Introducing the brain: language and invention (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 24, 2020, 18:08 (1394 days ago) @ David Turell

This theory says using language in thought leads to inventions:

https://psyche.co/ideas/our-greatest-invention-was-the-invention-of-invention-itself?ut...

"For more than 1.5 million years, archaic humans (earlier Homo species, such as Homo erectus) had been slowly diverging from the other great apes, developing a way of life marked by increased collaboration. They made simple stone tools, hunted together, might have cooked their food, and probably engaged in communal parenting.

"Still, their lifestyle remained largely static over vast periods of time, with few, if any, signs of artistic activity or technical innovation. Things started to change only in the past 300,000 years, with the emergence of our own species and our cousins the Neanderthals, and even then the pace of change didn’t quicken much until 40-60,000 years ago. (my bold)

"What caused our species to break out of the pattern set by archaic humans?...But from my perspective as someone who studies the human mind, one development stands out as of special importance. There is a mental ability we possess today that must have emerged at some point in our history, and whose emergence would have vastly enhanced our ancestors’ creative powers.

"The ability I mean is that of hypothetical thinking...This is the key to sustained innovation and creativity, and to the development of art, science and technology. Archaic humans, in all probability, didn’t possess it. The static nature of their lifestyle suggests that they lived in the present, their attention locked on to the world, and their behaviour driven by habit and environmental stimuli. In the course of their daily activities, they might accidentally hit on a better way of doing something, but they didn’t actively think up innovations for themselves.

***

"If Dor’s suggestion is right, then language would have paved the way for hypothetical thinking. Language enabled humans to learn about things they hadn’t experienced themselves... By combining linguistic elements in different ways, speakers could issue instructions for imagining an unlimited range of things – not only things their hearers hadn’t experienced but things no one had experienced... Gradually, they would have discovered that they could use this ability creatively, to tell stories, create myths, and deceive each other. And, crucially from our perspective, they would have discovered that they could use it to propose hypotheses.

***

"Dennett’s concern is with consciousness – the stream of thoughts, ideas and impressions running through our minds. It is tempting to think that producing consciousness is a central function of our brains, and perhaps of the brains of other animals too. Dennett suggests that this is not so. Our brains, are composed of multiple specialist systems, which operate non-consciously and in parallel. The conscious mind is a temporary level of organisation – a ‘virtual’ system – that we create for ourselves through certain learned habits of self-stimulation.

" Once they developed language, our ancestors would sometimes talk to themselves, at first by accident. And when they did, they would hear their own utterances and, often, react to them as they did to other people’s. When they asked themselves a question, they answered; when they admonished themselves, they worked harder; when they reminded themselves, they focused more, and so on – these reactions being generated spontaneously by non-conscious processes. Sometimes, one utterance would provoke another, and that another, and so on, generating a lengthy train of thought. This process of mental self-stimulation helped to coordinate the resources of different brain systems, and it proved useful, enhancing self-control and promoting sustained patterns of behaviour. Humans formed habits of private speech and gradually developed the ability to talk to themselves silently in inner speech. They also adopted other forms of mental self-stimulation, such as drawing pictures or visualising them. Elaborated and refined, the stream of self-generated speech and other imagery, and the associated mental reactions, came to form what we call the conscious mind.

***

"As they cultivated these habits, mentally stimulating themselves and paying careful attention to the results, humans did something else, too. They created the sense that there was a private world inside them, where their real self lived and thought, a world that sometimes seemed more real to them than the one around them. In a sense, they created their own conscious minds and selves.

"If Dor and Dennett are right, the key factors in setting humans on their unique path were the invention of a new way of communicating and the discovery of how to use it creatively, first socially and later in private. These activities are now central to human life, and our brains and vocal systems have probably become adapted in many ways to facilitate them, but they were initially cultural innovations. We might say that humans’ greatest invention was the invention of invention itself."

Comment: The author notes the stasis after arrival of our large-sized brain and the beginning of real use of concepts once usable language appeared. The large brain provided a space for complex spoken language and later writing and reading language.