Category Archives: Scholastic interscope for the way humans think

05/27/25

The Scholastic Interscope For How Humans Think (Part 1 of 4)

0871 The scholastic three-level interscope for how humans think is introduced in Comments on John Deely’s Book (1994) New Beginnings (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

The conceptual apparatus is developed in A Primer on the Category-Based Nested Form and A Primer on Sensible and Social Construction.

The semiotic tool is productively used in Looking at John Deely’s Book (2010) “Semiotic Animal” (appearing in July 2024 in Razie Mah’s blog).

0872 Here is a diagram.

0873 The three-level interscope is a category-based nested form composed of category-based nested forms.

For each level, a triadic normal context3 brings a dyadic actuality2 into relation with a monadic possibility of ‘something’1.

Among levels, perspectivec brings situationb into relation with contenta.  Likewise, thirdness brings secondness into relation with firstness.

0874 Here is how each nested form is articulated.

On the content level, the normal context of what is happening3a brings the actuality of sensation2a into relation with the potential of ‘something happening’1a.

On the situation level, the normal context of what it means to me3b brings the actuality of perception2b into relation with the possibility of ‘situating content’1b.

On the perspective level, the normal context of whether this makes sense3c brings the actuality of a judgment2c into relation with the possibility of ‘contextualizing the situation’1c.

0874 Notice that the actualities are not portrayed as dyads.  When they are, the scholastic interscope becomes more… well… beautiful.  And, biosemioticians must be careful when a transcendental manifests, like a beautiful painting at the end of a hallway. There is no telling where that hallway leads.

0875 What about biosemiotics?

Elements of Sharov and Tonnessen’s noumenal overlay fit nicely into various slots in the scholastic interscope.

0876 Can I discern a specifying sign-relation?

Here, the initiating (semiotic)2a is a real event2a.

Information2b virtually situates the initiating semiotic2a, in the same way that a specifying sign-object (SOs) virtually situates its sign-vehicle (SVs).

Notice that both SOs and SVs belong to the realm of actuality.

0877 A specifying sign-interpretant (SIs) enables the SVs to stand for its SOs.

What is that SIs?

SIs consists of the situation-level normal context3b operating on its possibility1b.

In this instance, SIs is the normal context of self-governance3b operating on potential ‘courses of action’1b.

0878 I can go further.

I can imagine the exemplar sign-relation.

0879 A perspective-level goal2c virtually contextualizes situation-level information2b, in the same way that an exemplar sign-object (SOe) virtually contextualizes its sign-vehicle (SVe).

Both SOe and SVe belong to the realm of actuality.

0880 An exemplar sign-interpretant (SIe) enables the SVe to stand for its SOe.

What is that SIe?

This is where the scholastic interscope for how humans think comes in handy.

For semiotic agency, the SIe is vague.  The normal context of salience3c operates on a potential underlying salience1c.  I suppose the potential1c is ‘the possibility1c of contextualizing information2b‘, if that helps.

For the scholastic interscope, the normal context asking, “Does this make sense?”3c operates on the possibility of ‘contextualizing the situation’1c.

0881 To me, this implies that the term, “salience3c((1c))“, supports an actuality2c that weighs perception2b against sensation2a, while asking what goal2c might be attempted.

What does that imply?

0882 The scholastic interscope contains the specifying and exemplar sign relations, which figure so prominently in semiotic agency.

05/24/25

The Scholastic Interscope For How Humans Think (Part 2 of 4)

0883 Here is a diagram showing the way that Sharov and Tonnessen bring a three-level interscope into a dyadic actuality suitable for laying over the noumenon of all biological processes.

Empirio-schematic inquiry into biosemiotics may now fruitfully employ this noumenal overlay as the thing that is objectified by biosemiotic phenomena.

0884 But, there is more. 

The interventional sign-relation is difficult to fathom, because its sign-vehicle cannot be seen.  It must be inferred.  In biosemiotics, that inference represents phenomena.  It is the goal2c as a sign-vehicle (SVi).

More on that in short order.

0885 Here is a picture of the interventional sign-relation within the scholastic interscope.

Before discussing the strangeness of the perspective-level sign-vehicle2c (SVi), I want to dwell on our (human) familiarity of the content-level.

What is more routine than asking the question, “What happening?”, as if this is a normal context3a operating on the potential of ‘something’ happening’1a?

The question asks for content, and the answer comes by way of sensation2a (SOi).  For animals, sensations do not come packaged with loads of information.  For humans, they do.  A simple statement, like “Where did you put your token?”, which is really a question, gets rapidly decoded into the content-level {SOi}2a.

Yes, the SOi is a real element.  The SVs is a real element.  The contiguity between the two is [message].

That token (SVs) is a ticket to ride (SOs).

0886 The familiar character of the content-level SOi and SIi hides the unfamiliar nature of the perspective-level SVi.

What is going on with judgment2c {SVi}2c?

05/23/25

The Scholastic Interscope For How Humans Think (Part 3 of 4)

0887 The judgment2c in the above figure contains two contiguous real sign-elements.  One is the exemplar sign-object (SOe) and the other is the interventional sign-vehicle (SVi).  As already discussed, the contiguity is [meaning].  For biosemiotics, the medieval scholastic term, “judgment2c“, corresponds to {SOe [meaning] SVi}2c.

0888 At the same time, for postmodern scholastics, judgment2c is a triadic relation.

Indeed, it is the triadic relation that stands at the start of this lengthy examination v(see point 0005).

0889 There are two types of judgment.  The one depicted above is contemplative.  The other is actionable.  Once Peirce’s three categories are assigned, one category to one element, then the judgment becomes actionable.  An actionable judgment unfolds into a category-based nested form.

Does “unfolds” sound like [meaning]?

0890 One example should suffice.

The scholastics harbor an ideal for judgment2c.  As far as they are concerned, this judgment2c is the best.  A rational intellect (relation, thirdness) brings the intelligibility of perception (what ought to be, firstness) into relation with the universality of sensation (what is, secondness).

This is a level-headed judgment, for sure.  The scholastics are trying to be sensible, even when they face the nonsensical mysteries of life and revelation.  No wonder they have such riotous and entertaining debates.  In Latin, no less.

0891 Here is a picture of the scholastic’s ideal judgment.

0892 The assignments of the categories are crucial.

Thirdness goes into the normal context3.

Secondness goes into actuality2.

Firstness goes into the possibility of ‘something’1.

0893 Categorical assignments appear in the above figure.

If the assignments are different, then the judgment would unfold into a different category-based nested form.

This is critical, if I rotate the current assignments one notch counterclockwise, then the intelligibility of my perceptionsbecomes the normal context3, bringing the actuality of my “rational intellect”2 into relation with the possibility that ‘my sensations are universal’1.  Replace “intelligibility of perceptions3” with “knowledge3“, “rational intellect2” with “don’t contradict me2“, and “universality of sensations1” with “universality of what I experience1“. Then, the unfolded nested form says, “The normal context of my knowledge3 brings the actuality of ‘don’t contradict me’2 into relation with the possibility that what I experience is universal1.”

0894 Doesn’t that sound like expertise?

Rotating the categorical assignments one notch counterclockwise takes the inquirer from the scholastic idea to modern expertise.  Experts are knowledgable3, elevate their own experiences1 over others, and do not enjoy being contradicted2.

Scholastics are just trying to be rational intellects3, bringing the universality of what they sense2 into relation with the possibility of ‘an intelligent perception’1.

05/22/25

The Scholastic Interscope For How Humans Think (Part 4 of 4)

0895 So, I have a working definition of [meaning], as a judgment2c (SOs) unfolding into a category-based nested form2c (SVi).

Also, from point 0862, I have a working definition of [message], as the continuity between an expression of intention (SOi) and an initiating (semiotic) event (SVs).  Plus, the initiating (semiotic) event2a (SVs) is not the same as the event that occurs after judgment2c unfolds into an action2c (SVi).

0896 Here is a picture of the interventional sign, along with its contiguities.

0897 These contiguities turn out to be the connections between semiotic agency and the interventional sign-relation.

This is shown clearly in the biosemiotic (or STI) noumenal overlay.

In sum, the scholastic interscope for how humans think assists in appreciating the nature of the biosemiotic noumenal overlay.

The scholastic interscope contains three boundary-crossing sign relations.  Two belong to semiotic agency.  One belongs to the interventional sign-relation.

The scholastic interscope also contains three contiguities between sign-relations.  These correspond to content-level [message], situation-level [presence] and perspective-level [meaning].

0898 Finally, there is Peirce’s natural sign typology, consisting of icons, indexes and symbols.

An icon is a sign-relation, whose sign-object is based on the qualities of images, pictures, unities, monads and so forth.

An index is a sign-relation, whose sign-object is based on the characteristics of pointing, contact, cause and effect, and other dyads.

A symbol is a sign-relation, whose sign-object is based on the stuff of habit, convention, law, agreement, and so on.

0899 I conclude with a list of the sign-relations that are embedded in the scholastic interscope for how humans think,along with the sign-object and type of natural sign.

0900 This information should prove handy in the upcoming examination of human agency.

11/30/24

Looking at Daniel Houck’s Book (2020) “Aquinas, Original Sin and the Challenge of Evolution” (Part 1 of 23)

0001 Daniel W. Houck juggles five challenges in his attempt to recover Thomas Aquinas’s teachings on original sin.

0002 One, Aquinas does not challenge Augustine’s mechanism of original sin.  Original sin descends through Adam to all humans through human reproduction.  Augustine’s speculation is now on the chopping block, because modern biologists observe no large genetic bottleneck, as required by Augustine’s proposed scenario.  Concupiscence may be undeniable. But, it does not plague humans due to descent from a single ancestral pair.

On one hand, original sin cannot be accounted for as a sexually transmitted disease.

On the other hand, sexually transmitted diseases can, in part, be accounted for by original sin.

0003 Two, original sin is inextricably tied to a difficult conversation about the fate of the souls of infants and fetuses, who tragically die.  Where do the souls of aborted fetuses go?  To the city dump?

0004 Three, the doctrine of original sin does not appear in Scripture.  Instead, original sin comes from interpreting Scripture.  It’s like the smell of the rotting food.  If one reads Scripture and follows the unfolding theodrama with care, one cannot help but conclude with Paul, in his notorious Letter to the Romans, that Adam and Christ are linked.  The Scriptures stink of original sin.  Yet, the fragrance of redemption overcomes the sordid aromas.  That is the Good News.  Jesus is a breath of fresh air.

0005 Four, despite recent attempts to revive the theology of Thomas Aquinas, his account of original sin remains neglected.  There is a reason.  Thomas never locks onto a clear and concise reckoning.  A hundred years ago, Aquinas’s thoughts on the matter are debated.  Jean Baptiste Kors publishes an in-depth examination under the title, La Justice primitive et le peche originel d’apres S. Thomas (1922).  Now, it is crickets.

0006 Five, Houck consigns even the crickets to silence, because the crickets never considered Neodarwinism and how it puts Augustine’s speculation on the chopping block.  In light of the shimmering axe of negation poised above the City of God, much less the City of Man, the crickets may silently snicker at Houck’s promise to tie together Aquinas’s account of original justice with other areas of the great medieval theologian’s thought.  Does a synthesis matter? After the blade of scientific expertise comes down on the idea that Adam and Eve are the first humans, will the executioner call out, “Next, original justice.”?

0006 Already modern theologians slink away from the historicity of the Fall.

Can they do without this non-scientific nonsense?

Houck does not think so.  No responsible Christian theologian thinks so.

Houck must juggle these five juggernauts, as if each does not have a life of its own.  What is the secret that brings them into obedient motion, where one goes up while another comes down?

It is not to be found in his book.

0007 It is to be found in the hypothesis of the first singularity.

The stories of Adam and Eve, along with all currently known written origin stories of the ancient Near East, point to a recent time-horizon, beyond which civilization cannot see.

They point to the first singularity.

They cannot see beyond this event.

The ancient myths say, “Humans are made right before civilization starts.”

Now, archaeologists testify to humans before the time horizon of the first singularity.

Humans walk the earth long before the dawn of history.

0008 Is Adam the first human, as suggested by Augustine, as well as by the Genesis text?

If Adam is not the first human, then who is Adam?

Adam must be a figure in a fairy tale.  The fairy tale may be about an event, or something like an event, hidden in time. We (moderns) do not know much about what came before this event.  We know more than nothing. Neolithic stone tools that tell us that, after 12,000 years ago, plants become very important as food.  The remains of sedentary villages tell us that we learned to give plants as food to the animals.

The Neolithic marks the invention of agriculture.

The Developed Neolithic combines stockbreeding and agriculture.

0009 There is an intimation, in Genesis 1:26-30, of a humanity before Adam.  If that is the case, then why does the Story of the Garden of Eden start with God creating Adam from dust and Eve from Adam’s rib?

Oh yeah, the story of the Garden of Eden is a fairy tale.  And, a fairy tale may be about an event, or something like an event, hidden in time.  At the start of this event, Adam busies himself with the garden and names the animals.  He gets to contribute a rib to make Eve.  He is innocent.  So is Eve.  Together, they portray everything that the hominins evolved to be.

In the garden, there is the tree of life.  This tree is a metaphor for Thomas Aquinas’s notion of original justice.  It is also a metaphor for the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

The tree of life is a metaphor for the Lebenswelt where humans are what they evolved to be.

0010 The noumenon of humans, like all animals, is hylomorphic.

The word, “hylomorphe”, combines two words, “hyle” (matter) and “morphe” (form).  According to Comments on Daniel De Haan’s Essay (2018) “Hylomorphism and the New Mechanist Philosophy…”, Aristotle’s hylomorphe associates to Peirce’s category of secondness.  Peirce’s secondness consists in two contiguous real elements.  Here, the two real elements are matter and form.  The contiguity?  May I use the word, “substance”?

The contiguity is placed in brackets.  Secondness is denoted by the subscript.

10/31/24

Looking at N. J. Enfield’s Book (2022) “Language vs. Reality” (Part 1 of 23)

0841 This is an encore performance to the sequence of blogs on the post-truth condition.

As such, this examination wraps up Part Two of Original Sin and the Post-Truth Condition (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

Take a gander at the full title of Enfield’s text, Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good For Lawyers and Bad For Scientists. 

Surely, that sounds like a book that belongs to a set of books on the post-truth condition.

So, the numbers continue to build from the last examination.

0842 The book is published by MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The author is a professor of linguistics at the University of Sydney and the Director of the Sydney Centre for Language Research.  

0843 The title of the book is a play on John B. Carroll’s (editor) collection of essays by Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941 AD), published in 1956 under the title, Language, Thought and Reality.

To me, this implies that “thought” has transubstantiated into “versus”.  The substance of the word has changed, so to speak.  The word, “versus”, derives from the same root as the word, “adversary”.  So, if “thought” once used to nominally stand between “language” and “reality”, then today, “thought” is confounded with “adversary”, and that might serve as a hint concerning the nature of our adversity.

Perhaps, this is not the only notable feature of the title.

Then again, a book titled, Language, Adversary and Reality, might not fly off the shelves in feel-good book-outlets.  It is not as if, next to the Self-Help section, there is a Come To Grips With Your Doom section.

So, expect me to play with the title throughout this examination.

0844 Another notable feature of this book, at least to me, is that the author is not acquainted with Razie Mah’s re-articulation of human evolution, in three masterworks, The Human Niche, An Archaeology of the Fall and How To Define the Word “Religion” (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).  The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.  Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk.  Plus, the evolution of talk comes with the twist, humorously called, “the first singularity”.

So, Enfield’s work serves as a marker for the twilight of the Age of Ideas and the dawning of the Age of Triadic Relations.

0845 Okay, let me dwell on the idea that the evolution of language is not the same as the evolution of talk.

Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) (by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues, and also, for the most part, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog for January, February and March, 2024) divides the evolution of talk in the following manner.

0846 The first period starts with the divergence of the chimpanzee and human lineage (7 million of years ago) and ends with the bipedalism of the so-called “southern apes” (around 3.5 to 4 million years ago).

In the second period, australopithecines adapt to mixed forest and savannah by adopting the strategy of obligate collaborative foraging.  Eventually, Homo erectus figures out the controlled use of fire, leading to the domestication of fire, starting (perhaps) around 800 thousand years ago.

The third period, lasts from the domestication of fire to the earliest appearance of anatomically modern humans.  During this period, hand talk becomes fully linguistic, religion evolves as an adaptation to large social circles (of 150 individuals and more) and hominins use the voice for synchronization during seasonal mega-band and occasional tribal gatherings.  Then, sexual selection does the rest and the voice comes under voluntary neural control.

0847 The fourth period starts when the voice, now under voluntary control, joins hand-talk, resulting in a dual-mode way of talking, hand-speech talk.  Hand talk retains the iconicity and indexality that grounds reference in things that can be pictured or pointed to.  But, speech adds a symbolic adornment, which starts as a sing-along and ends up taking a life of its own.  Four centuries ago, the North American Plains Indians and the Australian aborigines still practiced hand-speech talk, with full fledged sign and verbal languages.  Now, their hand-speech talk is all but dead.

0848 That death, along with the demise of all hand-speech talking languages, comes (and came) due to exposure to speech-alone talk, which has significantly different semiotic qualities than hand-talk and hand-speech talk.  Hand-talk is iconic and indexal.  The referent precedes the gestural word.  Speech-alone talk is purely symbolic.  The spoken word labels ‘something’, and sometimes that ‘something’ cannot be imaged or indicated.

Well, it must be real because speech-alone talk provides a label for an explicit abstraction!

0849 Here is a picture of the transition labeled, “the first singularity”.

0850 Consider the words, “language”, “adversary” and “reality”.  Each word is a label for ‘something’ that cannot be pictured or pointed to.  These words do not exist in hand-talk or hand-speech talk, because the referent cannot be imaged or indicated using a manual-brachial gesture.  What does this imply?  Does a referent exist because a label has been attached to it?  Or, does an explicit abstraction properly label referents that exist irrespective of the spoken word?  This type of question is addressed in Razie Mah’s masterwork, How To Define The Word “Religion”.

Fortunately, the author of the book under examination is unaware of the first singularity and the difficulties that a change in the way that humans talk poses.  Human evolution comes with a twist.

0851 So why examine this work?

Well, I expect to see the evolution of talk manifesting in this book, even though the author is not aware of Razie Mah’s academic labors.

Surely, Enfield’s work details recent scientific research in linguistics and cognitive psychology, in an attempt to provide the reader with a coherent view of how language is good for lying lawyers and bad for honest scientists.

What will this examination reveal?

10/5/24

Looking at N. J. Enfield’s Book (2022) “Language vs. Reality” (Part 23 of 23)

1060 Chapter eleven completes Part III.  This chapter concerns sense making.

How am I to make sense of the inverted interscope that arrives after the story of Adam and Eve enters into Enfield’s science-inspired interscope?

1061 How do I capture the Gestalt shift in speech-alone talk?

For Enfield’s scientific frame, the perspective-level contiguity is [translates into].

For the inverted frame, the perspective-level contiguity is [transubstantiates into].

Does this suffice?

The Gestalt switches from one to the other interscope.

1062  What else?

The change of Gestalts reconfigures the title.

1063 What Enfield cannot say is this.

Our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

In 2022, he simply is not aware of the hypothesis of the first singularity.

1064 What Enfield cannot say may be formulated in terms of science, as an evolutionarily recent cultural transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk, starting with the emergence of the Ubaid culture of southern Mesopotamia, nominally 7824 years ago.

One day, science may present how hand and hand-speech talk potentiates constrained social complexity and speech-alone talk potentiates unconstrained social complexity.

Science may investigate how hand and hand-speech talk facilitates implicit abstraction and how speech-alone talk has a unique ability to label anything, even referents that cannot be pictured or pointed to, even referents that are quite fantastic and alluring and that exist only in the realm of possibility.

1065 Perhaps, explicit abstraction is more cunning than any animal that the Lord God creates.

Like sin, it couches at our door.  It is our job to tame it.

1066  In conclusion, Enfield’s well-written book testifies to what he is not aware of.

The background Gestalt of his scientific discourse is a story, and this story steps forward in this examination of Part III, entitled “Reality Made By Language”.  But, the inversion does not manifest a full Gestalt shift, because that is precisely what Enfield wants to avoid.  He wants to remain a scientist, speaking the disciplinary languages of linguistics and cognitive psychology, as if they could warn us about the near impossibility of practicing Wittgenstein’s rule, because our kind evolves the trait of ‘agreeability’1a, so that our ‘imaginations’1b may align in the virtual normal context of ‘coordination’1c.

1067 Enfield’s interscope is beautiful to behold.

His interscope appears in the mirror of science.  I say this while casting a glance at Comments on Mariusz Tabaczek’s Arc of Inquiry (2019-2024) by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  Portions appear in Razie Mah’s blogs for April through June, 2024.  When a theologian looks at Enfield’s interscope, shimmering in the mirror of science, he responds with a theological question, asking, “What is this image revealing?”

The answer cries out for a Gestalt inversion.

One Gestalt hinges on the contiguity, “translates”.

The other Gestalt hinges on the contiguity, “transubstantiates”.

1068 The invert interscope is a wonder to behold.

Saint Thomas Aquinas might chuckle.  Aquinas coined the word, “transubstantiates”.

Note how a physical reality, as simple as water, poured over the head of a baby or a child or a repenting adult,transubstantiates into the social reality of washing away the stain of original sin2c.  Water is more than physical reality.  Washing the stain of original sin is more than social reality.

1069 This is what the theologian projects into the mirror of theology, standing in the jurisdiction of science, as he contemplates the implications of what Enfield has written.

1070 In the sacrament of baptism, everyone in the ritual co-ordinates, in one particular recitation, starting with an answer to the question, “Do you reject Satan?”

Lucifer is an angel of light.  Everything that Lucifer says tells more about Lucifer than the referent that Lucifer’s words conjure.  Indeed, the referent that Lucifer’s words conjure is a lie.  Just look at the seven of cups in a deck of illustrated Tarot cards and tell me that Lucifer’s words do not conjure this image in the mind of poor, unsuspecting Eve, who, after all, is only trying to be agreeable.

1071 Perhaps, this examination is an invitation for Dr. Enfield and other linguists and cognitive psychologists, to realize that their science has isolated us in rigid containers of empirio-schematic thought.  We are creatures who evolved to live as images of God, not as subjects for the psychometric sciences.

Do not let your scientific commitments get in the way of an origin story of the ancient Near East2a, rising through the observable and measurable use of spoken words2b, and blossoming into a sacrament instituted during the most amazing revelation coming from the promised land2c.

When John the Baptist pours the waters of the Jordan over the head of Jesus, the heavens rejoice.

Here is what we evolved to be, standing at the confluence of language and reality.

1072 John Deely, the author of Four Ages of Understanding (2001), offers a label for this new world view.  Welcome to the Age of Triadic Relations.

1073 My thanks to Dr. N. J. Enfield for his book, written at the cusp (yet without awareness that there is a cusp) of a new age of understanding. 

09/4/24

Looking at Michelle Stiles’s Book (2022) “One Idea to Rule Them All” (Part 23 of 23)

0749 What about domination?

Chapters eleven and twelve conclude the book with suggestions for how to proceed, now that Stiles’s own manuscript testifies to the necessity for operation spider web to engage in as many operation sheepskins as possible.  The scrappy players are becoming aware that what they regard as reason3a,1a is actually an interventional sign-interpretant (SIi) declaring that an operation sheepskin2c executed by the scientismist one3c (SVi) stands for what people are thinking [and] what people are saying2a (SOi).  Experts3b cannot reduce this awareness to capitalist and socialist ideations2b and remain intelligible.

More research is required.

One of the operation sheepskins has got to dominate the scrappy players that deny the post-truth interscope.

0750 The scrappy player needs only to watch corporate broadcast media for the latest operation.

The money and power required to sustain operation spider web is enormous.

After the system3c burns through its cash, then it3c will ask the oligarchs and the federal government to appropriate more funds for their private-public partnerships.

The laboratory of expertise strives for an effective formulation.

Will they configure a final solution?

0751 Meanwhile, scrappy playersa are coming to terms with the nature of domination by the ones of scientism3c.

The scientismist one’s3c interventional sign-objects2a (SOi) trigger the scrappy player to imagine2a a perspective-level interventional sign-vehicle (SVi), a hidden agenda2c, that can only be recognized when the intellect3a contextualizes a potential greater than the will1a (SIi).

In order to do so, the scrappy player must recognize that what he has been thinking2a and what he has been expected to say2a are no longer intellectually3a satisfying.

Something greater than “our” intellect3a is required.  

Then, what the scrappy player discovers2a is that humans are adapted to recognize interventional sign-relations.  

The ones of scientism3c use that adaptation against the scrappy players2a.

The ones of scientism3c dominate by pretending to be the divine source of interventional sign-vehicles (SVi).  

They do so by limiting reason3a,1a to the intellect3a contextualizing the will1a, as if the will1a does not seek perfection (completion) in transcendentals, such a truth.

Yes, they are using a human adaptation against us.  But, they are triggering the adaptation as well.

0752 Hence, there is a practical conundrum facing the scrappy player.

To speak of a hidden agenda2a is counterproductive, because to posit that events2a are scripted by operation-sheepskin empirio-normative judgments2c is to talk in terms of formal and final causalities, which are the very statements-phenomena2a that cannot regarded as worthy of observation and measurement by psychometric experts3c.   Psychometric experts3b base their models2b on truncated material and efficient causalities (shorn of formal and final causation).

Speech about hidden agendas2a cannot be regarded as phenomena2a worth attending to.

Therefore, it must be ignored.

0753 The impasse is palpable, because (look at the third row).

0754 The crisis is about to begin.

0755 My thanks to Michelle Stiles for daring to publish a manuscript worthy of examination in regards to the post-truth condition.

03/1/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2016) “A Natural History of Human Morality” (Part 22 of 22)

0588 The Tomasello-Mah synthesis shows the ghost in the basement of the house of Tomasello’s vision.

Indeed, as this version of Darwin’s paradigm begins to haunt the entire edifice of human evolution, then Tabaczek’s housebecomes more than a house with a basement.  If sociogenesis1b is the potential1b of triadic relations2a, then Tomasello’s arc of inquiry may be re-articulated using triadic relations.

0589 For example, Razie Mah’s Primer on Sensible and Social Construction may be used to re-label the eras of individual, joint and collective intentionality.  Individual construction associates to the category-based nested form. Sensible construction associates to the two-level interscope, containing content and situation levels.  Social construction associates to the three-level interscope, containing content, situation and perspective levels.

Here is a list of what that might look like.

0590 To continue, the re-labeled eras may be regarded in terms of the evolution of talk.

The evolution of talk is not the same as the evolution of language.  Language evolves in the milieu of hand talk.

0592 Next, I would like to focus attention on the era of collective intentionality.

Here is a list depicting the timeframe.

0593 Before the era of collective intentionality, hand talk is confined team activities.  Hand talk produces sensible constructions.  Each team develops its own way of hand talking.  

After the domestication of fire, team-tradition hand talk starts to be used generally, eventually producing fully linguistic hand talk.

The situation is very dynamic.  Since cooking with fire increases the number of teams, fully linguistic hand-talk is re-appropriated for specialized use in more and more teams.  Fully linguistic hand-talk influences all social circles.  In some of these circles, grammatically correct, yet apparently nonsensible statements, generate social constructions that open new cognitive spaces.  These novel cognitive spaces become sites for more sensible construction.

0594 The voice comes into play during community meetings (150), seasonal mega-band round-ups (500) and special occasion tribal pow-wows (1500).  The voice is used for synchronization.  Song brings a large gathering of hominins into synchronization.  Once this cultural habit starts, then singing joins other traits in sexual selection.  The voice comes under voluntary control.

0595 Most likely, the early speciations of late Homo erectus produced species that could sing and hand-talk.  But, they could not speak.

Speech is added to hand-talk with Homo sapiens.  Anatomically modern humans practice a dual-mode of talking, hand-speech talk, for the next two hundred-thousand years.

0596 Hand-speech talk would still be practiced by anatomically modern humans today, were it not for the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.  The hypothesis of the first singularity proposes that the Ubaid is the first culture on Earth to practice speech-alone talk.

Here is a picture of the era of social construction.

0598 Today, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

This brings me to the limit of Tomasello’s vision.  I open the door, and step out into the realization that our current Lebenswelt is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  I step into the vision of Razie Mah.

0599 The arc of Tomasello’s inquiry, spanning from 1999 to 2016, opens onto three masterworks by Razie Mah.  These electronic books are available at smashwords and other e-work venues.  This examination relies primarily on The Human Niche, along with books contained in the series, A Course on The Human Niche.  A related series is titled, Buttressing the Human Niche.

Here is a list of Mah’s masterworks.

Still, there is more.

A Commentary on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) is available at smashwords and other e-book venues.  This commentary includes Mah’s blogs for January, February and March, 2024, along with an examination of Becoming Human (2019), the fifth book in a sequence of five books.

0600 My thanks to Michael Tomasello, who writes the books under examination while Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, for conducting a scientific inquiry, from which I have examined only several works.

02/29/24

Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2014) “A Natural History of Human Thinking” (Part 1 of 22)

0187 In the preface, the author notes that this book is a prequel to The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (1999, Harvard University Press).  The question is the same.  What makes humans unique?  The answer is the same.  Humans think differently than great apes, their closest biological kin.

In 1999, researchers in evolutionary anthropology could say, “Only humans think of other humans as intentional agents.  Plus, my cat and my dog are intentional operators, as well, say nothing of the weather.”

Okay, I added the second sentence for dramatic effect.

Unfortunately, research conducted after 1999 introduces a problem.  It turns out that great apes recognize intentionality in others.

Uh oh.

0188 This book is the third marker in Tomasello’s intellectual journey.  I start following his trek with Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (1999) “The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition” (appearing in Razie Mah’s January 2024 blog).  The second marker that I examine may be found in Looking at Michael Tomasello’s Book (2008) “Origins of Human Communication” (appearing later in the same blog for the same month).

0189 In the publication before me, A Natural History of Human Thinking (2014, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts), Tomasello explicitly abstracts three cognitive processes in order to distinguish humans from apes.  The processes are cognitive representation, inference and self-monitoring.  He then proposes that all three components were transformed in two key steps during hominin evolution.  He labels his claims, “the shared-intentionality hypothesis”.

0190 Does this follow the trajectory set by previous works?

Here is a theme that appears in the second marker, pre-emptively modified with the above propositions in mind.

0191 This modified picture allows me to offer slogans for movements zero and one.

For zero, the slogan is “I work for food.”

For one, the slogan is “We work for food.”