0178 Chapter four (C4) is titled, “Things Depend on Humans”.

This chapter follows the break-out section on Catal Hoyuk.

0179 Over time, things fall apart.  The author provides examples from England, where stone walls, marking the boundaries of fields, are inherently unstable.  He describes the use of internal buttresses to stabilize walls in level III to I of Catal Hoyuk, as well as the Chalcolithic west mound (dating 6000 to 5500BC).

0180 To me, internal buttressing of walls may require explicit abstraction.

The smelting of copper probably entails specific recipes (serving as explicit abstractions).

The cylinder seals found at the site definitely indicate explicit abstraction.

0181 Nothing says, “Things depend on humans.”, like ownership.

That is what cylinder seals are all about.  They are used to seal lists of goods as well as other documentation associated with ownership and transfer of ownership.

0182 Cylinder seals are things that depend on humans.

There are two confoundings in the following virtual nested form in the category of secondness.

0183 In the first confounding, clay and a specific impression_2am [thingness] a cylinder seal_2af and the cylinder seal_2af [entangles] the matter of an official designation_2bm.  Each element demands an explicit abstraction.  What is the image on the seal?  What does it designate?

In the second confounding, the official designation_2bm [flowness] the embodiment of a thing that is  labeled (with a sealed stamp) by its owner_2bf and that label_2bf [entangles] the matter of an explicit process of declaration_2cm, that is, a process by which ownership is explicitly asserted.

0184 That is not all.

I already mentioned that sign-relations are built into the three-level interscope (points 150-156).

I explicitly detailed the specifying sign-relation.

0185 The two confoundings for cylinder seals correspond to the specifying (subscript “s”) and exemplar (subscript “e”) sign-relations.  Here is a picture the sign-vehicles (SV) and sign-objects SO).

0186 Finally, all the elements of the specifying and exemplar sign-relations are labeled in the following three-level interscope.

0187 In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, the elements of two sign-relations cannot be labeled with the gestural words of hand- or hand-speech talk. Instead, the sign-relations are simply performed.  These sign-relations are adaptations into a niche composed of the potential of triadic relations.  This biological proposal is set forth in Razie Mah’s e-book, The Human Niche (2018).

0188 In our current Lebenswelt, elements of the two sign-relations can be labeled with speech-alone words.  The production of the seal (from thingness to flowness, so to speak) touches base with labor specialization.  Not just anyone can fashion a cylinder seal for use.  The embodiment of the label on a thing (from flowness to affordness, so to speak) touches base with social specialization.