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, commitment_2c (SV_i) stands for a species impressa_2a (SO_i) in regards to what is happening_3a operating on the potential of ‘something happening’_1a (SI_i).

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 commitment_2c serves as a sign-vehicle, one cannot taste, smell, touch, hear or see it_2c.

0303 One of the odd features of an intervention comes to mind.  When an intervention occurs, one never really know where it is coming from_2c.  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 sprout_2a at dinner_3a and someone at the table saves the day by applying the Heimlich maneuver_1a.

In the format of the content-level nested form, the normal context of dinner_3a brings the actuality of the elderly man choking on a brussels sprout_2a into relation with the potential of someone nearby applying the Heimlich maneuver_1a. 

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.”

0308 How disturbing is that off-hand contention?

Well, it is as disturbing as the realization that the person who applies the Heimlich maneuver harbors a commitment_2c, that is, a rationality_3(2c) that brings the universality of sensation_2(2c) into relation with the potential intelligibility of perception_1(2c).

Or should I say…?

A training_3(2c) that brings the recognition of the universal signs of choking_2(2c) into relation with a potentially intelligible course of action called “the Heimlich maneuver”_1(2c).

0309 Is that the same as an auditory hallucination_2c?

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 (SV_i) 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 (SV_i).  An auditory hallucination_2c (SV_i) stands for all the statements about the spouting incident_2a (SO_i) in regards to a joke-filled dinner happening_3a operating on the potential of brussels sprouts as one of the dishes served_1a (SO_i).

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 (SV_i), 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 (SO_i), and indirectly, as an interventional sign-interpretant (SI_i).

0314 In the interventional sign-relation, a perspective-level actuality_2c (SV_i) stands for a content-level actuality_2a (SO_i) in regards to a content-level normal context_3a operating on its potential_1a (SI_i).

The following figure reduces the sign-relation to a correspondence, thirdness_3(2c) with thirdness_3a, secondness_2(2c) with secondness_2a, and firstness_1(2c) with firstness_1a.

Say what?

Compare commitment_2c (as a category-based nested form unfolded from judgment_2c) and the content_a-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 commitment_2c is present, as it always is under conditions when hominins communicate through hand-talk, then what is happening_3a is implicitly confounded with rationality_3(2c) and the potential of ‘something happening’_1a should implicitly be entangled with an intelligible perception_1(2c).  Also, the universality of the sensation_2(2c), including… dare I say… synaesthetic cross-modal mentation_2(2c)… gets rapidly decoded into a kind of impression, a species impressa_2a.

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 impression_2a (of what is happening_3a given the potential of ‘something happening’_1a).  The decoded impression_2a is integrated with sensory information and feelings that we attribute to sensation_2a (that is the dyad, {active body [substantiates] sensate soul}_2a).

Content-level elements associate to the sign-object (SO_i) and the sign-interpretant (SI_i) 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-vehicle of the interventional sign-relation (SV_i).  That SV_i is commitment_2c as the unfolding of judgment_2c.

According to the scholastic ideal, commitment_2c is a category-based nested form where the normal context of rationes_3(2c) brings the actuality of a species impressa intelligibilis_2(2c) into relation with the possibility of a species expressa intelligibilis_1(2c).

That is to say, a rational normal context_3(2c) brings the actuality of the universality of sensation_2(2c) into relation with the possibility of an intelligible perception_1(2c).

The SV_i (from the Wernicke’s region on the right) is decoded (SI_i, by Wernicke’s region on the left) into a SO_i.

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.

0321 Let me briefly summarize.

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 (SV_i(SO_i)). 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.

0345 Explicit abstractions?

Let me step back and consider how the medieval scholastic interscope for how humans think presents explicit abstractions within a framework that promotes… um… implicit abstraction.

0346 The written words that go into each slot in the scholastic interscope are explicit abstractions.

However, the purely relational structure of the interscope characterizes the nature of implicit abstraction.

0347 To start, the medieval scholastics identify three actualities, corresponding to judgment_2c, perception_2b and sensation_2a.

0348 Does explicit abstraction stop with these labels?

No, another layer of explicit abstraction refines these one-word labels.

Let me start from the top, then (after some discussion) end at the top.

Since judgment_2c is a triadic relation, it_2c can be portrayed as a triadic relation (the three-spoke diagram), a dyadic structure (where the triadic relation is “reduced” to secondness), and a monadic structure (an undifferentiated triadic structure appears to be one perspective-level thing).

On one hand, different ways of expressing the same perspective-level actuality_2c may appear confusing.  On the other hand, each way reflects the difficulty of capturing this elusive creature_2c, which is also the interventional sign-vehicle(SV_i).

0349 Perception_2b and sensation_2a are dyadic relations, typical for the category of secondness.

An exemplar for the dyadic relation is Aristotle’s hylomorphe, matter [substantiates] form.  Matter and form are real elements.  [Substance] is the contiguity between these two real elements.

Weirdly, [substance] is not a real element, but, the Wernicke’s area on the right does not know that.  Consequently, it has no impediment to imagining what a substance must be.  Then, instantly, the Wernicke’s area on the left decodes that what into a spoken word… er… “auditory hallucination”.

Weirdly, the voice in my head tells me to avoid substance abuse.

Substance abuse wrecks the body and compromises the soul.

So, does “substance” label a chemical compound?  Or does the term label the contiguity between body and soul?

0350 The medieval scholastics already rely on the spoken terms, “body” and “soul”.  These are old, holistic words, converted into explicit abstractions.  Each spoken label has a distinct meaning, presence and message.  

“Body” derives from the Greek word, “soma”.  Soma represents the parts of the warrior’s body ready to perform in battle.  It’s not enough to be fleet of foot.  One must have shield and weapon on arm and in hand.  According to Jaynes (page 71), soma is used by Homer in the Iliad in the plural to refer to a dead corpse.

“Soul” derives from the Greek word, “psyche”, which refers the life-substances of blood and breath.  Other words also apply, “thumos” means motion and agitation, particularly related to the chest. “Phren” is goes with “gut reaction”.  “Noos” relates to vision.

0351 According to Jaynes, the original Greek words explicitly label implicit processes expressed by men in battle and conflict.  They do not touch base with introspection.  They do not label subjectively conscious thoughts and attitudes.  Instead, they cohere with the bicameral mind as the two-chambered brain organ that pumps interventional sign-vehicles_2c into species impressae_2a.

0352 In contrast, the following figure presents explicit abstractions that portray what is implicit to the previous figure’s explicit abstractions.

0353 The content-level actuality_2a elucidates what Jaynes refers to as “the auditory hallucination” of the bicameral mind.

Sensation_2a is a hylomorphe, consisting of two real elements, the active body (which associates to body-oriented Homeric terms about the warrior) and sensate soul (which refers to impressions and feelings that emerge from (and situate) the potential of ‘something happening’).  The art of the Iliad comes from an epic portrayal of the active bodies of Greek and Trojan warriors, with the expectation that the sensate souls of the audience are moved in concert.

But, the Iliad lacks the vocabulary for sensate soul. So, the movements of the audience’s sensate souls occurs through implicit abstraction.  There is nothing explicit about that.  When gods and friends appear to the warriors in the Iliad,they act like active bodies engaging sensate souls.  It is as if each appearance is… well… I suppose that the modern label, “auditory hallucination” applies.

0354 Is there a more clinical way to consider active body [substantiates] sensate soul?

Perhaps, the active body_2a touches base with the Wernicke’s region on the right.  As such, the active body_2a introduces an SV_i to the interventional sign-interpretant (SI_i).  Later, the sensate soul_2a associates to the left Wernicke’s region’s decoding the SV_i into its SO_i.

0355 The situation-level actuality_2b repeats the terms that constitute the content-level actuality_2a. But here, different qualifiers apply to “body” and “soul”.  The perceptive soul [informs] the reactive body_2b.

Opinion [informs] emotions_2b.

Consciousness, that is, introspection, seems to apply, since a perception of the situation may be subject to analysis, if one has the vocabulary to conduct the analysis.  Spoken terminology that refers to reflective thought must be present before the phantasm_2b is subject to introspection.  Jaynes argues that psychological terminology does not yet exist during the era of the bicameral mind, even in literate early civilizations.

Not yet?

Is that the same as “nyet”?

0356 The following diagram shows how the integration of body and mind entangles matter and form.

The body₂ is active_a matter on the content level and reactive_b form on the situation level.  The active body has five senses for the exterior world and many more for the interior.  The reactive body is where emotions change inner physiological dynamics.

The soul₂ is sensate_a form on the content level and perceptive_b matter on the situation level. The sensate soul_2a exhibits qualia and feelings.  The perceptive soul_2b emerges from (and situates) the possibility of one’s imagination_1b.

0357 The medieval scholastics use Latin for their explicit abstractions.  To me, their terms retain a holistic flavor.  Peirce’s postmodern diagrams adds a whole new style of holism: the purely relational structure.

0358 Does the Latin term, species impressa_2a, capture the content-level hylomorphe_2a, where the two real elements are active body and sensate soul?  Species impressa_2a transliterates into “a kind of impression”.  Or maybe, “impression as a kind of actuality”.

Similarly, does the Latin term, species expressa_2b, capture the situation-level hylomorphe_2b, where the two real elements are perceptive soul and reactive body?  Species expressa_2b transliterates into “a kind of expression”.  Or perhaps, “expression as a kind of actuality”.

0359 The postmodern hylomorphes pictured on the left build on the explicit abstractions achieved by premodern Latin-writing medieval scholastics, pictured on the right.  However, the expressions on the left look like implicit abstractionscompared to the expressions on the right.

Each set of technical terms comes from its own specialized language.

0371 At this juncture, I intend to link the prior comments about Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976), The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, to the archaeological record.

The link is already established in points 320 through 330, which covers the second period in human evolution (the second period ranges between 3.5 and 0.6 Myr, according to Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019), by Razie Mah, available at smashwords and other e-book venues, as well as Razie Mah’s blog covering January through March, 2024).

0372 The following figure covers from the the start of the domestication of fire (at 0.8Myr) until the earliest appearance of Homo sapiens (at, say, 0.3Myr).  This corresponds to the third period of human evolution (using Tomasello’s nomenclature).  This is also where Steven Mithen’s nyet hypothesis applies.

0373 As fire is domesticated, the number of teams increases because cooking with fire breaks down the cellular matrices of otherwise indigestible raw food, making more nutrients and calories available.  More teams prosper, because there are more successful ways to forage for food.  Cooking with fire is a significant technology of production.

Even as the selection pressures on teams (15) slacken, the selection pressures on the community (150), mega-band (500) and tribe (1500) increase.

The question arises, “How do we maintain harmony among teams and other social circles with our newfound abundance?”

0374 One answer is that hand-talk, once the domain of teams, enters into the community and becomes fully linguistic.

0375 Proto-linguistic hand-talk can only engage in sensible construction.  The content and situation levels are in play.  The team constitutes the perspective level.  The interventional sign-relation may be active in generating a team.  But, once the team is established, the interventional sign-relation comes into play only when the team sees a foraging opportunity.  Commitment_2c belongs to the team.

0376 Fully linguistic hand-talk engages in both sensible and social construction.  In a communal setting, teams can clash with other teams.  High-risk and high-reward teams may upset families and friends participating in less-risk and less-reward teams.  Social construction is required in order to create cognitive spaces that promote harmony.  Grammatically correct, counter-intuitive hand-talk statements create the species impressa_2a that undergird those cognitive spaces (species expressa_2b).

For example, an animal may be associated with a team by juxtaposing hand-talk words.  The team-animal may then be treated as a person in night-time hand-talk stories where each manual-brachial word-gesture is grounded in the natural signs of icons and indexes, but symbolic operations allow grammatically correct, counter-intuitive statements.  Two radically different (yet successful) teams, the team that digs tubers for fire cooking and the team that hunts large game for fire cooking, learn to get along though stories about [RABBIT][MAN] and [WOLF][MAN].

0377 The relational structure of commitment_2c is implicitly abstracted during story-telling events, by Wernicke’s region on the right.  In concert, manual-brachial word gestures are automatically decoded by Wernicke’s region on the left.  Two chambers in the brain work to pump interventional sign-relations from the perspective to the content level.  These are then situated as phantasms_2b, cognitive spaces that brings all social circles into harmony, in the hominin mind.

Another modern term for those implicit abstractions is “social construction”.  Social construction is the meaning underlying the word, “religion”.

0378 Here is a list of these key points.

0379 What about the voice?

Here is a picture of the next set of key points.

0380 The brain of Homo heidelbergensis is almost as large as that of Homo sapiens.  So, what is changing is not quantitative, but qualitative.  Once human and Neanderthal lineages separate, intergroup competition among African populations increases selection pressures on large social circles.  The community (150) meets routinely.  The mega-band (500) gathers seasonally.  The tribe (1500) gathers on rare occasions.

0381 None of these gatherings last long, because gatherings create opportunities for disaster (disease).  So, the voice is recruited for rapid social synchronization by way of communal singing.  If the person knows the tunes, the person belongs.  The songs do not have words.  They have harmonies and beats.

Sexual selection assists.  The vocal tract changes and the voice comes under voluntary control.

0382 Before the evolution of Homo sapiens, day-talk and night-talk are distinct traditions that encourage story-telling.  Hearths are common by 400kyr.  Night-time hand-talk with a campfire as illumination presents challenges.  So, traditions arise where a vocal utterance accompanies each hand-talk word gesture.

This is the real subject matter of Steven Mithen’s book, The Language Puzzle.   The hidden questions that this evolutionary anthropologist does not consciously address are, “How is speech added to hand-talk in human evolution?  Also, how is it that we, civilized folk, only practice speech-alone talk?”

0383 The answer to the first question is synaesthesia, cross-modal species impressa_2a.  The storyteller and audience are committed_2c to fully appreciating grammatically correct counterintuitive story statements, but they have difficulties with decoding in the flickering light.  Wernicke’s region on the right encourages Wernicke’s region on the left to process both hand-talk and accompanying vocal-utterance.  In sum, species impressa_2a for iconic and indexal hand talk crosses over into sound, so that both modes are automatically decoded.

0384 In retrospect, the evolutionary anthropologist may say that speech emerges as an adornment to hand-talk, prior to the appearance of our species, Homo sapiens, around 250kyr.

From the start, Homo sapiens practices hand-speech talk.

Homo sapiens practices hand-speech talk for the next 240,000 years.

0385 Things change.  That is the message that underlies the word, “evolution”.

If I start with Homo sapiens decoding vocal utterances along with the hand-talk gesture-words that they adorn and if I end with civilized humans practicing speech-alone talk, then there must be a development and then a twist, as shown in the following figure.

0386 The first step coheres with the evolution of the bicameral mind as the two-chambered organ that pumps interventional sign-relations.

The Wernicke’s region on the left adapts to hand-talk.  Decoding becomes more automatic with fully linguistic hand-talk.  Decoding contributes to the interventional sign-object (SO_i), the species impressa_2a.

The Wernicke’s region on the right adapts to the niche of the perspective level of the scholastic interscope.  Fully linguistic hand-talk allows grammatically correct counter-intuitive statements.  Each word-gesture of these mystical statements is evaluated according to the original mission of right-side Wernicke’s region.  Original mission?  The right-side holistically assesses the integrity of hand-talk icons and indexes.  Do hand-talk words comport with imagery, indexality, as well as team situation?

But, now the Wernicke’s region on the right offers additional value by engaging in synaesthesia, the evaluation of the accompanying vocal utterance.   This evaluation assists the left-side Wernicke’s region in decoding hand-talk words during conversations and performances illuminated by fire.

0387 The first step coheres with Mithen’s nyet hypothesis.

0388 The second step consists of developments over the next two-hundred and forty thousand years.

The left-side Wernicke’s region adapts to decoding both hand-talk and vocal utterances, in tandem (as when a spoken word adorns its hand-talk gesture-word) and independently (under socially prescribed conditions).  The communitygains another cultural trick to assist in maintaining social harmony among circles.  This trick is used in a variety of manners.

0389 One of the tricks involves extending what vocal utterances originally do.  Spoken words adorn hand-talk words.  Manual-brachial word-gestures are grounded in icons and indexes.  They picture and point to their referents, even when used in grammatically correct, counter-intuitive statements, such as the stories about [RABBIT][MAN] and [WOLF][MAN].  Vocal utterances cannot serve as icons and indexes.  They are purely symbolic.  So, spoken wordscoupled to hand-talk add a symbolic adornment.

0390 So, what is a “symbol” and what does “it” have to contribute to the evolution of adornment?

0391 According to Charles Peirce, a “symbol” is a natural sign-relation whose sign-object is determined on the basis of habit, convention, law and so forth.  A symbol belongs to a symbolic order.  Each symbol in a symbolic order obviously differs from all other symbols.

If I introduce Mithen’s nyet hypothesis to this picture, I imagine that synaesthesia acts like a habit.  The habitconsistently chooses one vocal utterance for one hand-talk word.

0392 According to modern anthropologists, a “symbol” is a label for any manufactured artifact that does not have obvious utility.  I say this tongue in cheek.  For example, a laboriously fashioned stone spear-tip is not a symbol.  An ibex carved into the handle of a spear-thrower is.

The implication is not straight-forward.  When an evolutionary anthropologist labels an artifact as a “symbol”, that means that the scientific discipline cannot explain the artifact, because the inquirer does not know what the symbol represents.  So, a symbol is an artifact that represents ‘something’, but the anthropologist cannot ascertain what that ‘something’ is.

0394 In the case of an ibex carved into the handle of a spear-thrower, the anthropologist can say that it is a symbol of an ‘ibex’.  And here, the symbol represents ‘something’ about the ibex that the anthropologist cannot ascertain.

Indeed, what is the affectiveness of symbols?

I wonder, “If the carved ibex constitutes an interventional sign-object (SO_i), then what is the correspondinginterventional sign-vehicle (SV_i)?”

Oh!  Does SV_i correspond to commitment_2c?

How unexpected is that?

0395 Once the inquirer grasps this idea of what a symbol is, then “adornment “is the appearance of an interventional sign-object (SO_i) that symbolizes ‘something that must be present but cannot be seen’, that is, an interventional sign-vehicle (SV_i).

0394 Ah, is this why hand-speech talk and adornment may be linked in their evolutionary development?

Both speech and adornment contribute a symbolic ‘something’ to a visual species impressa_2a.

0395 If I take the liberty to depict “decoding_2a” as the operation of a category-based nested form, performed by Wernicke’s region on the left of the brain, then a right-side mirror image appears in commitment_2c.

0396 The actuality_2c on the bottom corresponds to SV_i.  The actuality_2a at the top corresponds to SO_i.

The evaluation_2c on the right-side offers a SV_i that produces, by the left-side, an SO_i, that is a sensible species impressa_2a.

0397 The importation of hand-talk into communal settings with the domestication of fire introduces social construction.  After a few hundred-thousand years, the voice slowly gets added to hand-talk.  Once hand-speech talkemerges as an adaptation, with the appearance of our own species, Homo sapiens, vocal utterances adorn manual-brachial word-gestures to such an extent that their symbolic aspects become more and more integrated into hominin phantasms_2b, contributing to a new style of intelligibility_2c.

0398 Here is a picture of that new style.

0399 Replace the picture and pointing of the hand-talk word_2(2c) with the physicality and the imagery of a Paleolithic artifact_2(2c), then the artifact_2(2a) speaks for itself.

How?

Am I back to Jaynes’s awkward term, “auditory hallucinations”?

0415 In synaesthesia, impressions_2a cross modes.  Visual stimulates auditory.  Auditory triggers visual.  What is the sound of an image?  What is the image of a sound?

The strange part is that both hand-talk and speech-talk are rapidly decoded by the Wernicke’s region, located around the left temporal lobe, as well as other regions specialized for language.

As speech decouples from hand-talk, the archaeological record blossoms with innovative technologies, symbolic artifacts, and evocative adornments, including spectacular burials.

0416 But, the archaeological record of the Upper Paleolithic gives no indication that something weird is about to happen.

Here is a picture.

0417 By the time that humans in Eurasia are no longer interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans, they practice hand-speech talk as a dual-mode way of talking.  Speech is no longer merely an adornment to hand talk.  Speech has taken a life of its own.

Humans create artifacts that can speak to their owners.

0418 Julian Jaynes uses the term, “auditory hallucination”.

But, that is not a satisfying label for what the artifact says.  The artifact serves as a visual stimulus that triggers cross-modal synaesthesia, or spoken words, that are automatically decoded into a species impressa_2a.

0419 Okay, as far as an insight-filled modern psychologist is concerned, that species impressa_2a is “an auditory hallucination”.

However, as far as this examination is concerned, the species impressa_2a is also the sign-object (SO_i) of an interventional sign-relation.

Plus, the left and right hemispheres have specialized regions… phenotypes… that embody the human adaptation into the niche of the interventional sign-relation.

0420 Jaynes associates these specialized regions to the Wernicke’s region (in the left hemisphere) and the corresponding lateral region (in the right hemisphere).  Wernicke’s region on the left is specialized to rapidly decoding symbols (whether in the form of hand-talk or speech-talk) in the construction of a species impressa_2a.  Wernicke’s region on the right is specialized to constellate commitment_2c.  Commitment_2c (SV_i) stands for a species impressa_2a (SO_i) in regards to the normal context of what is happening_3a operating on the potential of ‘something’ happening_1a (SI_i).

0423 As the interglacial ends, around 10kyr, Neolithic tools signal the start of a new stone age.  Plant domestication spreads.  So does animal domestication.  The two productive trends join in the so-called Developed Neolithic.  Humans are told to give plants as food to their animals.

Told?

Think “auditory hallucination”.

0424 Here is a picture of the timeline.

0425 Then, something weird happens.

The first singularity begins.

The first singularity is portrayed in many of Razie Mah’s works, including The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace and An Archaeology of the Fall, available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

0426 But, I am not above repetition.

0427 When the current interglacial begins, the oceans rise as glaciers melt.  The rise is so significant that the Persian Gulf fills.  Twelve-thousand years ago, the Persian Gulf is a dry valley with a river gorge, home to two late-stone-age hand-speech-talking cultures, one Neolithic dryland farming and stockbreeding on the valley floor and one Mesolithic coast-dwelling and wetland-familiar in the river gorge.  The rise of the sea level drives them to the edges of the Persian Gulf.  The two hand-speech cultures become one speech-alone talking culture, the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia.

0428 The linguistic consequences of two independent cultures being forced together is well documented from historical studies.  The two languages get picked up willy nilly, without grammar, as a pidgin.  Then, the pidgin is routinized in the next few generations, resulting in a fully linguistic creole.

In this case, the original cultures practice hand-speech talk and the resulting creole ends up as speech-alone talk.

At the time the Ubaid forms, it is the only culture in the world practicing speech-alone talk.  All contemporaneous cultures engage in hand-speech talk.

In this regard, it is not surprising that the Sumerian language is unrelated to any large family of languages.

0429 But, there is something that is surprising.

0430 The differences in semiotic qualities between hand-speech talk and speech-alone talk account for the subsequent emergence of unconstrained social complexity in southern Mesopotamia.

As already noted, iconic and indexal hand-speech relies on implicit abstraction and serves to maintain the harmony among social circles within a tribe.  In other words, hand-talk and hand-speech talk facilitate constrained social complexity.  Teams are specialized, not people.

In contrast, purely symbolic speech-alone talk allows explicit abstraction .  Speech-alone talk allows anything to be labeled: parts, wholes, individuals, groups, and so forth.  This type of labeling encourages both labor and social specialization, as well as technical innovation. Speech-alone talk promotes unconstrained social complexity.

From its inception, the Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia has greater wealth and power, as well as technical superiority, compared to adjacent hand-speech talking cultures.

0431 So what happens next?

Nearby hand-speech talking cultures drop the hand-component of their hand-speech talk and begin to experience marginal increases in wealth and power promoted by the purely symbolic nature of speech-alone talk.

Speech-alone talk spreads from Mesopotamia to the rest of the world on the wings of mimicry.

0432 Here is a timeline for the Near East, starting with the first singularity.

0433 By the time that archeological evidence for the Ubaid is obvious (say, around 5800 B.C.), surrounding cultures are already dropping the hand-component of their hand-speech talk.

0434 Even though the Ubaid practices speech-alone talk, the bicameral mind persists.

Indeed, the bicameral mind persists through the Sumerian Dynastic, long after writing is invented. 

For hundreds of years, cuneiform writing is used to record transactions and inventories.  But, no scribe writes that the temple and the palace are competing power sources.  Surely, the scribes record events involving competition among factions and powers, but the explicit abstraction of “competition” has yet to be labeled.  Despite this, modern academics find it easy to project modern conflicts between state and church onto ancient civilizational structures.  Are they missing the mark?

0435 If Julian Jaynes is on target, then people in the Sumerian Dynastic do not think with subjective consciousness.  Instead, they do what their “auditory hallucinations” tell them to do.

In sum, people in these early civilizations cultivate a bicameral mentality.

0436 Let me say this again.

The first singularity marks the transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.    The Lebenswelt that we evolved in practices hand-talk (or hand-speech talk) and exhibits constrained social complexity.  Our current Lebenswelt practices speech-alone talk and exhibits unconstrained social complexity.

The semiotic characteristics of hand-talk and speech-alone talk account for the difference.

0437 Peirce identified three natural sign-relations: icon, index and symbol.

Here is a picture of how each way of talking employs Peirce’s natural sign-relations.

0438 The semiotics of hand-talk allows both sensible and social construction.  Hand-talk images and indicates its referents.  The referent precedes the manual-brachial word-gesture.  Because hand-talk words are distinct, they behave like symbols.  Symbols are different from one another.  They form a symbolic order that allows symbolic operations, such as grammar.  This is how hand-talk becomes fully linguistic.

0439 The semiotics of speech-alone talk appears to allow sensible construction.  Spoken words, such as “cat” and “chair” appear to picture and point to their referent.  But, they really don’t.  Spoken words do not picture or point to anything.  So, speech-alone talk ultimately favors social construction, even for familiar terms.  Consider “cat-nap” and “chair-person”.

0440 Along with social construction, spoken words can label anything.  Labeling is the first step in explicit abstraction.  Words are defined on the basis of meaning, presence and message.

0441 Finally, speech-alone talk is fully linguistic because spoken words are already symbols.  Each spoken word differs from other spoken words.  So, symbolic operations can spontaneously order discourse.

0442 Surely, cultural transitions from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk preserve continuity with respect to speech-talk, but not with respect to hand-talk.  To me, the hypothesis of the first singularity helps explain why there seems to be two paces to language evolution.  Linguistic data seem to show very slow evolution of words from long ago(corresponding to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, practicing hand-speech talk) and more rapid word-sound change in recent times (corresponding to our current Lebenswelt, practicing speech-alone talk).

0443 My summary of the impact of the first singularity starts with the following figure.

0444 The first singularity marks the evolutionary transition from the Lebenswelt that we evolved in to our current Lebenswelt.  It also denotes the cultural transition from hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk.

0445 Hand and hand-speech talk only permit implicit abstraction.  The purely relational structures of the interscope, the interventional sign and the bicameral mind engage implicit abstraction.  These triadic relations are holistic.  They are not analyzed.  They are performed.  Consequently, these relational structures facilitate constrained social complexity, where teams may specialize, but individuals do so only modestly.  Indeed, hand-speech talk adapts to conduct both sensible and social construction in teams and communities.

0446 Speech-alone talk is experienced as if it is hand-speech talk.  But, it is not, because speech-alone words do not image or point to anything.

This is tricky, because spoken words appear to allow implicit abstraction and facilitate explicit abstraction.  When the Wernicke’s region on the right adopts a spoken label as if it is a hand-talk word, then the person projects that assumption into the way an utterance is decoded.  I suppose that might increase the intelligibility of perception_2b in a specialized cultural venue, and if that is so, then speech-alone facilitates unconstrained social complexity.  That does not mean harmony among social circles.  It means the multiplication of explicit social circles based on specialized disciplinary languages and means of production.

0447 Given that the semiotic properties of hand-talk (and hand-speech talk) and speech-alone talk are radically different and given that the bicameral mind is an adaptation that pumps interventional sign-relations, then one may wonder how the evolved two-chambered mind performs in the milieu of unconstrained social complexity.

This is where the hypotheses of Julian Jaynes applies.