0050 What does the following statement imply?

Impressions of communal spaces must be received by a blank-slate capable of receiving impressions as integral to a map of narodal cognition.

How does a denkfurher go about teaching a student to serve as a blank slate?

0051 The scholastic interscope for how people think may assist in imagining the process.

For a derivation, see Looking At John Deely’s Book (2010) “Semiotic Animal”, in Razie Mah’s blog for October 2023.

0052 On the content level, the normal context of what is happening_3a brings the actuality of an impression_2a (or sensation_2a) into relation with the potential of ‘something happening’_1a.

On the situation level, the normal context of what it means to me_3b brings the actuality of a perception_2b into relation with the potential of ‘situating content’_1b.

On the perspective level, the normal context of does this make sense_3c brings the actuality of a judgment_2c into relation with the potential of ‘contextualizing the situation’_1c.

0053 Obviously, the ethnographer enters a narod (a community) with the aim of mapping its cognitive space, then publishing that map in a monograph.

0054 So, I suppose that the initial interaction between ethnographer (who does not belong to the community) and the narod consists of sensations_2a and impressions_2a.

But, what is an impression_2a?

The scholastics propose a dyadic actuality that corresponds to what the ethnographer encounters.

An impression_2a consists of the dyad, {active body [substantiates] sensate soul}_2a.

0055 Here is a comparison of impression_2a to ethnography₂.

How do these two relate to one another?

One can almost assign philosophers to each real element.  Merleau Ponty goes with “active body”_2a.  Carl Jung goes with “sensate soul”_2a.  The external and internal senses, including the automatic decoding of words, goes with active body.  Feelings and qualia associate to sensate soul.

0056 In this comparison, the presence of the ethnographer, participating in the activities of a narod, is like an active body.  This active body substantiates a sensate soul, which, through training as an anthropologist, is capable of receiving the matter of the active body_2a and the form of an impression_2a.

0057 How does this contribute to the ethnographer’s construction of the narod’s cognitive space?

Well, look at the corresponding normal context_3a and potential_1a.  The cognitive space opens into the question, “What is happening”_3a, operating on the possibility of ‘something’ happening_1a.

0058 The same story line applies in a comparison of perception_2b to ethnography₂.

The ethnographer’s participation allows reception of {the narod’s perceptive souls [informing] their reactive bodies}_2b.  The ethnographer will record the people’s phantasms and emotions.

0059 The ethnographer, ironically, cannot sit in judgment_2c of the community, because the ethnographer does not enjoy or suffer the narod’s commitments.  Yet, an implicit Hippocratic Oath characterizes the commitment of the ethnographer.  First, do no harm.  This responsibility… this oath… is what makes an ethnographer a true professional.  The ethnographer professes that the recorded cognitive maps will not be used for nefarious purposes.

0060 The scholastic map of how humans think allows me to ideate the following comparison, where the narod (the community under investigation) consists of a summation of the content and situation levels, in such a fashion that each person in the community matters and contributes to the forms of the narodal cognitive space.

0061 In sum, the actuality of the narod_2a is situated by ethnography_2b, as shown in the figure below.

The content-level question is, “What is happening?”

The situation-level question is, “What does this mean to me?”

0062 A researcher may try to be a tabula rasa, but cannot be, because he (or she) has already been raised in a civilization where ethnography is a profession.  Every community senses this, and regards the ethnographer as an emissary from a particular (and different) civilizational sphere.  To me, this is a remarkable feature of the ethnographic enterprise.  Plus, it is one of the phenomena of the noumenon of humans in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. 

0108 In section five, the author moves towards an integrated conceptual framework of evolutionary biology and anthropology.

So far, this examination conjures a vision of two applications of that framework.

0109 One reflects the Lebenswelt that we evolved in and niche construction.

Here is a picture of the domestication of cows_2b as an adaptation.  Human sociality_2a constitutes the actuality independent of the adapting species_2a.

Here is a diagram of the entanglement of humans_2b as an adaptation.  Niche construction_1b produces increasingly domesticated cows_2a that yield more milk for the herding ethnos.  Adult lactose-tolerance is one of the adaptations_2b.

0110 Two goes with our current Lebenswelt and seems to manifest as a standard adaptation.

The academic community_3b compares to natural selection_3b.

0111 But, in regards to the domestication and entanglement example, are the academics like cows or like humans?

Perhaps that is not a fair question.  But, an anthropologist may admit that the kenosis that the ethnographer learnsmight be comparable to an adult regaining the childhood ability to drink milk.

0112 If that is the case, then the dyad, {ethnographer [records] cognitive map}_2b, touches base with adaptation_2b.

The possibility of ‘subject cognitive spaces’_1b reflects niche_1b.

The dyad, {persons as matter [substantiate] narod as form}_2a, mirrors the actuality independent of the adapting species_2a.

0113 But, the subject community is not merely the community that is the subject of anthropological inquiry.  It is a community that assumes that these novel humans offer the potential of ‘what’?… ‘protection and nurture’?.. or at least… ‘something other than predation’.  Maybe, the labels of ‘safety’ and ‘mutuality’ will do.

With that assumption, the subject community adapts by losing fear of the civilized humans that send an ethnographer to participate in their world.

0114 Here is a picture.

0115 Of course, nothing like the above argument appears in section five.

Instead, the author says that anthropologists (“we”) need to develop a framework of feedback loops that include behavioral, cognitive, material and ecological components, that addresses key issues of human evolution from at least the mid-Pleistocene (maybe 2Myr) to the present.

Surely, evolution-informed anthropologists should be interested in showing how kinship systems, economic, religious and political affiliations, and institutions construct and influence social and perceptual processes through… um… interpellation.

Niche construction is key because humans… and their hominin ancestors… somehow… alter the actuality independent of the adapting species… through social and perceptual processes.

Yes, it may be messy, but an integrated anthropology will be worth the effort.

0116 The last claim that the author wants to make is that ethnographers are like humans and their subject narods are like cows.

0117 Of course, humans are not like cows.  Nor are humans like who we think they are.  They are… um… the products of complicated evolutionary feedback loops.

0118 In section six, the author lists more than a dozen publications on the subject, setting the stage to propose his own heuristic framework.

0119 Fortunately, the author has the excuse of not being familiar with Razie Mah’s masterwork, The Human Niche,available at smashwords (and other e-book venues) in 2018.

Unfortunately, he already tried to reverse engineer Bourdieu’s concepts of “habitus” and “structure” into a framework reductive enough to fit the basic requirements of current evolutionary theorists.  Current evolutionary theorists?  These are the highly-credentialed academics who have yet to figure out that adaptation_2H is not the same as phenotype_2V even though both labels apply to the same entity₂.

0120 I mean, really, current evolutionary theorists make fun of the proponents of intelligent design while sitting on an intersection as mysterious as the improbability of life itself.  If a species_2b‘ niche_1b and its_2b genome_1b are made possible by an actuality independent of the adapting species_2a and DNA_2a, respectively, in the normal contexts of natural selection_3b and body development_3b, respectively, then exactly what rules out a Creator God from operating within the realms_2a underlying the situation-level possibilities_1b or within the situation-level possibilities_1b themselves?

It is something to gag over.

0121 Meanwhile, this examination has already fumbled upon domestication-entanglement co-evolution as a possible manifestation of what the author is talking about.

The author proposes three components, or “nodes”, that influence one another: individual, group and community.  With the manifestation at hand, “individual” labels both the ethnographer and the person as matter.  The “group” corresponds to the narod.  The “community” goes with civilization and the academies within it.

0122 Then, the author proposes that these mutual influences engage in feedback.  

Then, the author illustrates the feedback using the example of sexual partnering.

The author chooses the term, “sexual partnering”, because the terms “mating” or “sexual activity related to reproduction”, are too blatant and annoying.

Nevertheless, even with the bland label, the example should pique the curiosity of any undergraduate.

“Sexual partnering”, indeed.

0123 This examiner will stay the course with the current paradigm of domestication and entanglement, modified by ambiguity, because the role of the cow and the role of the human now play out as mirrors of one another.

Even though this paradigm is not as… sexy… as the author’s example.  It has the benefit of shedding light on the nature of the first singularity, where hand-speech practicing ethnos become speech-alone talking narods, thereby making the passage from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.

0154 Section nine offers some parting thoughts.

The author proposes an integrated anthropology.

Integrated with what?

An extended evolutionary synthesis.

0155 Recall that the full title of the article is “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, Ethnography, and the Human Niche: Toward an Integrated Anthropology”.

The proposition of an integrated anthropology and the title associate to a category-based nested form.

0156 The problem?

Anthropology₂ does not constellate under the normal context of the human niche₃ and within the potential of ‘the niche-construction version of an extended evolutionary synthesis’₁.

Instead, ethnography₂ is anthropology’s adaptation to the normal context of community₃ operating on the potential of ‘communal cognitive spaces’₁.

0157 This makes sense, in terms of Aristotle’s causalities, which are cleverly re-imported from philosophy into scientific inquiry by the academic discipline of Anthropology.

0158 Yes, humans evolve.  So, it seems that contemporary anthropology₂ should be contextualized by a need for integration₃ with the potential of ‘evolutionary science’₁.

0159 This expectation brings in a second problem, corresponding to the Greimas square of Dugin’s typology in Comments on Alexander Dugin’s Book (2012) The Fourth Political Theory (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

0160 This examination of Augustin Fuentes’s article adds value by elaborating the elements within this Greimas square.

0161 The people (A) are here represented by the ethnographer, operating within an institution (of “the people”), that manifests its organizational objectives in terms of contemporary political theories (including notions (B) on how the discipline of anthropology should train ethnographers capable of receiving (and mapping) the cognitive spaces within a narod (C)).

0162 In other words, the ethnographer as anthropologist (A) contrasts with the various theoretical apparatuses (B) that sustain the academic discipline.

Plus, these various theoretical social constructions (B) are what makes a people capable of practicing a level of social complexity that appears as wealth and power in the view of the limitations of any particular community or narod (C).

Finally, the narod (C) is a traditional society in our current Lebenswelt that cannot return to a corresponding ethnos (D) that would exist in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

0507 So, where was I?

Where have I traveled?

I have walked through the first of two interviews with a prominent member of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics at its first ascendant.  Because my approach capitalizes (some would say, “exploits”) Peirce’s formulations, my examination adds value to the discussion.  Diagrams of purely relational structures, such as the interscope, permits a visualization of semiotic changes and developments through time.

0508 The second interview, starting on page 425, discusses thirteen questions.  Predefined questions offer an awkward format for an interview.  Given the hyperventilation that occurs during the interview on August 25, 2011, the hope is for a more structured encounter at Uspenskij’s villa in Rome on May 27, 2012.

The interview concerns Uspenskij’s 2007 book, Ego Loquens: Language and the communicative space.

0509 The Latin term, “ego loquens“, roughly transliterates into “I speak”.

Of course, the end of Descartes’ famous slogan immediately comes to mind, “therefore I am.”

I speak, therefore I am.

0510 But, what am I?

Perhaps, I am language_2b (that another person can read like a literary text_2b) as well as a communicative space (like the way that I, as a literary text_2a, entangle a communal cognitive space called “language_2a“).

0511 How confounding.

A communal cognitive… er… communicative space_2a is the language_2am that is entangled by the literary text_2af, not as a thing itself_2b, but as a model_2c of structural_3b and semiological_3a signification_3c.

0512 I hope that this statement justifies the use of the title of Uspenskij’s book to label the fundament and derivative interscopes, as shown below.

0513 Look closely at the above figure.

Can the reader see a triadic relation where a semiological_3a structuralist_3b model_2c (SV_i) stands for a literary text as form_2af (SO_i) potentiated by meaning_1a, presence_1b and message_1c in the normal context of a defining intellect (SI_i)?

0514 At this point, I would like to introduce the interventional sign-relation, first brought to visualization in Comments on Sasha Newell’s Article (2018) “The Affectiveness of Symbols” and then used as a tool in Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010) “Semiotic Animal“. Both works are by Razie Mah.  The former may be purchased at smashwords and other e-book venues (while the time lasts!).  The latter appears as a series in Razie Mah’s blog during October, 2023).

0515 The interventional sign-relation?

How informative.

Please tell.

0516 In general, the interventional sign-vehicle (SV_i) is a perspective-level actuality_2c.

The interventional sign-object (SO_i) is the represented content-level actuality_2a.

The interventional sign-interpretant (SI_i) consists in the content-level normal context_3a and potential_1a.

0517 An interventional sign-vehicle (SV_i) stands for its sign-object (SO_i) in regards to an interventional sign-interpretant (SI_i).

0518 Here is a general diagram.

0519 This rendition of Peirce’s sign-relation in terms of Peirce’s category-based nested forms is founded on the notion that both the SV and the SO belong to secondness, the realm of actuality, leaving the SI to include both thirdness and firstness.  Since nested forms occupy levels in an interscope, the SO occupies the actuality on the adjacent higher level than the SV.  The SI occupies the same level as the SO.

0520 This rendition implies that there are three signs contained within any three-level interscope.

Each sign connects the levels of two adjacent categories, except for the interventional sign, which goes from thirdness to firstness.  One dare not call that “prescission”.

0521 Unless, one imagines, not precission among levels, but among interscopes.

The interventional sign-relation constellates precission between two interscopes.

In this case, the “tiers” belong to firstness and secondness.

How informative.

0522 Tiers of interscopes is not new.

Precission among tiers of interscopes can be found in Razie Mah’s chapter on presence in How To Define The Word “Religion”.  Ten primers belong to the corresponding course, for those interested in a step-by-step exposition.

Precission among tiers is also intimated in the very structure of the article under examination.  The first interview, part one, deals with the possibility of exact methods_3c virtually bringing structuralism_3b into relation with the potential of semiology_2a.  The second interview, part two, deals with Uspenskij’s literary text_2af, Ego loquens, and considers the possibility of meaning_1a, presence_1b and message_1c.

0575 Page 437 introduces a question (#7) concerning translation.

Why is adequate translation between languages impossible?

There are two specifying sign-relations in the TMS regime.

0576 In the first specifying sign-relation, in the fundament interscope, the literary text_2bf is substantiated by the language_2bm (SO_s) that virtually situates spoken words_2a (SV_s) as langue_2am and parole_2af of a particular mother tongue.  Translating a literary text into another mother tongue risks misreading the content character of a literary text_2af, especially when the text is rich with word-play.

0577 Here is the specifying sign-relation for the loquens interscope, in general.

Parole_2af (SV_s) stands for language_2bm (SO_s) in regards to a structuralist paradigm_3b((1b)) (SI_s).

0578 If the word-play is not translated, the text does not make sense.

In other words, an alien reader may not be able generate an adequate semiological_3a structuralist_3b model_2c of the original text.

The text_2bf is not funny anymore.

0579 In the second specifying sign-relation, in the derivative interscope, social interaction_2bf is substantiated by a cognition_2bm (SO_s) that virtually situates the language of meaning_2am (SV_s) that has been entangled by the literary text_2af.  Can this operation be translated into the various languages of a positivist intellect?  What if the positivist language is too different?  Then, will it be virtually situated by a style of cultural inquiry_3b that makes no sense at all, such as computer operations_3b.

0580 Say what?

Here is the specifying sign-relation for the ego interscope, in general.

A positivist language_2am (SV_s) stands for cognition_2bm (SO_s) in regards to a cultural-studies paradigm_3b((1b)) (SI_s).

0581 What if the literary text_2af is a series of apparently irregular scratches_2af that the academic thinks are inscribed near the center of only one side of each of the before mentioned pieces of fossilized wood?

What could these scratches_2af mean_1b in terms of the language of anthropology_2am?

0582 Of course, after the excavation, the researchers take the artifacts to Professor Rabenmann, who still has an office at the old Institute of Archaeology. 

What will the old man have to say?

0583 They explain the find and give him the two flat pieces of fossilized wood.  The Professor notes cord markings are on the opposing side of the scratches and much closer to the end of the flat pieces, than the marks.

Are the marks intentional?

What do these artifacts translate into?

0584 Hmmm.  The professor is not sure.  He opens the drawer to his desk and takes out a ball of string.  He measures out a meter, then cuts the string with a scissors.  Then, with a degree of deliberation, he places the stones face to face and starts to wind the string around the two pieces, retracing the one sided cord markings.

0585 Professor, what are you doing?

Give me a moment. I want to see.

You are not going to break them, are you?

Oh no, no breakage, these are hard as stone.  Now, look I have tied them together.

Now what?

0586 Then, the professor takes a walnut that is on his desk, places it between the two pieces, right where the scratches are, and presses the stone slabs together.

0587 The novices almost pass out.

“There you go.  It is a nutcracker.”, the professor says, while picking the meat of the nut away from the shell.

0588 Yes, the word “translation” now applies to two literary texts.  The loquens_2bf text (the one everyone talks about) is substantiated by the language of the mother tongue_2bm.  The ego_2af text (the one that Uspenskij talks about) entangles the language_2am of the TMS positivist intellect_3a.

0589 Later, the students use interferometry to make three-dimensional images of each fossilized piece in order to demonstrate that, if the two cord-impressed ends are bound by a simulated structure, then enough force could be simultaneously applied to the opposing termini as to compromise the mechanical integrity of a Persian walnut.

Now, that is what I call, “translation”!

0590 I recall that at the very opening of the second interview, Part II, Uspenskij notes that the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics is primarily interested in culture.  It does not regard inanimate and animate processes as significant.

0591 With that recollection in mind, consider a literary_2af… er computerized input_2af that entangles a coding language_2am.

Here is a picture.

0592 Does a cybernetic intellect_3a turn computer input_2af into machine code_2am according to the potential that ‘each word of the input translates into a sequence of machine codes’_1a?

0593 Does the answer imply that entanglement is translation, broadly speaking?

Entanglement is translation.

Does this apply especially to the content-level actuality_2a of the “ego” interscope, in so far as it embodies the sign-object of an interventional sign-relation (SO_i) and the sign-vehicle of a specifying sign-relation (SV_s)?

0097 The earliest stone tools show us that, once a team becomes both successful and long-lived, the disjuncture between the two selection pressures remains.  Once a new team habit settles in, individuals adapt to the habit over generations, rather than the habit adapting to the individuals.

One clue to the validity of this conclusion is found in the stability of stone tools.  

Here is a timeline.

0098 Oldowan stone tools are made the same way for almost a million years.  To me, this suggests that the perspective level of the following interscope does not change, because the team activity persists over generations.  Improvements in the Oldowan team activity are not as crucial as discovering another lucrative team activity.  The Oldowan team is one.  We do not know how many others there are.

0099 But, what about the individuals that participate in the Oldowan team activity?  Are they subject to natural selection for abilities to assess which stones to choose for rapid construction and whether a carcass is worth scavenging?

Yes, the content and situation levels of the above interscope show features where natural selection can operate.  Obviously, there are many specialized cognitive abilities that can be rewarded, through natural selection, over many generations.  Indeed, while the Oldowan stone-tool “kit” remains stable, a new species of human evolves, complete with substantially larger brains.

0100 After Homo erectus appears in the fossil record in Africa, a few more hundred thousand years pass before the team changes.  Mithen describes Oldowan and Acheulean stone tools in detail, but does not elaborate on how they were used.

0101 Oldowan stone tools are utilitarian and made on the spot.  Opportunistic scavenging seems to be the likely definition of success_2c.

Acheulean stone tools are more sophisticated and are made ahead of time.  Perhaps, this implies new ways to extract food.  Homo erectus hunt some sort of creature that can be taken down with what appears to be a fairly large stone tooth.  This is not the only possibility, but it is the one that appears in the following figure.

0102 Perhaps, the Acheulean stone-tool kit is used by more than one team.

It is difficult to know, without time travel.

If we moderns could time travel, I suspect that we would be amazed at the variety of extractive technologies that Homo erectus masters prior to the domestication of fire.  Homo erectus migrates out of Africa and into Eurasia around a million years ago.  Then, along with the domestication of fire, more refined Acheulean stone tools appear.  New stone tools imply that new teams are constellating, this time with hunting definitely in mind.

0103 Here is the ongoing timeline of hominin evolution.

0154 What a banner!

0155 The evolutionary anthropologist, Steven Mithen, publishes a book in 2024 with the full title, The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together The Six-Million Year Story Of How Words Evolve (BasicBooks: New York).  The book purports to describe the evolution of “language”.  But, what is “language”?  Is language the sole province of speech?  Of course not, deaf communities practice so-called “sign-language”.  I call this practice, “fully linguistic hand-talk”.

0156 Despite the reality that language can be performed in two modalities, manual-brachial gesture and voice, Mithen rules out the gestural origins of language.  Consequently, he faces the challenge of portraying the vocal origins of language.

0157 The problem?

Consider the following comparison.

0158 Two features are integral to language.

The first is displacement.  “Displacement” means that “the referent of the word does not have to be present”.

The second is symbolic operations. Symbols are sign-relations whose sign-objects are based on habit, convention, law and so forth.  Within any symbolic order, a symbol must be sufficiently different from any other symbol as to be readily recognized.  A finite set of symbols constitutes a symbolic order.  Symbolic operations constellate within a symbolic order.  One name for such symbolic operations is “grammar”.

0159 Archaeological evidence for bipedalism predates 3.5 Myr (million of years ago).  At this time, vocalizations are not only involuntary, but they tell everyone that a referent is present. It is the opposite of displacement.  Vocalizations denote placements.

Of course, that means that involuntary calls may be labeled indexes, in so far as the call indicates a presence.  That means that involuntary calls are indexes.

But, an involuntary call cannot be called a linguistic sign-relation whose sign object is determined by pointing, contiguity, cause and effect and so forth.  And, that is an index, too.

0161 Okay, that may be confusing.

Vocal calls are indexes in the same way that an emergency alarm is an index.  The alarm cannot tell me much more than “an emergency is happening”.  That is not displacement.

Manual-brachial gestures can point to something, even when that something is not present (like the location of the sunrise).  Manual-brachial word gestures allow displacement.

0162 In regards to symbolic operations, consider taking the metaphor, a word is like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle,literally.  Then, say, 1.7 million years before present time, while I am digging tubers with my team, not far from the forest’s edge, a vulture lands in a nearby tree and one of us notices that… uh oh… there is a jaguar in that tree.  The vulture sees the jaguar.  The jaguar eyes the little hominins.  We know why the vulture decides to land.  The vulture wants to see what happens.

Everyone gathers what tubers they have into leaf-baskets.  The elder of the team signs the following gestures to me and I reply.

0163 Elder signs [point-YOU][image-RUN][point-RIGHT][image-THROW].

Then in reply, I say, [point-ME][raise ROCK].

0164 Each iconic and indexal gesture-word has already been honed through usage to be sufficiently different from any other word-gesture (in our team-oriented lexicon) as to be instantly recognized.  So, the imagery and the indications snap together into one Gestalt, shared by both elder and myself.

Of course, Mithen discusses displacement and grammar, but not in this manner.  He proposes that displacement for the vocal channel involves synaesthesia, that is, cross-modal sensing.  But, how would this apply to the problems faced by teams, while extracting food under dangerous conditions (which Michael Tomasello labels “collaborative obligatory foraging”)?

0165 So, what is the key point?

Mithen claims to be solving a six-million year old process. But, his metaphor of the jigsaw puzzle, when taken literally, takes us through the period that stretches from the start of bipedalism to the domestication of fire.  This corresponds to Michael Tomasello’s “period two”.

Indeed, Mithen is not aware that his choice of metaphors undermines his claim against the gestural origin of language.

0166 Is that sort of funny?

In what way?

Technically, before the domestication of fire, hand-talk is protolinguistic.  Each team has its own protolanguage.  Plus, this protolanguage is not fully linguistic because it does not permit grammatically correct counter-intuitive statements, such as:

[imageTREE][point to EYES][roll EYEs back and forth]

0167 Oh, yes.  Our kind evolves in a surveillance society.  And we are on the menu.

The trees have eyes and are watching.