Moment: Lore, Language, Leibniz, and Lunacy. The author is one of the wandering stars of our current age, an era when academics award more doctorates than any job market can absorb. Professors with sharp elbows occupy the few available academic positions, leaving brilliant and successful graduates, the ones with sharp minds, to find places in heaven knows where.
Farrell finds a spot on the internet, that once verdant pasture of free expression, and establishes his own scholastic exploration outside of modern institutional constraints. In short, he founds his own school. Those who listen to his voice offer remuneration. God bless all concerned.
0002 The work before me offers speculation on the nature of the titular biblical story.
Farrell proceeds by way of a spiral staircase of observations and… may I say?.. expansive “measurements”. Measurements of what? The literature of the seventeenth century? The titans of the late Renaissance? Yes, that will do.
0003 My goal in this examination is to shoehorn Farrell’s exploration into a category-based nested form composed of category-based nested forms. The interscope is elaborated in A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction, by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues. Of all procrustean beds that I have at my disposal, the interscope is most accommodating.
Here is a diagram of the interscope.
0004 The method is simple. First, associate features of Farrell’s argument to elements in the above matrix. Second, discuss the implications.
Each nested form consists of four statements, the most paradigmatic of which goes like this. A normal context3 brings an actuality2 into relation with the possibilities inherent in ‘something’1. The subscripts refer to the categories of Charles Peirce. Thirdness brings secondness into relation with firstness.
The nested form is fractal. An interscope is a category-based nested form composed of category-based nested forms. A two-level interscope associates with sensible construction. A three-level interscope corresponds to social construction. Note how the labels change from 1, 2 and 3 to a, b, and c.
The three-level interscope allows the visualization of virtual nested forms, composed of elements within one column. For example, the virtual nested form in the realm of actuality turns the second column into a category-based nested form,where a perspective-level actuality2c (as virtual normal context) brings a situation-level actuality2b (as virtual actuality) into relation with a content-level actuality2a (as virtual potential).
0005 Farrell opens chapter one with his personal discovery of Leonard Bernstein’s recorded lectures, titled “The Unanswered Question”. In these lectures, Bernstein discusses Noam Chomsky, who has his own unanswered questions. Chomsky, in turn, provokes Farrell to ask his own unanswered question, “How do linguists go about demonstrating linguistic universals?”
A universal may be regarded as an observable feature “measurably” appearing in all spoken languages.
0006 Phonologists find common observable features in the sounds of speech. Common sounds are attributed to the anatomy of the head and neck.
Etymologists find common observable features in closely related words in different languages. The words are similar and not identical, because they arise from isolation and drift among speaking populations, in a manner similar to biology’s slogan, “descent with modification”.
0007 The key?
Universals imply common origins. For phonologists, the universal is biological. For the linguist, the universal is… perhaps lost… in the recesses of time.
0008 A dramatic hypothesis stands against this key. A sudden change may destroy the common language of humanity. That change may be labeled, “A Tower of Babel Moment”.
0009 Years ago, Farrell proposes a wider context to this type of hypothesis. The scenario includes ancient cosmic wars and world grids. But, these are other books, and other matters, than the text at hand.
0010 So, before going on to chapter two, let me draw some associations.
On the content level, the normal context is language3a. The actuality may be called a “topology”, or a map of all spoken languages2a. The potential is that universals imply common origins1a.
The normal context of language3a brings the actuality of cross-language maps2a into relation with the potential of ‘the idea that universals imply common origins’1a.
On the situation level, the normal context is a civilizational moment3b. The actuality is the Tower of Babel (the biblical story)2b. The possibility is ‘discontinuity’1b.
The normal context of a civilizational moment3bbrings the actuality of the story in Genesis 112b into relation with the potential of a discontinuity1b that corresponds to God confounding the common language of the plains of Shinar.
0012 Chapter two discusses the Tower of Babel story, along with ancient commentaries.
In Genesis, the story of Noah’s flood is followed by the genealogy-rich Table of Nations. The Table of Nations leads into the Tower of Babel incident. Then, another genealogy follows, segueing into the stories of Abram (who becomes Abraham).
Farrell does not take the reader into the particularity… that is, the “fit”… of this story as an introduction to Abram’s call. He does not speculate that Abram’s call is directly connected to the embarrassing collapse of a bureaucratic project that promised to deliver a monument rivaling those of the Egyptians.
0013 Instead, Farrell wonders why the denizens… er… rather, the elites of the land of Shinar seek notoriety in building a structure larger than… those damned Egyptian pyramids that everyone admires. At the time, the Egyptian pyramids are even more impressive than today. A stone casement adorns each side. The casement has been chipped off over the millennia. So, we will never know what the pharaoh proclaimed about himself, for all to read.
Whatever it was, I suspect that it had to be edited by later pharoahs.
0014 Timing?
Farrell is not so interested in connecting the Tower building to a historical event.
Nevertheless, intelligent guesses are possible.
The idea of a tower that establishes the notoriety of a people… or is it regime?.. places the building of the Tower of Bab-ilim (Sumerian for “the gate of the gods”) after the Egyptian pyramid building frenzy (by most reckonings, occurring between 2550 to 2450 B.C.)
According to the world history encyclopedia, dynastic civilization in southern Mesopotamia is already hundreds of years old at this time, in the style of city states. Around 2500 B.C., the first dynasty of Lagash establishes the first empire, swallowing many city states into one administration. Codes of law appear by 2350 B.C. Sargon the Akkad’s empire is even greater than the first. Sargon sacks Ur in 2330 B.C. Ziggurats are in use in many Sumerian cities by 2100 BC, showing what empire-ruling administrations can accomplish. The first king-list is officially registered around the same time.
Then, a short dark age follows, say 2080-2020 BC.
A Sumerian rebirth follows, the Ur III period in Sumer, the third dynasty of Ur, lasts from 2047 to 1750 BC. Then, Babylonians invade. Elamites attack. Amorites migrate into the region. Sumerian civilization ends.
0013 Farrell is interested in what the Genesis tales reveal.
Genesis offers a clue concerning the leader of the populations of Shinar. Nimrod is a mighty hunter before the Lord. Everyone else is completely intimidated. Nimrod hunts and conquers wild beasts. What about human hearts? Nirond overflows with charisma.
So, of course, Nimrod’s lackeys… er… “administrators” want to advertise his name (as better than the Pharaoh’s). What better billboard than a tower reaching to the heavens? Certainly, the Tower of Bab-ilim would secure their leader’s fame as well as ensure their own narrow objectives, such as maintaining their positional power as gatekeepers of the world most sacred site. Sacred? Yes, the word, “Bab-ilim”, in Sumerian, means “gate of the gods”.
0014 So what does God do?
God comes down and confounds their speech… oh, I mean to say… their common language.
Once the language is confounded. Work grinds to a halt. The project is abandoned. The blame game begins.
0015 Here, Farrell follows his discriminating nose to the concept that smells the most suspicious.
What is this “common language” business?
Mother tongues are associated with peoples. Peoples have similar genetics, by way of descent. So, does the confounding go all the way to the genes? And, what is in our genes that can be confounded? Is it DNA. Or is it what the DNA expects to encounter once its curiously complex code is rendered into a genotype that potentiates a phenotype?
0016 This reader imagines that the Tower of Babel story fits into the terminal events of Ur III, or perhaps with the preceding brief (but, I am sure, distressing) “dark age”. I imagine that Nimrod is an outsider, living off charisma, speaking a language that is different than Sumerian. Suggestions? Akkadian will do.
So, Nimrod rules over the plain of Shinar where two languages are spoken. One associates with his new regime. One associates with the old regime. There are two peoples. At the same time, there are two elites who want to take advantage of the union of the peoples.
So, a map needs to be constructed. The topology of this map connects spoken terms between the languages. With such a map, the people, in theory, speak a common language.
If they speak a common language, then there is nothing that they cannot do.
0017 Here is a picture of Farrell’s second procrustean bed, concerning the tower’s construction.
Note that a two-level interscope corresponds to sensible thought.
0017 Here is a picture of Farrell’s next procrustean bed, concerning the tower’s deconstruction.
Note that God’s intervention brings the perspective level into play. Once in play, social construction begins.
0018 What do I know so far from the Genesis 11 story?
0019 In terms of technical cohesion3b, kiln-fired bricks2b are expensive and methodologically demanding1b. They must be uniformly burnt “thoroughly”1b. So, there can be no diversity in the meeting of specifications. When the architectorders bricks for a monumental tower and asks that the bricks be burnt “thoroughly”, the manufacturer must deliver the appropriate product. So, the situation-level nested form addresses the organization or incorporation of the project.
In particular, the potential of “overcoming diversity” means that all the bricks are burnt thoroughly.
0020 Farrell further informs me that the Sumerian word, “Bab-ilim”, “gate of the gods”, is readily confounded with the Hebrew word, “Babel”, “confusion”.
May I wonder whether the technical term for “thorough” has a counterpoint in punnery?
0021 Farrell continues. Old Testament pseudepigraphical referrals to the Tower of Babel story are found in several books of the Sybilline Oracles (date estimated to be 150-200 A.D.).
In Book 3, a brief allusion tells of Nimrod-philic administrators wanting to go up to the starry heavens. This precisely contradicts the administrator’s propaganda that visualizes the tower as a passage from the firmament to earth. Celestial beings are invited to come down for refreshment. Mortal beings (except, of course, the administrators themselves) are not invited to go up and do something impetuous, like carve their initials into the metallic surface of the firmament.
In Book 11, the text mentions a universal ruler who furnishes another race of restless men. Does that terminology sound like “immigrant laborers”? I suppose the line between immigrant and “restless” is fuzzy, at best. These are the ones1bwho make the bricks to construct a tower of awful height, in opposition to heaven.
0022 Farrell suggests that these brief snippets add to the picture in Genesis 11 in intriguing ways.
First, the idea of going to the starry heavens intimates a desire for cosmic power (that is, the power of celestial beings). Can that desire be reduced to a quest for immortality (for example, as portrayed in the epic of Gilgamesh)? Is mortality tied to the confounding of the languages that accompany the deconstruction of the Tower?
Second, one aspect of the confusion of languages is phonetic drift.
Third, maybe, the immigrant-slave laborers are not regarded as human.
0023 Farrell next considers Slavonic and Greek translations of 3 Baruch.
In the former, the Slavonic writer sees features of the story in a vision. At the start, angels carry the visionary through an immense portal (time and space?) to a plain populated by chimeric men, with faces of cattle, horns of deer, feet of goats and loins of rams. When questioned, the angels say that these are the ones who built the tower of war against God. The Lord threw them out.
Later, the angels say that these chimerians force men and women to make bricks. One woman gives birth while engaged in such tasks and is not allowed to stop.
In a more technical vein, the visionary finds out that the chimerians devise an augur. What is the plan? When they get high enough to contact the firmament, they will use the augur to drill a hole in its surface, in order to ascertain its composition.
0024 Farrell asks the reader to consider genetic technologies to account for the chimeric humans. Plus, dows not the thickness of the gates of heaven indicate distances of transit from Earth to Sun or from Earth to Saturn? Such questions raise the specter of interplanetary powers. Is the goal of the Tower to manipulate celestial mechanics?
Too bad the chimerians are not around to ask.
0025 Farrell next turns to the Book of Jubilees, where the Lord our God says that, if the tower is completed, nothing will escape the Nimrod-affiliated administrative state (or, I should note, God says ‘something like that’). This explains why the Tower is called “an act of war against God”.
Most likely, the administrators claim (for the public to hear) that the Tower will serve the convenience of the celestial being. Come on down and have refreshment! But, the administrators (in private) have far more nefarious plans.
Thank God, no one knows about them.
0026 The citizens of the Shinar plain agree that whatever the administrators say must be correct. The great tower should ease the descent of a celestial being. Even the immigrant-slave laborer, who still knows what “thorough” means, is on board. Even that woman giving birth knows that her “people” can do anything that they set out to do. After all, they have a common language.
It’s like mind over matter.
In this regard, Farrell mentions the research of a material-science professor, at the University of California (back in the day), who demonstrates that humans, through agreement and projected intention, can generate “psychometric objects”.
Are these things that are altered by conditions? Or things that alter conditions? Or maybe both?
“Psychometric” is an evocative (yet ambiguous) adjective… and occasionally… noun.
0027 To me, “psychometric” describes the difference between an actuality alone and an actuality2 with a normal context3and potential1. An actuality by itself is a mind-independent being composed of matter and form. An actuality2 that is bounded by a normal context3 and potential1 permits understanding or whatever one wants to call the entire nested form as a mind-dependent being.
Farrell notes that psychometric objects naturally belong to rituals. In Christian tradition, bread and wine (matter and form) transubstantiates to the Body and Blood of Christ (being and form, as actuality2 in a nested form). The appearance or essence of the substantiated form remains the same. The presence or esse_ce of the substantiating being changes from matter to being.Matter is material. Being is relational. Being entangles matter in its relationality.
The Eucharist is an exemplar for psychometric objects.
Being (relationality) entangles matter (physicality).
A category-base nested form entangles an actuality itself.
0028 Speaking of psychometric objects, Farrell next turns to Pseudo-Philo’s version of the Tower of Babel story, where “thorough” takes on an alchemical flavor. Each person says to his neighbor, “Let us write our names on the bricks and then thoroughly burn them in fire.”
To me, the immigrant-slave laborers are only imitating their Nimrod-loving administrative masters. The word, “thoroughly”, passes from a technical quantification to an alchemic qualification. To burn a brick is to heat it long enough to fix the written name, rather than to drive all the water out, leaving spaces for molten bitumen to seep into before solidifying and stabilizing the brick.
The thoroughly burnt brick absorbs molten bitumen. When the bitumen solidifies, it fortifies the brick.
The alchemically psychometric burned brick appears to absorb molten bitumen, but maybe not as much. Plus, it costs a lot less.
Does that sound like a recipefor disaster?
0029 Pseudo-Philo re-iterates the idea that, if these Nimrod-serving bureaucrats and their immigrant-slaves act as one people, due to the conviction that they speak “one language”, then they will be daring in all that they propose to do, including building a tower that will rival the Egyptian pyramids.
But, Pseudo-Philo does not seem to notice that the method of brick manufacture has already changed, from construction material to alchemical psychometric thing, making it more and more difficult to ascertain which bricks are suitable for monumental construction and which are not.
How can the translator stone permit the discrimination of technically thoroughly burnt bricks from alchemical psychometric bricks when the translator stone is the mechanism supporting the ideology that the people of the old regime and the people in the new regime now speak one language and that makes them one people?
0030 The two-level interscope changes slightly, but tellingly.
