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Unlike other activities, like making tools, communication allows individuals to experience their own actions and their effects on others. This is because communication involves a shared experience between the speaker and the listener.This shared experience is key to understanding categorical concepts like cause and effect, as well as the idea of using actions to achieve goals.To understand cause and effect, you need to see how one action leads to another. Communication provides this opportunity because the speaker can see how their words affect the listener.This is different from toolmaking, where the effect is on an inanimate object, making it harder to grasp the connection between action and outcome.Communication also helps us understand the idea of using actions to achieve goals. When we speak, we have a purpose in mind, and we use our words to achieve that purpose.This is harder to grasp with activities like toolmaking, where the focus is on the physical process rather than the underlying intention.The ability to experience cause and effect, and to understand goals and intentions, were crucial steps in the development of consciousness.Communication, particularly speech, provided the ideal platform for these abilities to emerge, ultimately leading to the development of self-awareness.
Appendix: The Aptness of Communication for Mediating the Emergence of Consciousness
Communication, particularly speech, was crucial for the emergence of consciousness in hominids and Dewart posits that the unique properties of communication allowed hominids to experience their own reality, efficacy, and finality. Dewart argues that experiencing reality, efficacy, and finality requires conceptualization, which was unavailable to pre-human hominids. These are categories of understanding that cannot be derived solely from sensory information.
While hominids could engage in activities like tool-making, these actions did not offer the opportunity to experience the cause-and-effect relationship in a way that could lead to the conceptualization of efficacy and finality. Communication, on the other hand, allows the communicator to experience the direct impact of their actions on another being, the communicand. This creates a feedback loop that enables the hominid to perceive the relationship between their actions and the resulting effects, paving the way for the development of these crucial categorical concepts. It is communication that allows for the experience of cause and effect.
The example of a child learning to speak illustrates the process of discovering communicative efficacy and finality. While a child today has the advantage of learning from others, the underlying principle remains the same: the child must ultimately discover these concepts within themselves. Hominids aboriginally had to discover these concepts without external guidance. The comparison highlights that the inherent properties of communication itself, rather than external instruction, make this discovery possible.
Communication is Unique:
Experiencing Cause and Effect:
Communication allows the communicator to experience both the cause (their signaling behavior) and the effect (the conveyance of meaning to the communicand). This is possible because the communicator can empathize with the communicand, understanding the effect of their communication from the receiver’s perspective. This ability to perceive both sides of the communicative act enables the communicator to experience the efficient causality of their actions. Furthermore, communication allows the communicator to differentiate between the act of signaling and the intent behind it, highlighting the final causality, the purpose driving the communication. Emphasis is placed on the role of empathy in experiencing efficient causality and the distinction between signaling and intent in understanding final causality.
Understanding Goals and Intentions:
The crucial difference between communication and tool making lies in the object of the action. In flint-chipping, for example, the hominid acts upon an inanimate object, the flint. While the hominid can observe the changes in the flint, they cannot empathize with it or experience the effect of their actions from the flint’s perspective. This limits the understanding of the cause-and-effect relationship. In contrast, communication involves acting upon another being, the communicand. The communicator can empathize with the communicand, experiencing the effect of their communication from the receiver’s perspective. This shared experience is crucial for understanding both efficient and final causality.
The Development of Consciousness:
The ability to experience one’s own efficacy and finality through communication lays the groundwork for experiencing reality as such. While any animal can experience its own organism and activities, this does not equate to experiencing reality as real. Communication, however, introduces the element of assertiveness. The communicator is not merely acting but is actively conveying meaning and intent. This assertiveness, coupled with the experience of efficacy and finality, allows the communicator to experience their actions and themselves as real and significant within the world.
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