06/6/21

Looking at Kirk Kanzelberger’s Essay (2020) “Reality and the Meaning of Evil” (Part 18 of 18)

0069 Kirk Kanzelberger joins Thomas Aquinas with a basic acknowledgment: Evil is a privation of a good.

He then considers natural and moral evil.

In moral evil, he locates a semiotic disorder, in addition to a privation.

He considers the nature of the sign, as formulated by Charles Peirce.

0070 He publishes his argument in a journal worthy of the reader’s support.

Reality: A Journal for Philosophical Discourse

0071 My comments are not so different. They thread through both Peirce and Poinsot. They pass through the two loops brought to light by John Deely.

Yet, the are different, in that they offer diagrams based on Peirce’s categories.

0072 Typically, Razie Mah’s comments are published in the smashwords website and carried by a variety of e-book vendors.

Start with A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form.

Add A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.

That is all that is needed to introduce oneself to the interscope of social construction.

0073 The three-level interscope appears in the chapter on meaning in the masterwork, How To Define the Word “Religion”.

The three-level interscope plays a role in A Primer on the Individual In Community.

The three-level interscope serves as a model of langue, in Comments on Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky’s Book (2016) Why Only Us: Language and Evolution.

0074 All these works are available at the smashwords website.

So concludes this look at Kanzelberger’s foray into both Aquinas and Peirce, concerning reality and the nature of privation.

Look to Reality.

God bless.

05/19/21

Looking at Chris Sinha’s Essay (2018) “Praxis, Symbol and Language” (Part 1 of 5)

0001 Chris Sinha, writing from Hunan University, publishes another article on human evolution. The journal is Interaction Studies (volume 19(2), 2018, pages 239-255). The complete title is “Praxis, Symbol and Language: Developmental, Ecological and Linguistic Issues”.

The title of Razie Mah’s commentary is Comments on Chris Sinha’s Essay (2018) “Praxis, Symbol and Language”. The commentary is found at the smashwords website under the series: Buttressing the Human Niche. Other vendors also sell the e-commentary.

0002 This blog complements the commentary.

0003 Sinha’s article covers from the start of the Homo genus, around two million years ago, to the speciation of Homo sapiens, around two-hundred thousand years ago. That is a lot of territory.

Several issues intertwine. One is individual development (devo). Another is a transition in natural selection (evo) from ecology-driven adaptations (eco) to adaptations driven by social interactions (socio).

0004 Sinha loves terminology. He searches for a EcoEvoDevoSocio framework.

05/18/21

Looking at Chris Sinha’s Essay (2018) “Praxis, Symbol and Language” (Part 2 of 5)

0005 What about Sinha’s EcoEvoDevoSocio framework?

0006 The outer terms, “eco” and “socio”, signify a broad arc of human evolution.

Adaptation by a line of apes starts with ecological adaptations. For example, bipedalism is evolutionarily ancient.

However, the fact that bipedalism frees the hands for communicative gestures creates new opportunities. A truly human niche appears. One hominin can intentionally gesture to another. The other hominin can interpret that gesture.

0007 The frontpiece of the title captures Sinha’s EcoSocio vision. The praxis (or habits) of intentional manual-brachial gestures for communication proceeds from signaling to functional representation.

Functional representation metaphorically runs around the symbol, defined as a sign-relation whose sign-object depends on conventions, habits, laws and so forth. The more that intentional manual-brachial gestures act as words, the more symbolic they become.

In this way, hominins become symbol-ready and capable of engaging in language.

05/17/21

Looking at Chris Sinha’s Essay (2018) “Praxis, Symbol and Language” (Part 3 of 5)

0008 Allow me to further elaborate Sinha’s EcoEvoDevoSocio framework.

In the prior blog, the Eco-Socio bookends touch base with the title frontpiece of praxis, symbol and language.

0009 This implies that the EvoDevo inner coupling expresses the title endpiece of developmental, ecological and linguistic issues.

0010 Evo associates to phylogeny. Phylogenesis consists of adaptations into a niche. The human niche changes from one where ecology is the primary source of signification to one where symbol-ready hominins are the primary sources of signification.

Devo associates to ontogeny. Ontogenesis consists of alterations in DNA, genes, genotypes and phenotypes that permit the drastic shift in the primary source of signification.

0011 Sinha cleverly encapsulates the inner drama of phylogenic and ontogenic changes over evolutionary time(EvoDevo) within the outward motion from an ecology-centered Umwelt to a socially-centered Lebenswelt (Eco-Socio).

05/14/21

Looking at Chris Sinha’s Essay (2018) “Praxis, Symbol and Language” (Part 4 of 5)

0012 Sinha’s EcoEvoDevoSocio framework associates to all the terms in the title of Chris Sinha’s Essay.

0013 Eco-Socio are bookends describing the long arc of time from the emergence of the Homo genus to the appearance of Homo sapiens. At the start, signification primarily comes from the ecology. At the end, significations primarily come from social interactions.

0014 EvoDevo are the twin tomes of phylogenesis and ontogenesis, bringing me to the truth-bearing fiction within Sinha’s narrative.

What is this fiction?

Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

0015 Biologists have debunked this slogan, as fact. But, it lives on as fiction.

Why?

It must be true, even though it is factually incorrect.

0016 How else can one draw a thread through these two terms: language and the human brain?

Language goes with phylogenesis. As discussed in the masterwork, The Human Niche, plus its attendant commentaries, the biological capacity for language evolves in the milieu of hand talk. Hand talk develops phylogenetically, from signaling, to functional representation, to symbolic communication, then to fully linguistic. The adaptation of language occurs within the evolution of hand talk.

The human brain goes with ontogenesis. The capacity to read ecological significations expands to reading intentional manual-brachial gestures. Intentional gestures retain their semiotic qualities as icons and indexes as they become more conventional, habitual, lawful and so on. They become more and more like symbols. The neural substrate in the hominin brain finds a way to process symbols.

0017 Ecological significations are icons and indexes.

Intentional manual-brachial gestures are perceived as icons and indexes, even though they increasingly operate as symbols.

0018 So, instead of the slogan, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, we can adopt the saying, “ontogeny intersects phylogeny”.

A traffic intersection belongs to both roads. So does the intersection of ontogeny and phylogeny.

05/13/21

Looking at Chris Sinha’s Essay (2018) “Praxis, Symbol and Language” (Part 5 of 5)

0019 Chris Sinha’s essay is a contribution to a huge, obviously well-funded, academic project, led by Prof. Michael A. Arbib, of the University of California at San Diego. An outline is presented in the same issue of Interaction Studies(19:1-2 (2018) 370-389). The title is “The Comparative Neuroprimatology 2018 (CNP-2018) Road Map for Research on How the Brain Got Language“.

0020 The project’s slogan is a little humorous.

It’s like How the Birds Got Flight.

Does anatomy tell the tale?

To me, comparing the neural structure of the great apes, including models of our hominin ancestors, tells the ontogenesis side of the story.

0021 What about the phylogenesis side of the story?

The story of how the brain got language cannot be restricted to DNA, genes, genotypes, phenotypes and body development. Phylogenesis cannot be ignored. In this regard, Chris Sinha’s essay is crucial.

The intersection of ontogeny and phylogeny re-capitulates the intersection between body development and natural history appearing in Speculations on Thomism and Evolution.

Chris Sinha adds weight to the natural history side, covering environment, ecology, niche, adaptation and natural selection.

0022 To this end, I suggest that the seventeen authors on this magnificent quest consider Razie Mah’s Comments on Chris Sinha’s Essay (2018) “Praxis, Symbol and Language”. The contribution may be unexpected. Nevertheless, it is properly attired.

04/9/21

Looking at Jeff Hardin’s Essay (2019) “Biology and Theological Anthropology” (Part 12 of 15)

0063 What about the disciplines of modern psychology and sociology?

Do they labor as word-smiths, hammering out the spoken words that will address the tsunami of concupiscence-related disorders that currently plague modern society, or do they construct spoken words that thwart an evangelical’s desire to hear a sermon on Original Sin?

After all, lectures on concupiscence are not justified in a Zeitgeist where concupiscence is labeled “natural”.

0064 Surely, secular experts justify various features of our current Zeitgeist… er… regime, just like they previously (and maybe still do) labored to account for various flavors of mercantilism, various strains of fascism, and various manifestations of communism.

These ideologies all build on foundations of spoken words, specialized disciplinary languages fashioned by academically certified agents.

0065 Spoken words can (somehow) create the artifacts that validate spoken words.

The best way to make that happen is with sovereign power.

Spoken words can generate the righteousness underlying an organizational objective that will allow me (and my fellow travelers) to demand sovereign action. Then, the state implements my organizational objective, thereby validating the righteousness that my spoken words advocated.

Try to get around that.

0066 An example?

May I call the current regime: “big government (il)liberalism”?

Some would call it, “the administrative state”.

Big government (il)liberalism is the latest sovereign solution to the nasty consequences of an enlightened disposition, declaring, “Concupiscence is okay, because it is natural.”

“Tolerance” is key.

Big government experts must be tolerant in order to better manage the citizen’s natural proclivities.

0067 So, the word, “liberal” has been perverted from a focus on freedom and responsibility to a fixation on nonjudgment.

The prefix, (il), celebrates this inversion, because managing citizens is the negation of serving them.

0068 Isn’t that what the word, “government”, ought to mean?

If the citizens are going to do what’s natural, then someone must clean up the mess. What does that mean? Someone must control the citizens, in order to ameliorate the mess that they would produce, if left to their own natures.

Er… not someone, something. Something big.

0069 In a world where government is omnipresent, the message comes across loud and clear.

Look at your television and listen to the talking heads.

We are here to justify your concupiscence.

We are here to manage the consequences.

Please comply with current directives.

01/20/21

Comments on Philip Marey’s Post (2021) “Insurrection” (Part 1)

0001 The Greimas square is introduced in Comments on Gregory Sandstrom’s Essay (2013) “Peace for Evolution”, available at smashwords. This purely relational structure is introduced as a way to visualize langue as a system of differences. This is not the only way to visualize the word-in-mind. But, it is useful in labeling a word as a node in a symbolic order.

0002 Here is a picture of the Greimas square.

0003 Philip Marey is a senior US strategist at Rabobank. He contributes to the website, Zerohedge. On Friday, January 8, 2021, at 18:25, Tyler Durden posts Marey’s short work, commenting on recent events. The title consists of one word: insurrection.

0004 “Insurrection_2a” should go into slot A1, as the focus of attention. However, the situating actuality_2b is causality_2b. Marey’s post considers the projection of causality into the term. What explains the presence of insurrection_2a?

0005 The first cause that Marey raises comes from academics, in particular, economists. The primary cause of insurrection is economic.

“Economic causes” go into slot A1.

0006 In contrast, Marey offers an alternate cause: identity. His researchers show that the US political system becomes increasingly polarized after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This demonstration is a red herring, because polarization is already present in the 1964 presidential contest between Barry Goldwater (populist, “insurrectionist”) and Lyndon Johnson (party insider, “statist”). The 1964 Civil Rights Act is a symptom, not a cause.

The cause is the expansion of the federal government, with its attendant religion, Big Government (il)Liberalism (BG(il)L).

0007 Perhaps, the relevant factor for the growth of identity politics in the US is to be found in the rapid expansion of state university systems in the 1950s and early 1960s. New positions and fields of inquiry germinate a novel brand of Marxism. Cultural Marxism exploits cultural distinctions, rather than economic.

0008 “Identity” goes into slot B1.

01/19/21

Comments on Philip Marey’s Post (2021) “Insurrection” (Part 2)

0009 The next slot, A2, speaks against identity issues. Since identities are not equal, then the term, “inequality”, fits. Yet, inequality is not the same as different identities, so the contradiction is real, yet confusing. What happens when all identities are equal?

0010 What contrasts with inequality?

Equality, of course.

0011 Here is the completed Marey square for the causes underlying insurrection.

0012 What characterizes the word, “insurrection_2a“, as situated by causality_2b by modern academics?

Economic causation (A1) is the economist’s focal point.

Identity issues (B1) contrast with economic causation (A1) and lingers slightly below consciousness.

Inequality (A2) stands in contradiction to identity (B1) and complements economic causation (A2). Indeed, many BG(il)L academics conclude that government policies should be designed to reduce economic inequality, in order to remove fuel for insurrection.

Equality (B2) contrasts with inequality (A2), speaks against economic causality (A1) and complements identity-as-cause (B1).

01/18/21

Comments on Philip Marey’s Post (2021) “Insurrection” (Part 3)

0013 Here is the complete Marey square, once again.

0014 Do I see a problem?

Modern economists advocate for federal policies to reduce income inequality (A2) as a way to keep the peace (A1). In other words, inequality (A2) feeds into economic causation (A1).

Does the same pattern apply to the contrasting elements (B1 and B2)?

Should modern economists also address the contribution of identity?

Or does that responsibility rest with a different suite of experts?

You know, the one’s who argue that “identity” is fully malleable, yet behave as if it is fixed.

0015 Does the proposed solution of reducing economic inequality (A2) create an unintended consequence of forcing equality (B2) onto identity (B1)?

Is there a word that describes forcing equality (B2) onto identity (B1)?

How about the term, “conformity”.

If, identity cannot be fashioned out of the creative expression of experts, then identity is not something that readily changes. Identity is not so easily altered.

0016 What happens to the proposed solution?

Reducing economic inequality entails conformity, which explains government and private-public sector behaviors subsequent to the incident in Washington DC on January 6, 2021, the so-called “insurrection”.

The US Congress passes legislation to crack down on “domestic terrorists”, that is, people who do not conform. They also impeach, for a second time, a figurehead that serves as the “other”, the one who does not conform. Onto this other, they project their own crimes.

Private-public sector companies purge their platforms of people who do not conform with their corporatist stance, where the federal government handles the problem of economic inequality. In doing so, they promote equality of identity for those remaining on their platforms. Those who remain are complicit in purging those who do not have identities worthy of equality. Of course, those who are unworthy of equality do not believe the experts.

0017 Marey’s square identifies two experts. One drives the broadcast conversation, attributing social unrest (insurrection) to economic causes, particularly inequality. The other drives a hidden conversation, where favored identities conform to the narrative. In the latter case, experts are cultivated in order to chastise those who do not conform and to justify exclusion from public-private platforms.

0018 In short, Marey’s brief article hones in on a serious entanglement, which cannot be discussed, binding a BG(il)L public narrative (A1) with a hidden agenda concerning identity (B1). Forced conformity (B1, B2) is as disturbing as economic inequality (A1, A2).

An Archaeology of the Fall

A Horror Story by Razie Mah

Category Archives: The Evolution of Talk