virus: Tools, Language and Text (is this an ok example?)

Joe E. Dees (jdees0@students.uwf.edu)
Thu, 18 Jun 1998 20:37:50 +0000


Tools, Language and Text: The Serial
Isomorphic Evolution of Symbolic Capacity
in Human Consciousness

by Salamantis

Abstract- Tool use and language use evolve though an identical
succession of developmental structures, and the evolution of text
shares most of these stages. Notwithstanding this isomorphism, these
three successively abstract further and further from the unmediated
action/perception gestalt contexture from which their form derives.
Thus each phase of the evolution of textual representation depends
upon the prior completion of the evolution of a similar phase of
language use, which in turn depends upon the prior completion of the
same phase of the evolution of tool use. This can be observed in
child development, and archeological and historical evidence suggests
that the evolution of symbolic capacity in human consciousness pursued
the same course.

(1) The Substrate: Perception, Recursion and Conscious
Self-awareness

Adult higher apes and infants eighteen months old and older
demonstrate self-awareness as registered in the mirror test (Social
Cognition and the Acquisition of Self, Lewis and Brooks-Gunn, 1979).
When their noses are daubed with red paint and they are presented with
themselves in a mirror, they will touch their own noses rather than
the reflected ones, demonstrating that they recognize that the images
are of themselves rather than of conspecifics (other apes or
children). Lesser apes and infants one year old or younger attend to
the reflected noses, indicating a lack of self- awareness. The
appearance of self-awareness is a result of the internalization, by
the infant, of the distinction between persons as material yet
purposively mobile (responding to their entreaties) and physical
objects as material and either inert, purposelessly mobile, or moved
by persons. This internalization links the infant's awareness - its
spatio-temporal sense of a distinct position to which perceptions flow
and from which actions emerge -- with its bodily location, as a unique
subjectivity separate from others. As the awareness of others leads
the infant to an awareness of self, the organism/environment interface
is elaborated into the more complex schema of self/soma/world/society.
Why is it that higher apes achieve self-awareness and lesser apes do
not? For that matter, why does self-awareness manifest when it does
in child development, rather than earlier or later? I hypothesize
that this is when the number of brain cells, combined with the degree
and structure of complexity of their interconnections, passes a
Godelian limit. Kurt Godel proved that any system of sufficient
complexity could not be both complete and completely true (1931). The
reason for this is the emergence of self-reference. When System A
achieves a certain complexity, it is capable of generating a
self-referential Statement B, which, in effect, asserts that it is not
a part of System A. If Statement B is nevertheless included in System
A, then it is false, and System A cannot be completely true; if, on
the other hand, it is excluded, then it becomes true, and System A
remains incomplete. When this Godelian limit is breached in the brain,
the capacity for self-reference emerges in an organism which is
already aware; in other words, participating in a dynamic interchange
of action and perception with its environment. It becomes aware of
inhabiting a unique perspective, neither identical with nor isolated
from its surroundings. Perceived information provides the array from
which attention, itself an action, selects and focuses upon an object,
thus directing and refining its perception and setting the stage for
action upon the object, action which itself will result in perceptual
change. See how the feedback loop spirals? When this feedback loop
is applied self-referentially (in phenomenology, not to the noema but
to the noesis), that is, not to the perceived and acted upon but to
the perceiving and acting of the organism itself, self-awareness
results. The two conditions necessary for this are the
size/complexity quotient of the brain and the conditioning of a both
physical and social environment. That this system is incomplete, that
is, open, allows for creative action when presented with novel
situations rather than having its responses to stimuli circumscribed
by instinct alone. Jean Piaget would say (The Grasp of Consciousness,
1976) that the moments when habits fail are those which impel
reflection, a recursion provoking the advent of self-awareness, and
that self-construction and world-construction are isomorphic and
correlative processes, evolving from the central interface between
organism and environment into progressively more elaborate polar self-
and world- schemas. It also entails that conscious and self-aware
beings can be neither completely self-transparent nor omniscient; nor
can they completely forget either their own existence or the world's.
They can be neither gods nor things; each must be its own particular
subjectivity, absorbing, through experience, its own memories, and
using their constituents as building blocks to create its own
imaginings and to choose towards which of these to strive.

(2) (How) Are We Different from Chimps?

The great apes breach the Godelian limit, but just barely. While they
demonstrate self-awareness, it is, at best, at the Piagetian level of
concrete operations, and most likely remains at the pre-operational
level. They hand-modify objects into implements in response to the
exigencies of a present need, then discard them. They neither use a
tool in the manufacture of the implement, nor do they retain it once
its immediate purpose is achieved, much less assemble a toolkit, and
they rarely combine implements in action. Their gestures are likewise
prompted solely by the circumstance in which they occur (Tran Duc
Thao, Investigations into the Origin of Language and Consciousness,
1984). They have a limited vocabulary of mostly instinctually based
calls, with at best traces of syntax. While it is true that they can
be trained to some degree in rudimentary forms of communication, they
have not been observed to spontaneously create or transmit open-ended
syntactical systems in the wild. They invent neither composite
technology, nor languages composed of arbitrary signs, and the
creation of text systems is far beyond them. We may share 98% of our
DNA with apes, but that other 2% is responsible for immense
differences.

(3) The Genesis and Development of Symbolic Capacity in Children

Infants engage their world first through the engagement of the
caregiver and the exploration of their bodily motility. When they can
begin to coordinate actions with perceptions (age three to eight
months), they begin an investigation of the properties of physical
objects and their ability to affect them (experiments with
contingency). As they learn person permanence, self-permanence,
object permanence, means-ends relationships (rudimentary causality)
and the self-other distinction (age eight to twelve months), they
begin to experience specific emotional states and to exhibit imitative
behavior. Between one and two years of age, children undergo a rapid
linguistic assimilation, a grasp of more complex causal chains and the
onset of symbolic representation (Lewis and Brooks Gunn, op. Cit.).
They speak in single words, then in pairs, then with progressively
differentiated syntax. (The Language of Children, Mathilda Holzman,
1997). Their vocabulary grows from the most concrete generic ("cat",
"dog") into the more integrated general ("animal") and the more
differentiated particular ("Persian", "Siamese", "poodle"
"terrier")(The Modularity of Mind, Jerry Fodor, 1983). They rarely
can be taught to begin reading before the age of three, and generally
not until the age of four or five.

(4) The Evolution of Technology

This evolution emerges from the substrate of bodily action, which
involves the unmediated appropriation of the object. The second stage
consists of the use of unmodified implements as a means of imitative
bodily extension (using a stick to reach, strike or fend off). Next
comes the bodily modification of the implement to more efficiently
accomplish the task. The succeeding stage, which adds another layer
of mediation, is the first appearance of a true tool, in which one
object (the tool) is used to modify another (the implement) for the
task, and toolkits may be assembled. At this point, true creativity
begins: implements begin to be fashioned which perform their
designated tasks in manners other than imitative extensions of bodily
action. This is the stage where brute signification of created
(rather than natural) objects occurs, and their meaning is identical
with (a mental image of) their use. There are, however, only a finite
(and small) number of basic shapes available; these are refined into
multipurpose tool types (wheel, lever, wedge, spring, etc.), where the
use of the tool in the particular task is subsumed by a conceptually
idealized shape which facilitates general applicability. At this
point the revolution begins. The machine principle of technology is
developed; objects that are useless in isolation and derive their
significance solely from their use as connectors are combined with
these tool types into useful composite wholes, which themselves may
serve as modules in more complex constructions, as long as they obey
physical constraints. Now an endless variety of machines may possibly
be constructed, an unlimited diversity of tasks may potentially be
performed, and the ranges of action and perception may be extended
into the micros and the cosmos, although certain standard machine
types will predominate. Finally, in the theoretical physical sciences
(physics, chemistry, etc.), all specific applications are transcended;
such abstract principles may be instantiated for application to any
task.

(5) The Evolution of Language

This evolution also emerges from the substrate of bodily action, and
begins with calls or movements intended to elicit the attention of a
responsive other. Next comes the indicative gesture, which directs
the attention of the other away from the gesturer toward something
upon which the gesturer wishes the other to focus. This may be seen as
arising from imitative bodily extension in the absence of an
implement; one is pointing at that which one would have touched with a
stick had one had a stick in hand. This indirect bodily action,
directed toward a responsive other, constitutes primordial
communication. The third stage involves modifying natural
vocalization into an imitative representation of an absent referent
(onomatopoeic words probably have their origin here). A small array
of primitive signals may be assembled, but many objects make no sound
to imitate. Genuine creativity makes its appearance here; the advent
of rudimentary but genuine sign systems, where the signs still have
specific referents, but are no longer constrained to imitate them.
These are refined into multipurpose signs (number names, primary color
and shape names, etc.), where the use of a sign to indicate whole,
single and particular things is subsumed by its employment to
represent general attributes which have been abstracted from them.
Still, the array of possible monosyllabic sounds is inadequate for
efficient discourse. A revolution, the phonemic principle of
language, is required, where sounds that are meaningless in themselves
are combined into meaningful wholes, some of which are multipurpose
signs and some of which derive their significance solely from their
use as links connecting and relating these multipurpose signs in
varying ways. These words may be combined into sentences obeying
syntactic laws that must themselves, to be useful, facilitate a
reliable representation and communication of the physical entities,
situations and relations being described. Now an unlimited number of
signs may be created, and spun into boundless streams of discourse,
although certain standardized constructions will predominate.
Finally, in algebra and symbolic logic, all specific references are
transcended, and any referent may be abstractly represented.

(6) The Evolution of Text

This evolution also emerges from the substrate of bodily action, and
is initiated by the need to direct attention to others, such as
predators, prey or conspecifics. It begins with mimicry, or bodily
imitation (representation) of the movements of present or absent
others, most likely paired with indicative gestures to indicate either
the other(s) being mimicked (if present) or the direction in which the
absent other(s) lie(s). Inanimate things (such as landmarks) are much
harder to mimic, however, and if absent can not be pointed out. In
such cases, the mimicry, or subjective bodily representation, would
require external objectification into the depiction of things and maps
(drawing in the dirt seems a likely first step). The picture
represents by means of imitation, and is intended to evoke in the
viewer the mental image of that which it depicts, or at least the
capacity to recognize the depicted, when one encounters it, by means
of its depiction's remembered similarity to it. In the case of maps,
the territory as a whole is the represented object. These pictures
become simplified and standardized into glyphs. However, many
meanings are not of corporeal entities; they are thus not subject to
depiction. The glyphs therefore accumulate secondary meanings, which
metaphorically refer to these undepictables. Such a glyphic
vocabulary is unwieldy, however; the Chinese system has over one
hundred thousand separate characters, many of which are barely
distinguishable and easily confused. The phonetic principle of text
overcame this difficulty. A small number of glyphs (an alphabet of
letters and numerals) which have progressively lost their original
reference meaning, are used to represent the phonemes of spoken
language and the basic numbers. They may thus be efficiently combined
into textual representations of any word or quantity, by means of
punctuation (such as: ; ! ? etc.) and arithmetical symbols (+, -, =,
etc.), which possess purpose solely as differing subspecies of
mediations between representational groups.

(7) Similarities, Differences and Dependencies

Technology and language both pass through the stages of direct bodily
action, mediated bodily action, imitative action, creative action,
eclipse of particularity by structure, the creation of composites, and
abstract generalization. Text evolves from mimicry through depiction
of types and numbers of objects to the representation of their
linguistic referents, first as individual glyphs and counting marks,
then as alphabetical and numeric composites. Technology involves a
physical action upon objects; language involves a symbolic reference
to anything conceivable. The creation of tools also created meaning
not found in nature -the tool came to represent its use. Thus the
first signs were tools, and technology evolved prior to and was a
condition for the possibility of language. Texts are both systems of
signs in their own right, and tools by means of which we represent the
language upon which their present form of existence depends. Text
underwent (from its divergence as depiction) an independent though
structurally similar evolution to language - independent due to the
differences inherent in auditory versus visual media, similar since
they were referred by the same species of mind to the same world.
Once the phonemic principle of language took hold, however, the
phonetic principle of text, with some exceptions (not all societies
are literate), followed. Thereafter, as the increasing capabilities of
an expanding spoken vocabulary co-opted progressively more of the
tasks previously requiring depiction, text was primarily placed (with
certain exceptions, such as maps, mathematics and musical notation) in
the service of language representation, and graphic depiction was
increasingly relegated to the realm of art.

(8) The Communication of Information in the Pre-linguistic Domain

Before telling (a kind of saying) became a viable means to communicate
a knowing, it had to be transmitted by demonstration, or showing.
This is the most intimate and concrete mode of communication,
requiring the spatio-temporal co-presence of the shower, the thing
shown, the showing of this thing, and those to whom it is shown. In
fact, in this mode, the showing and the thing shown are only divisible
if the latter is a separate physical object (pointing something out).
If what is being shown is a doing, such as swimming, or a making
(which is a kind of doing) such as knapping a handaxe, the
instrumentality and the expressiveness of the body (or the 'what to
do/make' and the 'how to do/make') are seamless. This knowing is
transmitted through observation and imitation of the doing or making,
and immediate feedback is available from the world concerning whether
or not those shown are gaining the having of the knowledge for
themselves (or whether they, too, can make/do). This knowing would
most likely be best retained by routinizing the sequence of actions
involved (Mind over Machine, Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986; The Logic of
Practice, Pierre Bourdieu, 1990), a procedure easily generalizable
into ritual.

(9) Linguistic Information Communication

Once people possessed a common language, a knowing could be
transmitted by telling, which was more flexible than showing. The
teller, the telling and those to whom it was told must still be
spatio-temporally co-present, but the presence of the thing told is
not required. This frees events to be communicated to those absent
from their occurrence, but permits lying, mistakes, miscommunication
and misunderstanding, for the feedback from the world required in a
showing may be omitted. One can tell another what/how to do or make
without doing or making oneself; one can only show by one's own doing
or making. Telling also permits the transmission of abstractions such
as theories, speculations, and ideas, which, lacking physical
instantiation, can not be shown. Unlike showing, telling is a coding
of the thing told. One listens to telling not as a showing is
observed, as a presentation of an event, but as a string of symbols
bereft of any spatio-temporality which belongs to that told of rather
than to its telling. There is no environmental context, no gestalt;
the knowing received through telling carries no memory. Mnemonics
such as rhythm, sibilance and rhyme (Goatfoot Milktongue Twinbird,
1978, Donald Hall), used to retain the told as it was told, would
naturally form the basis for early poetic epics.

(10) The Advent of Text

A common written code further abstracts the knowing from any
particular event. The writing must of course be co-present with the
writer, but the presence of neither the written of nor the written to
is required. The fluidity of discourse can be frozen like ice on a
sheet of papyrus, ripped from the lived worlds of both the teller and
the told, and sent unchanging across space-time to anonymous readers.
Now history can be recorded and knowledge accumulated and preserved,
freed from the vagaries of memory and the passing of masters. Science
begins to gleam in the alchemical eye of superstition, music takes the
first steps from melody to symphony, and from the synthesis of ritual
and poetry, theatre may be born. Logo-centric 'religions of the book'
may supplant prehistoric pagan rites and contend with each other, and
philosophy may begin to probe both their assertions and its
(11) A Recapitulation of Terms

Being, knowing and having are states; doing, saying and making are
processes. Knowing and having are modes of being, and knowing is a
having of knowledge. Likewise, saying and making are modes of doing,
and saying is a making of discourse. There are other dependencies,
also; one must be (although since life is involved in dynamic
organism/environment exchange even when at rest, all living being is
actually a becoming) in order to do, one must know in order to say,
and one must have in order to make. Showing, telling and writing may
involve doing or making, but are essentially forms of saying.

(12) Why Technology Had to Precede Language, and the March of the
Ur-Meme

The coordinated system of perception and action which humans possess
took millions of years to develop, and our huge and finely articulated
brains required constant selective reinforcement from the environment
in order to evolve. In this sense, our quick strong bright nimbleness
is a result of the pre-reproductive demise of a lot of slow weak
clumsy dumb ancestors. These are individual skills; those with them
have a prima facie reproductive advantage over those without them.
Language, however, is social. What possible use could it have been
for the first mutant to have a modest capacity for linguistic
expression in the absence of interlocutors? Language facility is
simply not a likely candidate for gradual evolution in the same manner
as hunting and gathering skills. It is much more likely that a
genetically dominant second order mutation in brain systems
organization hijacked an already elaborated hand-eye coordination
system and applied it to the "mouth-ear" nexus (Uniquely Human, Philip
Lieberman, 1991). In this way, the social benefits could be realized
in just a few generations. Once this mutation spread within a group
of hunter-gatherers, its members could yell for help better and both
express and apprehend more subtle emotional states - useful skills in
a nomadic foraging band. Being informationally rather than
biologically based, the machine, phonetic and phonemic principles of
tools, signs and texts were nevertheless most likely extrapolated from
the gestalt contexture of action/perception; the structures
underlining these therefore appear to constitute a combinatorial
Ur-meme (The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins, 1976). Remember the Gaia
Hypothesis (James Lovelock, 1979)? It states that the aggregate of
terrestrial life tends to regulate its own environment to facilitate
its own perpetuation. Now, imagine human minds as, due to the
evolution of their somatic perceptual structuring of their
surroundings, already favorably disposed environments in which these
principles, considered as informational forms of life, take root.
They would need to protect their niches and to replicate; the first is
accomplished by evolving to give the host environment a reason to have
them around (much like E. Coli bacteria facilitate digestion) and the
second by evolving ease of infection (transmitting/teaching the
principles to others). Once tool-craft got going, tool forms would
evolve to give the best selective advantage to those possessing them
at the same time humans would evolve to more quickly and efficiently
conceive of and produce better and better tools. Once language
piggybacked onto the co-opted coordination system, it would evolve to
be most easily absorbed into children's brains at the same time it
would offer a progressively greater selective social advantage to
those children whose brains were most permeable to it. The
evolutionary imperative is in this case exactly the opposite of that
of biotic killers such as influenza, measles, and gonorrhea, which had
to evolve to become less virulent to allow for their transmission
before the death of the host. In their case, the more efficient lose
the competition to those strains which manifest slower or less
completely. On the contrary, incubation of these informational life
forms grants a selective reproductive advantage to those infected; the
evolutionary exigencies therefore gravitate towards more communicable
forms with faster incubation and more global mental infestation.
Rather than virulent, these memes are budding symbionts; like mental
mitochondria. And so telling is more easily and widely communicable
than showing, and writing more amenable to distribution than telling.
So far this may seem mere speculation, but watch how it dovetails
with history.
Once texts began to be created, they became more desired as the
literati gained power and influence. Scholars and scribes seemed to
exist solely for the task of creating and replicating libraries of
texts, which seemed to exist solely to employ scribes and train
scholars. Mass production of tools and texts has led to corporate
culture, labor division and assembly lines, which in turn have
allowed the construction of mass communications systems, and mass
transit systems to distribute both the codes and their carriers.
These dendritic hybrids of tool, sign and text are connecting human
'neurons' into a terran brain, communicating our codes by means of
metacodes. Not only has the ground of past history beneath our feet
been excavated by means of our textually informed gaze, but the
horizon of the future has been dissolved into the present as our
televisions and telephones abolish space-time through instantaneous
communication (The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram, 1996). And
we have made countless copies of them all.

(13) Staring at a Screen Darkly

The advent of the Internet recombines the abolition of space-time
barriers to communication with the constant and instant availability
of (potentially) practically all textual knowledge, as computer aided
design and computer assisted manufacture threaten to leave the
proletariat with little beyond bourgeois leisure and a subsistence
stipend. The underclass will be known not as the unwashed, but as the
unwired. With every computer terminal a samizdat, governments (and
religions) will progressively lose their ability to tell the big lies
and make them stick (see Zapatista). Guerilla semioticians will
increasingly 'poach' the icons and symbols of governmental, religious
and corporate institutions and imbue them with different and
frequently subversive meanings (The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel
de Certeau, 1984). Authority will issue not from age, race, gender or
status, but from the internal consistency, logical cogency, linguistic
clarity and external coherence of one's positions. Spoken and written
language forms will continue vanishing as quickly as endangered
species, as informational selection takes its Darwinian toll. The
hegemony of employment over location will melt away as more and more
jobs can be performed from anywhere with power and a telephone line.
Global democracy will supercede multiple national sovereignty as
humanity's attachments to borders and boundaries will shrink along
with their relevance to the lives of an increasingly individually
sovereign citizenry (as Francis Fukuyama foresaw in The End Of
History, 1992). The policy debates now occurring within electronic
'town meetings' will be settled by cyber-votes. The Human Genome
Project will allow human beings to genetically know themselves
(Socrates and Hippocrates would be pleased) and to re-engineer their
codes to remove textual errors (inherited defects). If they like the
result, genocopies (clones) will be possible. In the coming
millenium, homo sapiens will be both weavers of and woven by, for
better or worse, the informational warp and communicational weft of a
co-evolutionary New Web Order.