0199 McKnight introduces the social and historical conditions in which the stories of Adam and Eve were written.
0200 (Excavated) ancient Near Eastern literature sets the scene. This literature includes the Enuma Elish, the Gilgamesh epic, Atrahasis and a Sumerian origin account.
These stories depict the creation of humans by various gods, right around the time when real work was required. Real work indicates a job. The job can be tending the fields, maintaining irrigation, or attending the assembly. Work is a marker for our current Lebenswelt.
0201 These stories differ from the timeless cosmic circles of the North American Plains Indians and the time-fluid dreamtime of the Australian Aborigines. They also differ from ancient holistic traditions remembered in Proverbs 8:22-31. They differ from the visionary unfolding in Genesis 1. Mystic participation is a marker for the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
0202 Here is my version of McKnight’s first thesis.
The Genesis accounts present a God that both outside of historic time and inside of historic time.
0203 The God in the first chapter of Genesis corresponds to God in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
Indeed, humans appear in verses 1:26-30 with surprising precision. Verse 1:26 announces the intention of humans, the hand-talking hominins. Verse 1:27 goes with the first appearance of anatomically modern humans. Verse 1:28 touches base with the Paleolithic era, when humans displaced (oh, a little more than that) all other hominin species. Verse 1:29 reminds me of the beginnings of agriculture. Verse 1:30 captures the essence of the Developed Neolithic, which combined agriculture and stockbreeding: Give plants as food to the animals.
0204 The God in the second creation story corresponds to God in our current Lebenswelt.
Yes, God is the same in both eras. Humanity is the one that falls.
0205 Here is my version of McKnight’s second thesis.
Theomachy (battles among the gods) characterizes the (excavated) public origin myths, but not the Biblical origin myth.
0206 Why would this be the case?
0207 Public ancient origin myths account for a religious and political order established through conflict.
Genesis accounts for a family tradition.
0208 Here is my version of McKnight’s third thesis.
In the first Genesis story, the “temple” created by God is the entire visible world. In the (excavated) public origin myths, the temple is created for a god, to make visible the invisible world.
0209 These origin stories share a style common to the ancient Near East. Each origin story illuminates the mystery of what happened during the first singularity. The first creation story in Genesis goes so far that it envisions the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. Public origin myths (as well as the family stories of Adam and Eve) cannot discern times earlier than the first singularity.
0210 Here is my version of McKnight’s fourth thesis.
All humans are made in God’s image in Genesis 1. Humans were made to do the work of the gods in the (excavated) public origin myths.
0211 Again, the first creation story glimpses through the veil of the first singularity to the condition of humans in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. Humans are icons of the divine nature. Imagine how wonderful that must have been. Imagine a world talking in images and indications, just like our own hand-speech talk.
At the same time, the (excavated) public origin myths envision humans in our current Lebenswelt. There is a shimmer of insight into what came before. The original state is chaos. Chaos calls to mind the cultural changes that followed the adoption of speech-alone talk.
0212 Here is my version of McKnight’s fifth thesis.
Humans are not like the animals. Humans can be reduced to animals.
0213 The first statement follows Genesis.
The second statement comes from gods creating humans to do their work. Likewise, humans breed stock animals (like donkeys) to do their work.
0214 During the Uruk period, a standard bevel-rimmed bowl was invented in order to give rations. The elites treated the folk like stock animals. Work for food. This standard bowl is found in Uruk-level excavations.
0215 Here is my version of McKnight’s sixth thesis.
After the creation of Adam, God makes Eve from Adam’s rib. This denotes the way humans evolved to be.
0216 In the first Genesis origin story, humans were made to fill the earth and have dominion over it. This dominion was not royal imposition. It was a dominion in sync with the created world. Plants and animals talked to humans in images and indications. Humans talked to one another in linguistic pantomime and pointing.
In the second Genesis origin story, humans fill the earth and have dominion over it. This dominion is similar to royal imposition. Humans name the plants and the animals. God’s creation becomes subject to human sovereign control.
0217 Here is my version of McKnight’s seventh thesis.
When God places Adam and Eve in the garden. The garden represents the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. Adam and Eve tended the garden. But, the garden sprouted on God’s command.
When God curses Adam with the law of diminishing returns, His curse describes our current Lebenswelt.
0218 Here is my version of McKnight’s eighth thesis.
Adam names the animals. This naming depicts speech-alone talk.
In hand-speech talk, an animal would name itself. Some feature of the animal would go into its gestural-name. This is the nature of pantomime.
0219 Here is my version of McKnight’s ninth thesis.
Adam and Eve had the freedom to choose or defy God. They had the capacity to be arrogant. With the help of the serpent, they realized that they could be “like God”.
0220 This arrogance and grasping for power characterizes the battle between the original shamans and the priests and priestesses of the specialized religions of unconstrained complexity.
0221 The original shamans carried on the holistic traditions of the Lebenswelt that we evolved in. Their hand-speech traditions engaged God, through natural signs.
In contrast, labor and social specialties (empowered by semiotic qualities of speech-alone talk) projected gods into the gaps of their knowledge. They chose gods who were arrogant, power-grabbing and ready to displace the eternal gods of the shamans.
0222 Here is my version of McKnight’s tenth thesis.
The curses laid on Adam, Eve and the serpent depict our current Lebenswelt.
0223 But, worse than any of these curses, is the reality that humans no longer intuitively talk the truth.
When words are icons and indexes, they are true because they picture or point to something. The fidelity of the word is intuitively obvious.
When words are purely symbolic, their truth depends on the entire system of differences that supports them. This allows us to unwittingly and deceptively alter the meaning, presence and message of words.
0224 An example appeared earlier. The word “rational” once meant “reasonable” and “without passion”. Now, in 2025, “rational” means “anything but religious” (where “religion” means “Christian factions”).
0225 Here is my version of McKnight’s eleventh thesis.
The stories of Adam and Eve set the stage for the emergence of civilization in southern Mesopotamia.
In contrast, the ancient (excavated) public myths account for the political and religious orders of the time.
0226 Indeed, what follows the Book of Genesis is full of irony, since the nation of Israel does precisely what Eve did,believing its own projections into spoken words.
Saint Paul put the irony in a nutshell. Once someone else (particularly God) gives a command, our clever little minds start pulling and pushing at the spoken words, hoping to get something for nothing. We do so through our ability to name. We create labels. Then, we project our own meanings into the terms. In doing so, we create our own “reality”.
And the consequences?
Later generations will suffer these.
0227 Here is my version of McKnight’s twelfth thesis.
Adam and Eve are literary and archetypal. They bear the image-of-God.
They also point, via the genealogies, to events occurring thousands of years ago, not tens of thousands. The (excavated) literature of the ancient Near East does the same. The fact that this living and these dead traditions are co-extensive (containing different versions of the same story) indicates common descent (followed by modification).
0228 All these stories derive from a single – worldview transforming – event, set in motion 7800 years ago (and proceeding, even now, with the loss of hand-speech talk in the North American Plains Indians and the Australian Aborigines). This event is called “the first singularity” and marks the transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved into our current Lebenswelt.
0229 The historical Adam envisioned by Augustine is untenable. A historical and mythic Adam at the start of history is tenable.
0230 In two chapters, McKnight discusses how various Jewish writers and Saint Paul treated Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are real characters located in the mythic past. Adam and Eve are literary, archetypal and bear the image of God. They founded the Jewish people, as well as other peoples in the Near East.
0231 In chapter 5 of Romans, Paul comes eerily close to articulating the historical trajectory of the first singularity. McKnight covers the passage in detail. Razie Mah’s e-article, Comments on Original Sin and Original Death: Romans 5:12-19, examines a similar analysis by Tom Schreiner.
0232 What does this imply?
Saint Paul senses, but does not grasp, what could possibly have generated the Adam and Eve stories.
0233 At 5800 U0’ (or 0 A.D.), no one imagined that the stories of Adam and Eve associate to a fantastic traumatic event in recent human prehistory. No one imagined that those occasional funny hills deep in the deserts of the Near East could contain the ruins of the royal libraries of long-forgotten cities.
0234 At 6200 U0’, Augustine did not know that, either.
However, Augustine had the imagination to re-stage the stories as a play on the Manichean version of the descent of the soul. Original Sin later became Christian doctrine. God’s hand is in that designation.
0235 Then, the modern age of science arrived, digging up the hills of southwest Asia and fashioning classical Darwinism, then Neo-Darwinism. The first shows that the early chapters of Genesis exhibit the literary style and some of the same themes as ancient (excavated) Near East literature. The second shows that Adam and Eve could not be the biological ancestral parents of all humans.
0236 These two facts rule out the story of the Fall staged by Augustine.
0237 At the same time, the ruling raises the question: What is Original Sin?
0238 On one hand, modern theologians, such as Piet Schoonenberg, diligently worked in order to demonstrate that Original Sin corresponds to a combination of social conditions and personal sin.
In other words, Original Sin belongs to our current living world (Lebenswelt).
0239 On the other hand, someone had to wonder, “Why is our current Lebenswelt not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?”
0240 The genetic data shows that our current Lebenswelt is not due to a speciation event (as unwittingly predicted by Augustine).
0241 The data from excavations of ancient Near East sites shows that the public written origin stories point to a recent event occurring less than ten thousand years ago.
That event had to be cultural. It gave rise to our current Lebenswelt. It eclipsed and occluded the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
0242 The hypothesis of the first singularity is introduced in plain form in The First Singularity and its Fairy Tale Trace. The hypothesis is presented in dramatic form in the masterwork: An Archaeology of the Fall. These works, by Razie Mah, are available at smashwords and other e-book venues.
0246 Right at the start, a model… or some sort of picture… of how humans think should help.
For the uninitiated, A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction(by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues) should assist.
0247 Why do I say that?
The following figure presents the scholastic diagram of how humans think. The interscope is partially developed in Comments on John Deely’s Book (1994) New Beginnings and completely elaborated in Razie Mah’s blog for October 2023, Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010) “Semiotic Animal”.
0248 On the content level, the normal context of what is happening3a brings the actuality of sensation, impression and decoding2a into relation with the potential of ‘something happening’1a. The actuality2a is dyadic. That is not apparent here. Instead, I present a gradation, where sensation is close to consciousness,impression is liminal, and decoding is automatic and unconscious.
On the situation level, the normal context of what it means to me3b brings the actuality of perception and phantasm2binto relation with the possibility of ‘situating content’1b. Again, the actuality2b is dyadic. That is not apparent here. Instead, perception2a goes with consciousness and phantasm2b associates to unconsciousness… or should I say?… the bicameral mind.
On the perspective level, the normal context of does it make sense3c brings the actuality of judgment and commitment2cinto relation with the possibility of ‘contextualizing the situation’1c. Here, the actuality2c is a triadic relation. For judgment2c, the conditions for its actuality2c associate to consciousness. For commitment2c, the conditions for its actuality2c go with the bicameral mind.
0249 Does the above figure have anything to do with language?
In Comments on Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky’s Book (2016) Why Only Us?, Razie Mah suggests that the above interscope corresponds to langue.
0250 Langue?
Ferdinand de Saussure (1859-1913) revolutionizes the discipline of linguistics by defining “language” as two arbitrarily related systems of differences, parole (speech) and langue (mental speech processing).
Doesn’t that sound scientific?
0251 Yes and no.
Yes, the phenomena of parole are easily observed and measured because speech serves as the medium for communication.
No, the phenomena of langue cannot be directly observed and measured. Indeed, the phenomena of langue depend on what the scientist thinks that the noumenon of language must be.
0252 For example, the modern cognitive psychologist says that the thing itself (langue) consists of patterns of neuronal excitation and inhibition in the human brain.
Then, modern cognitive psychologists insist that all government research funds devoted to language processing pass through the articulated agenda.
0253 I offer this morsel of bureaucratic reality as an excuse for why Mithen cannot accept the gestural origins of language in hominin evolution. Research programs in cognitive and evolutionary psychology exclude gestural origins because it does not fit what they imagine langue must be. How can a subject conduct a conversation in hand talk while belted down in a functional MRI scanner?
0254 Indeed, today, the current metaphor of information transmission applies to speech-alone talk.
Here is a picture.
0255 The visualization of language as information transmission is so powerful that cognitive scientists simulate the origins of grammar as a spontaneous second-order effect of a sequence of transmissions. The langue aspect does not have much to do with it, except as a constraint.
This is discussed in chapter eight of Mithen’s The Language Puzzle. The chapter title is “Lessons from an Artificial Language”.
0256 Is there another way to look at this transmission metaphor?
If (the noumenon of) langue is depicted as the scholastic interscope for how people think, then grammar arises within parole as symbolic operations that assist in filling the blanks for each element in the interscope.
0257 For Saussure, parole is a system of differences. Each spoken word is distinctly different from any other spoken word (with a few exceptions). The difference is on the basis of habit, convention, law, tradition and so on. That makes each spoken word a symbol. In Peirce’s terminology, a symbol is a sign-relation whose sign-object is determined on the basis of habit, convention, law, tradition and so forth.
For Peirce, a symbolic order is a finite collection of symbols. Symbolic orders allow symbolic operations. For spoken words, those symbolic operations are called, “grammar”.
0258 Consequently, I may depict Saussure’s semiological paradigm and the metaphor of information transmission in terms of Peirce’s categorical framework.
Parole manifests as speech-alone talk. Speech-alone contains a finite number of symbols. Each symbol is (for the most part) distinct from any other symbol. A symbolic order is composed of a finite number of symbols.A symbolic order supports symbolic operations. For language, those symbolic operations go under the label, “grammar”.
0259 So, what are symbolic operations supposed to do?
They assist in attaching symbols (spoken words) to empty slots in a purely relational interscope.
0260 What about the word, “decode”?
Each symbol carries meaning, presence and message. The symbol is automatically decoded into these three potentials. Then, these potentials should appear in an empty slot or refine an occupied slot in the scholastic interscope for how humans think.
0261 At first, decoding operations fill in the slot2a on the content-level.
Then, the next slot to be filled in is the actuality2b on the situation level.
Then, if necessary, the perspective-level actuality2c comes into play.
Here is a picture that highlights the virtual nested form in the category of secondness.
0262 Allow me to re-present the virtual nested form in the realm of actuality in a horizontal motif. The result looks like a very large category-based nested form.
0263 Do I detect a tension?
0264 Does the upper line call to mind consciousness, in so far as these words look like explicit abstractions typical of modern terminology?
A perspective-level judgment2c virtually brings the actuality of a situation-level perception2b into relation with the potential of content-level sensations2a.
0265 Does the lower line call to mind the two-chambered mind, in so far as these words look like implicit abstractions that holistically pump their respective actualities? Pump? Yeah, these are words of wholeness and action.
Commitment2c virtually brings a phantasm2b into relation with the potential of decoding2a.
0266 With this in mind, I will consider the first two hypotheses in Jaynes’s books I and II.
Here is a picture.
0267 Are judgment2c, perception2b and sensation2a based on explicit abstractions, characteristic of technical spoken words in our current Lebenswelt?
Consider the following figure.
0268 Judgment2c, perception2b and sensation2a go with “consciousness”, not as “reactivity”, but as “the capacity for introspection”. So, do not be fooled when a psychologist says, “He is conscious.”, to mean, “He is awake, but not capable of introspection.” Julian Jaynes uses the term, “consciousness” in a very specific manner. A conscious being is capable of introspection. These explicit terms are salient to the “consciousness” that Jaynes discusses. These explicit terms offer pathways to introspection.
0269 Are commitment2c, phantasm2b and decoding2a based on implicit abstractions, characteristic of hand-talk word-gestures that picture and point to their referents, in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in?
0270 Well, the answer is yes, from the point of view of our current Lebenswelt.
Take a look at the following figure.
0271 Plus, the answer is no, because hand-talk words cannot picture or point to these referents. Even these terms, which are steeped in holism, are explicit abstractions.
Commitment2c is judgment2c without analysis. A phantasm2b is a perceived2b reality. Decoding2a is the gateway to sensing2athe meaning, the presence and the message of a transmission. If the human heart operates holistically with four chambers, the bicameral mind operates holistically with two.
0272 At this point, I appreciate the linguistic trap that Jaynes fashions for himselfby using the term, “auditory hallucinations”, for the operations of the bicameral mind. Even the radically holistic terms of commitment2c, phantasm2b and decoding2a are technical labels for the way that hominins think in a Lebenswelt where fully linguistic hand-talk (and hand-speech talk) cannot perform explicit abstraction.
Hand-talk pictures and points to its referents, in a manner that I label, “implicit abstraction”.
Even the label, “implicit abstraction” is an imposition from our current Lebenswelt onto the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
0273 With the distinction between subjective consciousness and bicameral mentation ready at hand, I compare the two states that are on display in Steven Mithen’s recent book, The Language Puzzle.
0274 The question on the left comes from a judgment (that rules out gestural origins for language). This judgment brings the intelligibility of Mithen’s perceptions concerning various fields of modern scientific inquiry into relation with the universality of an impression, a hunch, that cross-modal sensory experiences have a role to play in fashioning spoken words. The visual impression of the thing itself crosses modes to the sound of a particular vocal utterance.
0275 The answer on the right manifests Mithen’s commitment totruth, rather than his will to bring together the various sciences studying the nature of language in our postmodern era. Mithen’s commitment brings a intimation that, after the domestication of fire and after the voice comes under voluntary neural control through selection for singing,hominins (such as late Homo heidelbergensis) add vocal utterances to fully linguistic manual-brachial word-gestures as a way to better decode hand-talk under “hearthy” circumstances.
Well, how would hominins do that?
Oh yeah, through deliberate synaesthesia!
0276 The astute reader will notice that the above declarations on the left and the right do not take the shape of a virtual nested form in the realm of actuality. They conform to a similar, yet distinct, relation.
Here is a picture of judgment2c, as idealized by the medieval scholastics.
0277 Of course, medieval scholastics never formulate judgment as a diagram. For one thing, parchment is very expensive. Written Latin words, such as rationes (for rational intellect, or “ratio”), species expressa intelligibilis (for the intelligibility of perception) and species impressa intelligibilis (for the universality of sensation) take much less space than a drawing.
What does that imply?
Well, the Latin term for “perception” must be species expressa (literally “a kind of expression”). Similarly, “sensation” must be species impressa (“a kind of impression).
0278 Using Latin terms, the above diagram says, “Rationes (relation, thirdness) brings species expressa intelligibilis(what ought to be, firstness) into relation with species impressa intelligibilis (what is, secondness).
0279 Note the categorical assignments.
The category of thirdness is the realm of triadic relations, such as judgments, category-based nested forms, mediations, signs and so forth. So, the element of judgment that is assigned to the category of thirdness will “unfold” into the normal context3 of a category-based nested form.
Similarly, the category of secondness is the realm of actuality. The element that is assigned to secondness is the universality of sensations. After all, species impressa intelligibilis goes with what is, and what is tends to be more actual than what ought to be. What is (secondness) will enter the slot for actuality2.
0280 Finally, the category of firstness is the realm of possibility. The element that is assigned to firstness is the intelligibility of perception. That is because… well… consider the idea of a nyet hypothesis. A nyet hypothesis offers a better understanding of the question at hand than a well-constructed modern hypothesis. Indeed, it offers a better formulation of the question at hand!
So, in this instance, species expressa intelligibilis, as what ought to be, must be assigned to the category of firstness. The intelligibility of perception will unfold into the slot of possibility1.
0281 Now, I ask, “What happens when I unfold this judgment according to its categories?”
Here is the diagram.
0282 Commitment2c, the unfolding of judgment2c, labels the above category-based nested form. The normal context of a rational intellect3(2c) brings the actuality of the universality of sensation2(2c) into relation with the potential ‘intelligibility of perception’1(2c).
0283 Technically, this statement applies to subjective consciousness, whose origin (according to Julian Jaynes) is to be located in the breakdown of the bicameral mind.
0284 Does that mean that I could substitute in the terms for the bicameral mentality?
Well, yes and no.
0285 Yes, but the problem is that the inquirer starts to lose touch with subjective consciousness, because the labels apply to an unfamiliar noumenon. What does it mean for commitment2c to virtually bring a phantasm2b into relation with decoding2a. What the hell is being decoded?
Oh, decoding2a must be part of that thing that Jaynes calls an “auditory hallucination”.
0286 No, the Latin terms suffice. The Latin terms convey a very strange connotation. The species expressa intelligibilis1(2c), the intelligibility of perception (as well as phantasm), is a possibility that drives natural selection in our lineage. Our lineage adapts to the potential of species expressa intelligibilis1(2c).
Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” appears in serial during September 2025 in Razie Mah’s blog and claims that Mithen’s subjective consciousness proposes one hypothesis and his bicameral mind intimates another.
0288 Remarkably, Mithen consciously presents one hypothesis, while simultaneously offering enough information that an informed reader can construct the other.
The conscious hypothesis offers a distraction that veils the bicameral hypothesis.
The distraction and veiling call to mind Julian Jaynes’s paradigm where subjective consciousness historically originates from the breakdown of the bicameral mind.
Subjective consciousness inhibits the um… “auditory hallucination”… that provides a more cogent answer to the question that Mithen is nyet posing, “How does speech get added to hand talk after the domestication of fire and the evolution of voluntary neural control of the vocal tract due to natural selection for singing?”
289 So what is happening?
0290 According to Mithen’s judgment2c, the hypothesis on the left prevails, so a refusal to consider a gestural origin to language3a serves as the normal context3a fora book2a that examines current modern research on language as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces must fit together, because that is what jigsaw puzzle pieces do1a.
The ironic detail?
The judgment2c is decoded by a neural substrate, say… Wernicke’s region… in the left hemisphere of the human brain.
0291 According to Mithen’s commitment2c,the hypothesis in the mirror region of the right hemisphere is available, if only Mithen considers the gestural origin of language3a. If Mithen accepts the option, then the question of why spoken words are currently the only manner in which language manifests arises, posing a challenge to modern anthropology’s commitment to uniformitarianism. Yes, there is a twist to human evolution. Razie Mah has been on that illumination for over a decade. Consider The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).
0292 The ironic detail?
The commitment2c arises in… say… a mirror of the left hemisphere’s Wernicke’s region… in the right hemisphere of the human brain.
If only Mithen could drink a few cocktails and listen to his own “auditory hallucinations”.
0293 Okay, before delving into the brain tissue… I mean… issue, allow me to introduce the interventional sign-relation, which first appears in Comments on Sasha Newell’s Article (2018) “The Affectiveness of Symbols” (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues) and is formalized in Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010) “Semiotic Animal” (appearing in Razie Mah’s in October 2023).
0294 I start with a general picture of the scholastic interscope for how humans think.
0295 The subjectively conscious author, Steven Mithen, relies on judgment2c, so the hypothesis discussed in point 0289defines the book, The Language Puzzle. The above three-level interscope conveys the intentionality and rationality characteristic of the judgment idealized by medieval scholastics.
0296 But, substitute commitment2c in for judgment2c, then the category-based nested formof unfolded judgment may be juxtaposed against the content-level of the scholastic interscope, as shown in the following figure.
0297 The entire superior category-based nested form belongs to commitment2c. Commitment2c is the perspective-level actuality2c for the scholastic interscope for how people think. Judgment2c unfolds into commitment2c. Commitment2cis one element, even though it contains three elements, one belonging to each category. Thirdness brings secondness into relation with firstness.
The entire inferior category-based nested form manifests the contenta level for the same scholastic interscope. The normal context of what is happening3a brings the actuality of a kind of impression (in Latin, a species impressa2a) which includes decoding, as well as sensory information and feelings, into relation with the possibility of ‘something happening’1a.
0298 I notice similarities between each element in thirdness, secondness and firstness.
0299 What do these similarities imply?
The question arises, “Do these similarities somehow constitute an interventional sign-relation, where the perspective-level actuality2c constitutes a sign-vehicle (SVi), the content-level actuality2a manifests as a sign-object (SOi) and the content-level normal context3a and potential1a construct the sign-interpretant (SIi)?”
0300 I am still on my way to delving into the brain tissue.
What resides in the neuroanatomy of the human brain?
An interventional sign-relation.
In a sign-relation, a sign-vehicle (SV) stands for a sign-object (SO) in regards to a sign-interpretant (SI).
For the interventional sign-relation, commitment2c (SVi) stands for a species impressa2a (SOi) in regards to what is happening3a operating on the potential of ‘something happening’1a(SIi).
0301 Here is a picture, using the scholastic interscope for how humans think.
The elements of the interventional sign-relation are explicitly labeled.
0302 Of course, the interventional sign-relation is the most difficult of the sign-relations in the scholastic interscope.
To start, even though commitment2c serves as a sign-vehicle, one cannot taste, smell, touch, hear or see it2c.
0303 One of the odd features of an intervention comes to mind. When an intervention occurs, one never really know where it is coming from2c. Sometimes, someone will offer an explanation for an intervention in order to inform others and justify actions, such as in the following statement.
I had to apply the Heimlich maneuver, grampa was choking on that brussels sprout.
0304 More often, information and justification are presupposed when a witness relates her impression of the event.
I was shocked and horrified when an entire brussels sprout shot out of the old man’s mouth!
0305 For the most part, people assume that what they think starts with a kind of impression, and that impression often contains crucial messages that are instantly decoded.
Yeah, the grandfather is eating and he starts wheezing and acting like something is stuck in his windpipe. Then someone shouts, “He’s choking!” And, everyone freaks out, except for the one person who saves the day.
0306 So, for almost all the witnesses, the old man chokes on a brussels sprout2a at dinner3a and someone at the table saves the day by applying the Heimlich maneuver1a.
In the format of the content-level nested form, the normal context of dinner3a brings the actuality of the elderly man choking on a brussels sprout2a into relation with the potential of someone nearby applying the Heimlich maneuver1a.
0307 Now, someone else at the table, an expert on Julian Jaynes as he is currently interpreted in 2025, after witnessing the entire event, makes an odd comment to the person sitting next to him.
He says, “The hero only applied the Heinrich maneuver because an auditory hallucination told him to do so.”
Well, it is as disturbing as the realization that the person who applies the Heimlich maneuver harbors a commitment2c, that is, a rationality3(2c) that brings the universality of sensation2(2c) into relation with the potential intelligibility of perception1(2c).
Or should I say…?
A training3(2c) that brings the recognition of the universal signs of choking2(2c) into relation with a potentially intelligible course of action called “the Heimlich maneuver”1(2c).
0309 Is that the same as an auditory hallucination2c?
Yes, it is, to a scientific observer who figuratively stands outside the system. Most sign-vehicles can be observed and measured. The sign-vehicle of the interventional sign-relation (SVi) cannot be observed and measured.
So, is the auditory hallucination a phenomenon? Or is it a model that Jaynes places over the noumenon, the thing itself, in order to integrate the subsequent phenomena, which includes all the statements pertaining to the spouting of the brussels sprout.
0310 Even though the claim that the hero saves the day because of an auditory hallucination sounds disrespectful, at least the claim opens natural inquiry into the element of the interventional sign-relation that cannot be observed and measured, the sign-vehicle (SVi). An auditory hallucination2c (SVi) stands for all the statements about the spouting incident2a (SOi) in regards to a joke-filled dinner happening3a operating on the potential of brussels sprouts as one of the dishes served1a (SOi).
0311 No, the lesson is not, “Do not put an entire brussels sprout in one’s mouth before laughing at a funny story.”
0312 Nor is the lesson that grandfather’s guardian angel shouted into the ear of his son-in-law, who is a fireman fully trained in life-saving techniques.
But, the latter is fairly close to what Jaynes tries to pin down with his technical vocabulary.
0313 If Jaynes’s technical term, “auditory hallucination”, corresponds to the interventional sign-vehicle (SVi), then we may appreciate the term for what it is,a model of a sign-element that cannot be directly observed and measured, but produces phenomena that can be observed and measured, directly, as an interventional sign-object (SOi), and indirectly, as an interventional sign-interpretant (SIi).
0314 In the interventional sign-relation, a perspective-level actuality2c (SVi) stands for a content-level actuality2a (SOi) in regards to a content-level normal context3a operating on its potential1a (SIi).
The following figure reduces the sign-relation to a correspondence, thirdness3(2c) with thirdness3a, secondness2(2c) with secondness2a, and firstness1(2c) with firstness1a.
Say what?
Compare commitment2c (as a category-based nested form unfolded from judgment2c) and the contenta-level of the scholastic interscope for how humans think.
0315 The associations are profound, because they allow the inquirer to appreciate the implicit nature of the interventional sign-relation. If commitment2c is present, as it always is under conditions when hominins communicate through hand-talk, then what is happening3a is implicitly confounded with rationality3(2c) and the potential of ‘something happening’1a should implicitly be entangled with an intelligible perception1(2c). Also, the universality of the sensation2(2c), including… dare I say… synaesthetic cross-modal mentation2(2c)… gets rapidly decoded into a kind of impression, a species impressa2a.
0316 What about the brain?
Julian Jaynes focuses on the Wernicke’s region in the left hemisphere, which encompasses a deep cleft that partially defines the temporal lobe, and a less anatomically well-defined mirror region in the right hemisphere. I call these regions, “Wernicke’s on the left and on the right”.
0317 Wernicke’s region on the left is devoted to rapidly decoding both hand talk and speech talk. The decoded meaning, presence and message provide an impression2a (of what is happening3a given the potential of ‘something happening’1a).The decoded impression2ais integrated with sensory information and feelings that we attribute to sensation2a (that is the dyad, {active body [substantiates] sensate soul}2a).
Content-level elements associate to the sign-object (SOi) andthe sign-interpretant (SIi) of the interventional sign-relation.
0318 Julian Jaynes assigns the source of “auditory hallucinations” to the Wernicke’s region on the right. In light of this discussion, that assignment should correspond to the sign-vehicleof the interventional sign-relation (SVi). That SVi is commitment2c as the unfolding of judgment2c.
According to the scholastic ideal, commitment2c is a category-based nested form where the normal context of rationes3(2c) brings the actuality of a species impressa intelligibilis2(2c) into relation with the possibility of a species expressa intelligibilis1(2c).
That is to say, a rational normal context3(2c) brings the actuality of the universality of sensation2(2c) into relation with the possibility of an intelligible perception1(2c).
The SVi (from the Wernicke’s region on the right) is decoded (SIi, by Wernicke’s region on the left) into a SOi.
0319 Here is a picture of the association.
0320 The above figure portrays a phenotype.
The above figure represents an adaptation into the human niche.
According to the masterwork, The Human Niche, by Razie Mah (available at smashwords and other e-book venues), the human niche is the potential of triadic relations.
0322 Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in September 2025) reminds me of an old book, written in 1976, by a professor of psychology teaching at Princeton, Julian Jaynes, titled The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
Despite Mithen’s conscious analysis of many modern scientific disciplines investigating the nature of language,Mithen’s text contains clues to a hypothesis that is explicitly ruled out by the analysis itself. I call it the “nyet” hypothesis, because, when a Russian says, “Nyet”, the Russian means “no”, but the word, “nyet”, to the speaker of American English, sounds like “not yet”. Mithen’s conscious argument tells his own bicameral mind, “Not yet.” But, that does not stop his bicameral mind from providing clues to the question that Mithen unwittingly addresses and its scientific answer.
0323 Mithen’s subjective consciousness asks, “How do the jigsaw puzzle pieces of current research into the nature of language (as speech-alone talk) fit together?”
Mithen’s bicameral mind asks, “If we currently practice speech-alone talk and if the gestural origins of language makes sense, then how does speech get added to fully linguistic hand-talk in human evolution?”
0324 The answer is through synaesthesia, as seen in the following figure.
0325 To start, protolinguistic hand-talk is an adaptation to the social circle of the team (15) from the start of bipedalism to the domestication of fire. The team is the social circle that constellates due to obligate collaborative foraging (for more details see Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues).
Hand-talk works through pantomime and pointing. Manual-brachial images and indications become routinized as gesture-words.
0326 Hand-talk in teams is protolinguistic because it is entirely devoted to sensible construction (corresponding to content and situation levels of the scholastic interscope). That does not mean that social construction is not evolving as an adaptation to the social circle of the team. Indeed, social construction is adapting, giving us the innate expectation that words picture or point to their referents as well as an innate social contract based on direct and indirect reciprocity, even altruism. By the time that Homo erectus starts to domesticate fire, these expectations are built into our bodies and minds.
0327 Once fire is domesticated, cooking by fire changes everything. The number of teams multiplies, because foods that are otherwise indigestible become delicious and nutritious when fully cooked. The focus of natural selection shifts from teams (15) to the team of teams, the community (150). Communal eating creates the conditions where hand talk is no longer expressed only in teams. Hand-talk becomes fully linguistic as it adapts to the new communal venues of day-time talk and night-time talk.
0328 Communal day-time talk occurs during gatherings of the community (150), mega-band (500) and tribe (1500). The voice is recruited for synchronization through communal singing. Add the inducements of sexual selection and the voice comes under voluntary neural control.
Fully linguistic hand-talk is used during these gatherings for social construction. Social construction is necessary to promote harmony among family (5), friends (5), teams (15), bands (50), communities (150), mega-bands (500) and tribes (1500). Fully linguistic hand-talk creates novel cognitive spaces through grammatically correct counterintuitive statements, such as the character [image RAVEN][image MAN], whose adventures as a trickster offer important warnings, suggestions and life lessons.
0329 During the era when fire is being domesticated,Homo heidelbergensis evolves with fully linguistic hand-talk, nascent spiritual awareness, and day-talk and night-talk. The Neanderthal and the human lineages separate at this point, around 600kyr (thousands of years ago).
0330 What about communal night-time talk?
After hearths are common, around 400kyr ago, the voluntary neural control of the voice offers a solution to difficulties in decoding fully linguistic hand-talk in campfire settings. A cultural habit begins by imagining which sound fits each hand-talk word. Such imagination characterizes synaesthesia. Once vocal utterances routinely adorn hand-talk, once the Wernicke’s area on the right trains the Wernicke’s area on the left to decode the vocal utterance as well as the manual-brachial word gesture,Homo sapiens appears in the archaeological record.
0331 To me, Mithen’s nyet hypothesis not only asks the right question, it provides a really good answer.
Mithen’s subjective consciousness does not even take the metaphor of the jigsaw puzzle literally.
0238 In sum, to me, Mithen’s subjective consciousness thwarts Mithen’s bicameral mind. And that brings Julian Jaynesinto focus. The four hypotheses in books I and II of Origin of Consciousness may now be modified as follows.
0332 One, consciousness relies on spoken language.
Our current vocabulary has already labeled the relational elements in the scholastic interscope for how humans think. These labels are explicit abstractions. They allow inquiry on the content, situation and perspective levels. But, they tend to obscure one’s own experiences of the whole. The whole is the bicameral mind.
0333 Two, the bicameral mind has two chambers, the left and the right Wernicke’s regions, that operate in tandem, just like the four ventricles of the heart work in tandem.
The bicameral mind lacks the technical vocabulary mentioned in point one, and therefore performs its operations without explicit awareness. Most likely, what Julian Jaynes calls “auditory hallucinations” corresponds to the sign-vehicle and sign-object of the interventional sign-relation (SVi(SOi)). The bicameral mind “pumps’ interventional sign-relations.
0334 Back to one, subjective consciousness relies on explicit abstractions to inhibit the bicameral mind. That inhibition allows introspection.
Remember, for Julian Jaynes, “consciousness” does not refer to “being awake” (reactivity). Consciousness is the capacity for introspection.
0335 This capacity explains why Steven Mithen’s subjective consciousness uses the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle to describe the framework for his work. Each scientific discipline investigating the nature of language offers a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that Mithen intends to explicitly assemble.
0336 But, is that all?
What does Mithen’s bicameral mind have to say?
As noted in Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (appearing in Razie Mah’s blog for September 2025), the jigsaw-puzzle metaphor also portrays the two defining features of language, displacement and symbolic operations. Displacement corresponds to how each puzzle piece exhibits its own picture and shape. Each piece serves as a distinct icon and index. Symbolic operations corresponds to how the pieces fit together in particular manners. Hand-talk words lock into one another as if they are pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
0337 In other words, the metaphor that titles Mithen’s book also may be taken literally, as an intimation for how protolinguistic hand-talk works.
0338 Three, explicit abstraction unfolds in history.
This is where Razie Mah’s hypothesis of the first singularity has a role to play. The first singularity marks the start of history, because explicit abstractions unfold in history. One explicit abstraction builds upon another, successfully, until an entire suite of explicit abstractions – a worldview – collapses from its aggregated internal contradictions. Then, a new worldview gets socially constructed on that wreckage.
0339 There is another reason for the cyclic nature of history. The chambers of the bicameral mind work with the cultural resources at the time. People build their interventional sign-relations upon their own, historically contingent, reality. And, they simply ignore and neglect prior civilizational iterations.
Currently, in modern times, educated elites explicitly abstract the idea the all eras are subject to historical contingency, even our own. Isn’t that clever? This doctrine excuses modern intellectuals, when they ignore prior civilizations and abstract their interventional-signs based on current paradigms.
0340 Political philosopher, Leo Strauss (1899-1973), complains that modern philosophers disregard previous philosophers, on the basis that previous philosophers are limited by their own historic Zeitgeists. Moderns make this assertion without irony, even though, if their claims are to be consistently applied, modern philosophers are themselves contained within their own historic Zeitgeist and therefore should be disregarded.
0341 So, what am I saying?
New explicit abstractions (generated in principle, by subjective consciousness, and in practice, by manipulative intentions) are built upon the “internalization” of old explicit abstractions by bicameral minds.
Yeah, that sounds like a process that might lead away from an original insight, to conformity, to sloppy over-application, to narrowing of inquiry to only accepted applications, then finally, to dysfunction.
Oh, the cycles of intellectual history pertain.
0342 Fourth, the driver is phenotypic.
The double-brain is how speech gets added to hand-talk. The double-brain embodies the interventional sign-relation. The coordination of the left and right Wernicke’s area is crucial for implicit abstraction.
0343 The problem?
Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.
0344 In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, culture is not built on explicit abstractions, because hand-talk cannot label things. Hand-talk pictures and points to its referents. So, the double-chambered brain works holistically.
In our current Lebenswelt, civilization is built upon explicit abstractions, where things can be labeled with spoken words and where spoken words imply the existence of a referent. The double-chambered brain still works holistically, using both implicit and explicit abstractions as raw material. And, the results can be sort of crazy.
