The importance of human language (Animals)

by David Turell , Friday, June 28, 2024, 19:02 (127 days ago) @ xeno6696

xeno: But coming back to Jaynes, he details the process of metaphor building and extension that to my mind unlocks the key as to bbbhowbbb we ended up dominating the planet, which ought to be a fascinating question for most of us. It also explains why we were relatively "silent" prior to recorded history--we lacked the language that allowed us to spill into new places.

DHW: But we did spill into new places! Our non-sapiens and our sapiens ancestors’ bones are to be found all over the world, as are their artefacts. It’s not language that enables exploration and invention, though no doubt exploration and invention would have resulted in an increased vocabulary of sounds. Again, I’d say it is our intelligence that has given us domination, and our language is a tool invented by our intelligence but also enabling us to use, communicate and expand our intelligence to maximum effect.

Matt: So when I mean "spill into new places," I didn't mean geographically. I meant the mental world. An exercise that Julian Jaynes has the reader perform that is IMHO a radical exercise, is to read the OT Book of Amos, and then contrast that with the OT book of Ecclesiastes.

IIRC Amos is dated around 760BCE and Ecclesiastes is dated around 450BCE. Why that's important is that the time range is contemporaneous with various Greek classics that were also being written (Antigone was written in 441BCE) The important contrast is that by the time of Ecclesiastes, you have someone who is speaking about their own internal life using introspective words and phrases.

There's a co-evolution going on between our use of language and our ability to be conscious. Jaynes makes the point very well I think, that our ability to be conscious--entirely relies on language--which is good because it means we can *always* increase our ability to be conscious just by virtue of having a deeper vocabulary. However, the process of building language is by metaphor and analogy--ideas don't spring up on their own without it being related to some prior concept.

To try to make this point a little more concise, our intelligence and ability to be analogical isn't complete without language. Intelligence is necessary but not sufficient to explain our difference with the rest of the animal world. Our intelligence creates new connections but only on the foundation built by prior words and concepts.

Jaynes had a different goal for his book, so he didn't make this argument, but I would posit that other animals are capable of analogical thinking, the separator between us is the invention and use of language. Once we began the process of using analogy and metaphor to begin expanding our vocabularies, more and more things in the world began to enter our orbit. And in the time period that Jaynes focuses on, he maps a transition between what he calls "bicameral" thinking with what we take for granted today.

In Amos, God barks commands to the people, no inner space. In Ecclesiastes, we have a rich internal space. You might think like I did when presented with this argument--maybe there was a different audience for the texts, however ancient Greek and Sumerian historical records ALSO track an identical development of language over the exact same time periods. The further back in time, the more concrete and specific the language. Less room for a rich mental consciousness. Less room for an inner space. This ratchets between 2000BCE and the time period he covers, the beginning of the end for bicamerality occurring in the Bronze Age collapse in the 200yrs of either side of 1177BCE. The core of his argument is this: the consciousness that we take for granted today is the result of metaphorical and analogical reasoning that built the language structure that in turn created and deepened the space for that consciousness in the first place. Consciousness, defined as I have elsewhere as the ability for introspection, is different in kind between the neolithic age and today. And that consciousness is itself the sole difference us and all the other creatures. You simply cannot have what we have without language--language is what makes consciousness possible. (And as I pointed out earlier, even the word "consciousness" didn't exist until John Locke invented it.) This means precisely that we have a greater ability to be conscious than our ancestors.

If you stick to just the left-hand column at this site, you'll get very quickly the partial picture of where my head is at on this issue. The Bicamerality part of his thesis is controversial but the observations he makes stand on their own outside of his more radical ideas.

There is no question language broadens the form of consciousness we have. But my dog is conscious in a minor way. I see him head for the kitchen meal with intentionality. He must be conscious in his simple way, and he knows many words.