10/10/25

A First Look at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” (Part 19 of 21)

0490 Julian Jaynes’s book applies to historical and psychological developments in our current Lebenswelt.

The following timeline pertains.

0491 The Ubaid of southern Mesopotamia is clearly present in the archaeological record by 5800 B.C.  According to the hypothesis of the first singularity, the Ubaid is the first stone-age culture to practice speech-alone talk.  However, nearby hand-speech cultures are already changing due to their exposure to the marginally greater wealth and power of the Ubaid.  They are losing the hand-component of their hand-speech talk.  Soon, they will practice speech-alone talk.

The Ubaid shows trends towards labor and social complexity from the very beginning.  These trends are slow at first.  A tripartite temple structure appears in some villages.  Some villages grow while other villages decline and are abandoned.  This supports the idea that explicit abstractions in labor specialization are re-organizing societies from social circles to circles of specialization.

0492 The judgment2c that unfolds into commitment2c incorporates explicit abstractions of prior generations.

0493 Now, let me conduct a thought experiment, concerning a formerly hand-speech talking culture near the Ubaid, that has dropped the hand-component of its hand-speech talk, and is now practicing speech-alone talk.

In generation one, an innovation is made in, say, obtaining copper from the heating of yellow, almost golden, rocks mixed with charcoal in a clay pot.

Generation two improves the process and adds more detailed spoken labels, including terms for the look of the rocks, the character of the charcoal, the degree that the rocks are ground, the proportion of rock and charcoal, and the shape and durability of the clay pot.  The entire process is holistic and the labels assist in consistency. 

Generation three treats the labels as if they picture and point to their referents, and the process turns into a recipe or… a modern anthropologist might say, “a ritual”.  Toying with the ritual allows more productive extraction of copper, but its getting harder to find those almost-golden rocks.  Substitutions must be made.  Emissaries are sent afield to locate more of the correct minerals.

Generation four processes the technical words as if they symbolize essences operating within the ritual.  The recipe-oriented process, done properly, appeases the gods.  If the gods are pleased, then copper alchemically coagulates in the heated clay vessel.

0494 What happens during this span of four generations?

The first generation does not have specialists in copper extraction.  The fourth generation does.  Each generation operates by converting the explicit abstractions of the previous generation into implicit abstractions. The implicit abstractions pour into their labels, as if the labels are their proper containers.  At the end, a new, specialized “social circle” manifests, demanding its place in the current social system.  The “copper refiners” cannot be ignored.  Their sensible and social constructions get incorporated into an expanding syncretic.

0495 All four generations rely on the bicameral mentality.

The bicameral mentality is not deceptive or manipulative, because one’s commitment2c is presumably to the harmony of all social circles.  After the first singularity, that commitment2c  includes labor and social specializations, just as prior to the first singularity.  Even civilizational conflict exhibits the patterns of a bicameral mind, according to Jaynes’s reading of Homer’s Iliad.  Introspection does not occur.  Every spoken word is taken on face value.

0496 Almost forty generations pass from the start of the Ubaid to the beginning of the Sumerian Dynastic.  Today, the Sumerian and Egyptian Dynastic periods are regarded by anthropologists as the earliest civilizations.  The Sumerian Dynastic is composed of city-states.  The Egyptian Dynastic rules a consolidated territory.

0497 Even after the official end of the Sumerian civilization, the bicameral mentality operates.

Ur III is the last empire to practice Sumerian as a spoken language.  Consider the story of the Tower of Babel.  Thingsspeak for themselves, even in a civilization that speaks both Sumerian and Akkadian.  The Bible attests to the land of Shinar speaking “one language” as if it is a civilizational mantra.

Consider Looking at Joseph Farrell’s Book (2020) “The Tower of Babel Moment” (appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in December 2023) for a possible case study.  The one language that the people of Shinar believe in is the language of the Tower of Babel, speaking for itself.

0498 Due to increasing complexity and volatility of ritual practices and statecraft, species impressae2a spontaneously generated by commitment2c become less and less capable of supporting intelligible phantasms2b.

A quest for authorization begins.

Elite traditions appear, formally triggering the operation of the bicameral mind by specialists in prognostication.

As civilizations become more and more difficult to manage, the two-chambered mind is increasingly clogged by explicit abstractions in the guise of implicit abstractions.  However, the bicameral mind is still anchored in a phenotypethat matches Jaynes’s proposed right and left Wernicke regions.

Is that too great a simplification?

Let me bring it down to our modern era.

When I look at all the meters and lab equipment operated by physicists, all the pipets and spectrometers used by biochemists, all the dissection tools used by anatomists, all the surveys collected by sociologists, and so on, I cannot help but think that the data speaks for itself.

Then, a voice in my head says, “Trust the science.”

Where did I hear that before?

0499 For prognostications, traditions that observe and measure certain natural events or intentional procedures allow expert-initiated events to speak for themselves, according to associations between certain features of the events and clues to future outcomes.

Eventually, the associations are recorded as recipes. And, the recipes are attributed to divine intelligences.

0500 Technical terms are later recorded as recipes. Recipes are regarded as both universal and intelligible.

Prognostication events2(2c) are decoded (by experts) and rendered into technical terms2(2a) that weave a kind of impression2(2a) for the inquirer to consider.

0501 In short, after the first singularity, the semiotic differences between spoken words and hand-speech words start to burden the holistic operations of the interventional sign-relation embodied in the bicameral mind.  Speech-alone talkpermits explicit abstraction to be regarded by commitment2c as an implicit abstraction.

0502 How long does that last before the bicameral mind breaks down?

This is one question that Jaynes’s research labors to answer.

10/9/25

A First Look at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” (Part 20 of 21)

0503 This first look at The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes, makes fun of the term, “auditory hallucinations”.

Why?

It turns out that the term applies to SVi(SOi), the dual actualities of the interventional sign relation.

It also turns out to be the embodiment of what evolutionary anthropologist, Steven Mithen, calls “synaesthesia” or “cross-modal sensations” that explain why spoken words exist.

0504 Indeed, a weird divergence comes to the surface in Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) The Language Puzzle(appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in September 2025).

0505 Steven Mithen asks, “Why do spoken words exist?”

His conscious answer is that they are acquired through synaesthesia in regards to things themselves.  In other words, interactions with things themselves somehow trigger stable vocal utterances, or spoken words, through… well… leaky neurons.

Yet, some other intelligence operates beneath the surface of his conscious answer.  His bicameral mind inspires him to admit that he rejects the gestural origin of language outright, because no current research into natural language deals with gestural language. That makes sense, because all civilized people only practice speech-alone talk.

0506 Yet, the inadmissibility of Mithen’s conscious admission triggers a search, by this reader, for clues to an alternate hypothesis, which this examination provides.  After the domestication of fire and after the evolution of voluntary neural control of the vocal tract, vocal utterances are added as adornments to hand-talk.  This habit contributes to the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens, who practices hand-speech talk from the beginning.

0507 So, Mithen’s synaesthesia is not like… working with neuronal crossover… from encountering things themselves to auditory assignments.

0508 Rather, synaesthesia becomes a cultural practice during night-time communal hand-talk.  Vocal utterances clarify hand-talk word gestures when they are difficult to see in the flickering light of a campfire.  Then, synaesthesia from the Wernicke’s region on the right trains the Wernicke’s area on the left to automatically decode either hand-talk or speech-talk or both.  Hand-speech talk is then practiced night and day.

0509 The habit of synaesthesia does not stop there, because sensory-modal crossover supports the logic of adornment.  A spoken word adorns a hand-talk word-gesture.  Likewise, ochre adorns skin.  Soon, seashells are strung on fiber to adorn ankles and necks.  Each of these adornments speak to the actuality of what they are adorning.

After humans interbreed with Neanderthals, between 65 and 45kyr, humans begin to carve and mold figures in earnest.  These artifacts speak for themselves.  This is synaesthesia at its most robust.  The visual realness of say, the lion-man,crosses over into the auditory realness of what the lion-man has to say.

After the first singularity, Julian Jaynes attributes the large eyes of Mesopotamian temple statuary to synaesthesia.  The large eyes trigger “auditory hallucinations”, where divine commitment2c induces meaning-filled species impressa2a.

0510 Here is a picture.

0511 However, there is a problem.

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

0512 In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, the intervention sign-relation is honed through natural… or is it cultural?… selection to promote harmony among diverse social circles.  What the lion-may says is always in tune with what needs to be done to stay alive in a hostile world.

In our current Lebenswelt, explicit abstractions from one generation are taken to be implicit abstractions by the next.  So, the way that an explicit abstraction divides the world, say, between experts and the people that are supposed to benefit from expertise, becomes implicit, and then more explicit abstractions are added, then they become implicit, until elite expert “voices” no longer make sense to the ones who are being ordered around.

0513 What is amazing is that, without introspection, elites follow their own bicameral voices with um… “mindless” obedience.

Does any of this seem vaguely familiar?

0514 So, how does one solve the problem of authorization?

This is the topic of Book III of Jaynes’s masterwork.

0515 Many solutions are ingenious.  They tend to use tricks to stimulate interventional sign-vehicles2c (SVi) that yield, through the two-chambered mind, oracular proclamations2a (SOi), that may be regarded as ‘more intelligible that what the questioner can achieve on his or her own’1(2a).

For example, an oracle tells Socrates that he is the wisest philosopher on earth (SOi).  So, Socrates spends the rest of his life trying to show that the oracle is wrong, which turns out to be an effective way to demonstrate that no one is as wise as Socrates (SVi).

0516 Here is a picture of what happens as consciousness slowly arises, during the breakdown of the bicameral mind.

The statement on the left describes the bicameral mind before the first singularity.

The statement on the right describes how civilizations attempt to rescue, maintain and (maybe even) exploit the bicameral mind, as it gets clogged down with explicit abstractions (that are absorbed into the next generation’s implicit abstractions).

0517 Yes, as soon as I start wondering whether my phantasm2b is intelligible, I engage in introspection, and a whole new vocabulary is needed.  These words arrive as explicit abstractions, that attain the qualities of implicit abstraction, then those qualities are formalized into recipes, and then those recipes are considered to be the essence of whatever the thing that we have labeled must be.

What have we labeled this thing?

“Subjective consciousness?”

0518 Remember that Jaynes’s term, “auditory hallucination” serves as a label for SVi(SOi).

10/8/25

A First Look at Julian Jaynes’s Book (1976) “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” (Part 21 of 21)

0519 I conclude this first look at Julian Jaynes’s breakthrough masterwork, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, with a brief summary.

I examine the First Mariner Books edition, published in 2000, which offers the advantage of a postscript… er… “afterword”, written in 1990, fourteen years after the first edition.

The afterword does not substitute for the masterwork, even though it neatly distills the complex argument into four propositions.

0520 Here are the four propositions.

0521 This examination commences with these four propositions.

Why do I pursuit of this topic?

In my view, Mithen’s 2024 work, The Language Puzzle, exhibits the hallmarks of both subjective consciousness and bicameral mind.

0522 This examination concludes with modifications on Jaynes’s four propositions.

0523 Each of these modifications have been discussed in full.

These modifications bind together Mithen’s nyet hypothesis, pertaining to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, and Jaynes’s historical hypothesis, pertaining to our current Lebenswelt.

These modifications demonstrate that our current Lebenswelt (items in blue) is not the same as the Lebenswelt that we evolved in (items in green).

These modifications propose how the first singularity is a major cause for this difference.

The first singularity stands between the green and the blue items.

0524 Steven Mithen publishes in 2024, almost precisely five decades after Julian Jaynes publishes in 1976.  So much has happened during the past fifty years.  Also, so little has happened, when it comes to developing Jaynes’s four propositions.  How strange it is that Steven Mithen’s bicameral mind may have constructed a foreword to Jaynes’s masterwork, without the author consciously realizing it.

0525 This is precisely the irony that permeates Jaynes’s landmark work.

Who could have known? 

So concludes this first look at Jaynes’s text.

09/30/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 1 of 23)

0001 The full title of the book before me is The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together The Six-Million-Year Story Of How Words Evolved (2024, Basic Books, New York).  Dr. Mithen is a Professor of Early Prehistory at the University of Reading.  He has published before.  More on that later.

The book works on the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle.  Fourteen chapters present the pieces.  The introduction and conclusion stage and arrange them.

0002 This current metaphor is very different than a glorious historical metaphor used in a book published almost three decades earlier.  The Prehistory of The Mind (1996) offers the historical development of the architecture of cathedrals in Europe as a lens for considering cognitive evolution.  The metaphor works well because the nave associates to general intelligence and side chapels associate to specialized mental modules.

0003 From the genetic divergence from chimpanzees to the start of bipedalism, the simple nave of general intelligenceadapts to cognitive challenges.

From the appearance of bipedalism to the domestication of fire, specialized modules are added to general intelligence, but the two do not integrate.  Indeed, both specialized modules and general intelligence are supported by their own, thick, walls.  The metaphor is the Romanesque cathedral.

From the domestication of fire until the first singularity (think, “the potentiation of civilization”), general intelligence integrates with specialized modules, presumably due to talk becoming fully linguistic.  Language becomes the walls, supported by flying buttresses of automatic decoding.   The metaphor is the Gothic cathedral.

0004 Here is a picture.

0005 The metaphor is so wonderful that Razie Mah publishes the e-book, Comments on Steven Mithen’s Book (1996) The Prehistory of The Mind as one of the readers that accompanies the masterwork, The Human Niche, in the series A Course On The Human Niche (available at smashwords and other e-book venues).

0006 Mithen’s approach is also echoed in the work of another evolutionary anthropologist, Michael Tomasello, working at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, as discussed in Comments on Michael Tomasello’s Arc of Inquiry (1999-2019) (by Razie Mah, also see blogs for January through March, 2024).

0007 Mithen’s approach is also reflected in another review that belongs to the series, A Course On The Human Niche.  The title is Comments on Clive Gamble, John Gowlett and Robin Dunbar’s Book (2014) Thinking Big.  In this review, social circles turn out to be very important in hominin evolution.  Mammalian brain size roughly correlates to group size.  So, the larger the hominin brain grows, the larger the group.

Not surprisingly, Mithen’s metaphor indicates the social circle under the most intense selection pressure, irrespective of group size.

0008 What does this imply?

Obviously, group size is not the crucial factor in hominin evolution.

Whatever is increasing hominin brain size is.

0006 To me, it is not surprising that Mithen has not encountered Razie Mah’s review of his 1996 work, even though it is one of the few more-than-surface reflections on The Prehistory of The Mind available.

Perhaps, the same will go for this blog, which will take Mithen’s metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle quite literally. 

09/29/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 2 of 23)

0007 Imagine a jigsaw puzzle.

In a way, a jigsaw puzzle is a purely relational structure.

0008 In order to solve the puzzle, one must dyadically connect each puzzle piece to other pieces.  Sometimes the image on a puzzle piece offers a clue.  Other times, an unusual edge catches the eye.  Either way, one edge of one puzzle piece will fit with one edge of another piece in a way that is intuitively obvious.

0009 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 in comprehending the triadic relation diagrammed above.  The triadic normal context of a match3 brings a dyadic actuality2, {one edge [fits] another edge}2, into relation with the monadic potential that ‘the fit will be intuitively obvious’1.

0010 The category-based nested form is not the only triadic relation in play.

In terms of the natural sign-typology of Charles Peirce, the image is an icon. The edge-shape is an index.

0011 An icon is a natural sign-relation, whose sign-object is determined on the basis of similarity, imagery and other characteristics of firstness.  Firstness is a category, corresponding to the monadic realm of possibility.

0012 An index is a natural sign-relation, whose sign-object is determined on the basis of contiguity, cause and effect, action-reaction and other characteristics of secondness.  Secondness is a category, corresponding to the dyadic realm of actuality.  Secondness contains two contiguous real elements.  For nomenclature, the contiguity is placed in brackets.  For example, for Aristotle’s hylomorphe, the two real elements are matter and form.  The contiguity?  I propose to use the word, “substance”.  So, for Aristotle, a thing is matter [substance] form.

0013 So, jigsaw puzzles contain pieces that are icons and indexes.

What about the third type of natural sign?

What about the symbol?

Well, if I follow the pattern for icons and index, the symbol is a sign-relation whose sign-object is determined on the basis of what?… not imagery… not indications… how about the fact that each symbol has to be different from any other symbol.  Of course, nobody thinks about that when they use the word, “symbol”.  Indeed, this attribute sounds positively ridiculous, even though correct.

0014 For example, the moon offers an image of a nearby planetesimal.  The moon points to the sun, because its every changing face is due to sunlight striking its surface.  Then, I ask, “How can the moon be a symbol, if it is the only symbol and there aren’t any other moons?”

To which, I say to myself, “Well, why don’t I go out one night, away from the city, away from the camp, and sit myself down in its pale light and ask it, ‘What on Earth do you symbolize?”

0015 Strangely, this is not what any of our ancestors in the Lebenswelt that we evolved in could ever ask.

Why?

The Homo genus practices hand talk, then adds speech to hand talk, then ends up with speech-alone talk.

Hand talk belongs to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.

Hand talk words image or point to their referents.

They serve as images and icons.

So, where is the symbol in hand talk?

09/27/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 3 of 23)

0016 Chapter one introduces the idea that the author will present pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

In chapter fifteen, the author assembles the pieces.

0017 Chapter two presents a brief rendition of human evolution.

Here is a list, with a few items that Mithen does not mention, stopping before the evolution of the Neanderthal and our own species, Homo sapiens.

0018 Here is one item that Mithen does not mention.  Once bipedalism is an adaptation to mixed forest and savannah, Michael Tomasello’s concept of obligate collaborative foraging becomes relevant.  See Razie Mah’s blog for January through March, 2024.  Specialized cognitive modules may be adaptations to the mental and physiological demands of particularly successful teams.  Over generations, hominins find it easier and easier to learn and perform team tasks.  Plus, their brains increase in size with each successful team.

0019 Chapter three offers a disputation on words and language. A key technical term is “displacement”. “Displacement” acknowledges the reality that the referent is not present when a spoken word is used.  I can say the word, “moon”, without the planetesimal being visible.  But, where does the word, “displacement”, appear in this chapter on words and language?  And, why does it appear in chapter six, concerning iconic and arbitrary words?

0020 Yes, what about the spoken word, “displacement”?

Is “displacement” located, as presence1 in the following category-based nested form?

The triadic normal context of definition3 brings the dyadic actuality of a spoken word or statement2 into relation with the monadic potential of ‘meaning, presence and message’1.  

0021 Of course, in speech-alone talk, “displacement” refers to the reality that the referent is not present when a spoken word is used.  But, is that reality2 the presence1 underlying the term “displacement”?  If the answer is “yes”, then the message must be something like, “Hey, you better figure out whether the displaced referent has… um… the meaning that you think it has.”

0022 The other day, I “loaned” a friend twenty bucks.

Do I think that I’m getting that money back?

0023 That raises the question, “What is the presence1 that characterizes the word, ‘displacement’?”

On one hand, the referent is what is displaced.

On the other hand, what goes into that displacement?

0024 Mithen skirts around these ridiculous issues  After all, displacement is so obvious that it appears in chapter six (On Iconic and Arbitrary Words) and not in chapter three (Words and Language).

09/26/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 4 of 23)

0025 Okay, let me consider what is displaced when I utter the term, “piece in a jigsaw puzzle”.

0025 What is the reality that is not present when the spoken term is used.

Well, look.  A referent is pictured in the red circle.  The red circle indicates a referent.

How intuitively obvious is that?

0026 At the same time, I cannot ignore the dyadic actuality where two real elements, corresponding to the edge of one piece and the edge of another piece, are contiguous, [fits].

0027 Plus, should I neglect that there is a normal context that characterizes what is happening?

0028 To me, not only is the referent displaced by a spoken term, but the entire nested form that relates to the spoken term is not present, or is present only in potential1, in the normal context of definition3.

Can I see the meaning, presence and message in the possibility of ‘an obvious fit’1?

Is this why I am never going to get my “loan” back?

0029 But, what am I really asking?

Perhaps, the question that I raise is, “Is a word like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle?”

I ask, “Can I take Mithen’s ‘language puzzle’ literally?”

In the normal context of definition3, the actuality of a spoken word or term2 emerges from (and situates) the potential that spoken words sensibly fit together and that the fit is so good that it is easy to recognize1.

0030 But, what about the referent?

Yeah, what about the piece of a jigsaw puzzle that is in the red circle?

Well, the referent has three commendable features.  The first is the image (or the fragment of a big picture) that it bears.  The second is that it can join other pieces in an assembly of adjacent pieces.  The third is that the thing that the spoken word would picture or point to, if it could serve as an image or index, is displaced.

0031 It makes me wonder how speech-alone talk could bootstrap itself.

Well, Mithen has a hypothesis.

But, before I get that far, I want to suggest that manual-brachial gestures can be a source for words because they do not fully displace the referent.  Instead, they call the referent to mind through the natural act of picturing and pointing.

In this regard, manual-brachial word-gestures allow a literal appreciation of the metaphorical statement that words are like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.

0032 Here is a diagram of the corresponding category-based nested form.

The normal context of working in a team3 brings the actuality2 of patterns of iconic and indexal hand-talk2 into relation with the potential of ‘assembling and locking in a big picture’1.

Can I envision the meaning, presence and message1 that underlies each manual-brachial word-gesture2 in the normal context of team-work3?

Working in a team is what is happening3a.  The possibility of ‘something happening’1a corresponds to ‘assembling the pieces, locking them in and visualizing the big picture’1a.

09/25/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 5 of 23)

0033 What about monkeys and apes?

As far as psychological experiments with chimpanzees are concerned, these great apes practice the relationality inherent in the category-based nested form, each on his or her own and not in coordination.

0034 Here is a picture.

0035 For example, a captive chimpanzee may be challenged by a banana, suspended above reach on a string from the ceiling of an enclosure containing several large boxes.  The chimpanzee may figure out that the boxes may be stacked, allowing access to the banana.  The chimpanzee performs whatever it takes to turn the metaphor that a word is like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle into something literal.  But, it cannot um… displace the referent.

0036 Say what?

Here is the deal that becomes plain in chapter four, concerning monkeys and apes.

0037 How crazy is that?

If I use the principle of uniformitarianism, and I work forward from the common ancestor with the chimpanzee (say, 7 Myr), who solves challenges for food, and I work backwards from civilized folk, who will solve a puzzle because it offers a challenge, then do the forward and backward exercises meet in the same… um…. location?   I mean, does the label, “challenge”, remain the same when passing between the starting point and the end point?

0038 If the word, “challenge”, is a piece of a jigsaw, then one edge will eventually connect through other pieces to a specific reward, especially food, and a different edge will eventually connect to a reconceptualization of the specific reward, as something that might be called, “satisfaction”.

0039 What does this imply?

Well, if I take the metaphor that a word is like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle literally, then the content-level actuality2a in the following two-level interscope corresponds to a word, whether gestural (as in sign-language) or spoken (as in speech-alone talk).

0040 Obviously, this is what monkeys and chimpanzees do, with the chimpanzees performing better.  Once the pieces fit into an assembly, then the assemblies fit together, and the food is obtained.  The referent is not displaced.  The challenge is to sensibly construct a solution.

0041 Often enough, biologists stop with this sensible construction and go on to say that the general intelligence of monkeys and apes is adaptive, because it solves problems.  But, the spoken term, “the cognitive capacity of monkeys and apes”, is a label that introduces a perspective-level actuality2c, that does not exist for monkeys or apes.  Monkeys and apes do not realize1c that they have satisfied the conditions whereby the actual solution2b can be displaced by the term, “challenge”2c.

But, the biologist does.

09/24/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 6 of 23)

0042 Here is a picture of the perspective-level that the biologist introduces with his explicit abstraction.

0043 On the content level, the normal context of a match3a brings the actuality of the dyad, {one edge [fits into] other edge}2a into relation with the potential of ‘locking in’1a.

On the situation level, the normal context of wholeness3b brings the actuality of the dyad, {assemblies [fit with] one another}2b into relation with the possibilities of ‘assembling sections’1b.

On the perspective level, the modern biologist explicitly denotes the possibility of ‘a big picture’1c, that carries the message that biology accounts for the underlying two-level interscope1c.  If the ability to solve cognitive challenges in order to get to a reward2c could speak, it would say, “I am a manifestation of general intelligence.”

0044 This implies that the discipline of biology identifies2c a big-picture1c (as message1c) contextualizing the underlying sensible construction (as presence1c) as a niche (as meaning1c), within the normal context of primate natural selection3c.  Natural selection3c acts like a definition3c.  One label for the adaptation2c is “general intelligence”2c.  Or, maybe, the label is “solving challenges”2c.

Uh oh, does that make sense?

Here is a picture of what I just said.

The perspective-level actuality2c is an adaptation.

But, the word, “adaptation”2c, implicates the entire nested form.

Is that what is displaced?

The entire nested form?

0043 Hmmm, should I mention that only spoken words can apply labels that serve as explicit abstractions?

Manual-brachial word gestures do not apply labels.  Instead, they offer iconic and indexal sign-relations that holistically yield implicit abstractions.

In short, the modern biologist performs displacement for monkeys and apes through explicit abstractions based on the disciplinary terminology of contemporary science (circa 2024).

In the Lebenswelt that we evolved in, hominins somehow figure out how to engage in displacement (that is, use words), without the advantage of explicit abstractions.

0044 The problem with using the jigsaw puzzle as a literal analogy, rather than as a metaphor for what the biologist is doing in the name of evolutionary science, starts with this observation.

Speech-alone talk facilitates explicit abstraction, because spoken words can label anything, even things that cannot be pictured and pointed to.  In other words, speech-alone talk always and automatically engages in displacement.  So, how can a symptom explain the cause that produces it?  It can only do so if a symptom pretends to harbor its own cause.

0045 Say what?

Without displacement, the spoken word does not exist. But, displacement can exist without the spoken word.

Displacement can exist when a manual-brachial gesture serves as an icon or an index (that is, a natural sign) of its referent.  The referent exists before the gesture-word.  The word-gesture pictures or points to its referent, even if the referent is not present.  Yes, that sounds like “displacement” to me.

0046 What does this suggest?

Well, Mithen’s text projects “displacement” into the sensible construction that describes how both words and jigsaw puzzle pieces share similar natures. So, the biosemiotician in me (see Razie Mah’s blogs for January through June, 2025, collected into the e-books, Biosemiotics As Noumenon, 1 though 3, available at smashwords and other e-book venues)…

0047 …offers a biosemiotic version of the perspective level.

The perspective-level normal context of natural selection3c brings the actuality of displacement (as an adaptation)2cinto relation with the potential of ‘the hominin niche, an evolutionary big-picture, and the discipline of biosemiotics’1c.

Does this option appear more elegant?

Surely, the iconicity and indexality of manual-brachial gestures offers a realistic path for bipedal australopithecines to perform displacement.  A manual-brachial gesture can image (pantomime) or indicate (point to) a referent, even when the referent is not present.  It does so because it is a natural sign of the referent.

0048 Of course, Mithen comes to an alternate conclusion in the section (in chapter four) titled “Are ape-gestures the equivalent of words?”.  He rules out the option that language evolves in the milieu of manual-brachial gestures, rather than vocalizations.  Why?  Well, the gestural option does not explain why all civilized folk practice speech-alone talk.  

0049 Okay, somehow, in human evolution, the oral-auditory system gets drawn into fully linguistic hand-talk.

And then, maybe, a hominin species practices this weird hybrid, hand-speech talk, for hundreds of thousands of years.

And then, almost miraculously, two of these many hand-speech talking cultures get forced, by circumstances, into the same territory, where they don’t fight, but rather interbreed.  In doing so, they end up with a pidgin, then a creole, and this creole doesn’t have a hand-talk-component anymore.  That one culture is the first to practice speech-alone talk.  Also, that culture creates one of the first civilizations.

0050 Oh, yeah.  That option is totally outrageous.

0051 Mithen has other reasons for rejecting consideration of gestural origins of language.

Apes do not engage in iconic gestures.

How would apes distinguish one iconic gesture from another?

The highly specialized nature of human anatomy and neurology for speaking and listening implies a very slow and gradual evolution.  What could have caused these changes in the anatomy of the vocal tract and in the neurology of voluntary control of the voice if language has already evolved in the milieu of hand talk?

0052 On these bases, Mithen focuses only on vocalization as the pathway to language.

Which is sort of funny, because this examiner will apply Mithen’s insights to manual-brachial gestures as… um… the milieu in which language evolves.

09/23/25

Looking at Steven Mithen’s Book (2024) “The Language Puzzle” (Part 7 of 23)

0053 Well, after making a commitment to vocalization as the only pathway for the evolution of language, chapter fivecovers speaking and hearing.

Here is snapshot.

0054 This comparison is only the start.  Because vocalization is not under voluntary control at the start of bipedalism, the lineage will have to wait almost three million years before language can evolve with Homo heidelbergensis (who appears along with or after the domestication of fire, between 0.8 and 0.6 Myr).

Or something like that.

0055 So, why not start with manual-brachial gestures?  Bipedalism (present by 3.5 Myr) enslaves the foot and frees the hand.  The arms and hands are already under voluntary control.  Plus, manual-brachial gestures can pantomime and point.  They can serve as iconic and indexal natural signs.  The referents are imaged or pointed to.

The next challenge is to frame displacement in terms of two issues.  First (M), a chimpanzee will almost always use its general intelligence to solve problems to get food for itself.  In other words, the great apes forage for themselves.  Second (N), there must be a way to frame the displacement that occurs with manual-brachial gestures.

0056 Indeed, these issues crop up in chapter six, concerning iconic and arbitrary gestures… er… words.

0057 I start with the first issue (M). The period of concern starts at 4.5 My and accounts for the emergence of the earliest species of the Homo genus, around 2.5 Myr, along with Oldowan stone tools.

0058 Two adaptive changes (M1 and M2) key into the transition from living in tropical forests (characteristic of the common ancestor, at 7 Myr) to mixed forest and savannah (at 4.5 Myr).

0059 The first adaptive change (M1) is anatomical.  Bipedalism enslaves the foot and frees the hand to carry things, ranging from babies to rocks.  Also, the hands (“manual”) and arms (“brachia”) are capable of communicative gestures.  Bipedal species travel from one location of seasonally rich resources to another.  They travel in bands (50).  So, a certain amount of cooperation among family (5) and friends (5) is necessary.

0060 The second adaptive change (M2) is… well… may I say, “cultural”? 

With all the travel, settling in and packing out, there is less time for individual foraging.  Indeed, individual foraging does not provide enough to keep each person in the band alive.

However, a team of around 15 souls can gather enough to feed a band of 50.  Well, no one thinks of it so analytically.  On a good day, a team of around 15 can gather enough to feed all their family (5) and friends (5).  Yes, that covers everyone in the band, more or less.  On any given day, a band of 50 supports two or three teams.  One is bound to get lucky.