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Animals communicate to survive, but they don’t understand how their signals work. They just do what comes instinctively.Humans, on the other hand, are aware that their signals have effects on others. This awareness is the key difference between animal and human communication (i.e. speech).Speech emerged when our ancestors realized that their signals influence the actions of others. This realization allowed them to communicate with intent.This new understanding of communication also led to a new understanding of reality. Humans began to see the world as something that could be talked about and shared.
Early humans were very good at recognizing patterns in their environment. They could see that certain actions always led to certain results.They could also understand the absence of things. For example, they could tell when a signal was missing.This ability to see patterns and absences helped them to understand that their signals had effects on others. The communicator realizes that communicands react to their signals in the same way that they react to the signals of other communicators.This realization led to the ability to speak with intent. They could now choose signals to achieve specific goals.Speech likely developed from vocal signals rather than visual ones. This is because humans can only control their vocal sounds by hearing them, which enables them to understand how sounds affect others. Conversely, the way that proto-human central nervous systems were able to process information caused hearing and vocalization to feed back into each other. This feedback loop continues to be the foundation of experience that is present to itself.
Speech led to the development of thought. Thinking is speaking to oneself, using imagined sounds instead of audible ones.Thought allowed humans to reflect on their own experiences. They could now understand themselves as experiencers.This self-reflection led to the emergence of immediate consciousness. Humans became aware of their own experiences in the moment, without needing to communicate them.
Human reproduction is unique because it involves the transmission of consciousness. This is done through language and culture, not genes.This new form of reproduction is much faster and more flexible than biological reproduction. It allows for the rapid accumulation and transmission of knowledge and skills.Human society acts as a “womb” for consciousness. It provides the environment in which individuals develop their ability to think and experience.
Human society is built on speech. All human relationships and institutions are shaped by what people say to each other.Culture determines social organization, not the other way around. The rules of human society are created and maintained through language.
Absent-mindedness is a flaw in consciousness. It arises from a lack of clarity about the source and purpose of speech.This flaw originated in our ancestors’ imperfect understanding of how communication worked. They could see that signals had effects, but they didn’t fully grasp their own role in creating those effects.Absent-mindedness is perpetuated through culture. We learn to think and speak in ways that obscure our own agency.
Chapter V: The Emergence of Consciousness
This chapter explores the evolutionary transition from animal communication to human consciousness, and the role that speech played in this development. Dewart proposes a multi-stage process, starting with the perception of communicative causality, leading to the emergence of immediate consciousness and eventually to thought. The chapter also discusses the self-reproductive nature of consciousness and the socio-cultural matrix that sustains it, concluding with an analysis of the origins and implications of “absent-mindedness”.
How Speech Emerged
Human communication, characterized as “speech,” differs from animal communication in its assertiveness. This assertiveness arises from the speaker’s awareness of the communicative effects of their signals, and their ability to integrate goal-seeking and signal-making into a single act. While animals communicate to achieve ends, they do so without experiencing the connection between their signals and the desired effects.
The Steps to Speech
The first phase in the evolution of speech involves the communicator’s perception of their signals as causes of communicative effects. This awareness allows them to use signals intentionally, marking a departure from purely instinctive animal communication. The second phase involves the communicator’s experience of their signals as embodying and fulfilling their purpose of communicating. This deeper understanding of communicative finality leads to a more intensive assertiveness in their signal-making.
Early hominids learned to perceive the causal relationship between their signals and the response through a process of mutual identification. By exchanging roles as communicator and communicand, they could identify their own vocal signals with those of others, realizing that the same signals elicited similar responses in both parties. Thus what the communicator communicates is ultimately their experience of reality. This realization allowed them to grasp the shared meaning of signals and their efficacy in producing communicative effects.
Ontogenetically, individuals learn to speak within a pre-existing language system used by a community that already knows how to speak. Phylogenetically, Dewart argues that speech emerged from a pre-existing system of non-assertive vocal signs used by pre-humans. In both cases, the ability to speak arises from the assertive processing of a pre-existing language, highlighting a crucial role for language in the development of speech.
Proprioception, the ability to experience oneself and one’s behaviour from within, played a crucial role in the second phase of speech development. By integrating proprioceptive awareness of their striving to communicate with their prior experience of signals as causally related to communicative effects, early hominids could perceive their signal-making as embodying their desire to achieve a communicative effect. This realization marked the transition from mere signal-making to signal-asserting, giving rise to true speech.
The lack of proprioception in vocal sound-making facilitated the emergence of speech. Since vocal signals are perceived primarily through hearing, both the speaker and the listener experience them in the same way. This shared mode of perception made it easier for early hominids to identify the meaning heard by the communicand with the meaning they heard in their own vocal signals, a crucial step in grasping the causal relationship between signal and communicative effect.
From Speech to Consciousness
Thought, defined as the ability to speak inaudibly to oneself, emerged from the realization that one could speak inaudibly to oneself. This realization, facilitated by the practice of speaking aloud in the absence of an apparent communicand, led to the discovery of purely imaginary speech. This internalization of speech allowed for faster and freer self-communication, enhancing the rudimentary self-presence of speech and paving the way for the development of immediate consciousness.
Mediate consciousness, generated by speech, involves the coincidence of the contents of an experience as signified by speech and the contents of the same experience as experienced by hearing oneself speak. This self-presence is mediated by the act of vocalization and hearing. Immediate consciousness, on the other hand, involves the direct coincidence of the contents of an act of experience and the experiencing of contents, achieved through the single act of conscious perception. This self-presence is immediate and unmediated by any external act.
Thought, with its more intense self-presence than speech, created the possibility of experiencing assertively without first signifying the experience either in thought or speech. By speaking and thinking about their present experience, early humans gradually learned to experience it assertively without the need for linguistic mediation. This process, driven by the interplay between experience and communication, led to the emergence of immediate consciousness.
The Self-Reproducing Power of Consciousness
Both sexual reproduction and the self-reproduction of consciousness involve the transmission of information that generates a new entity similar to the generator. In sexual reproduction, genetic information is transmitted through chromosomal exchange, creating offspring with unique genetic configurations. In the self-reproduction of consciousness, generative information is transmitted through significative communication, specifically speech, generating consciousness in the recipient. Both processes perpetuate a specific form of life while allowing for variation and evolution.
The Socio-Cultural Matrix
The socio-cultural matrix is the organized network of conscious states within a human community, constituted by the speech and interactions of its members. It serves as the “womb of consciousness,” transmitting the ability to speak and generating consciousness in new individuals. This matrix perpetuates and develops human nature through the ongoing exchange of significative and generative information, shaping the conscious experience of individuals and the evolution of consciousness itself.
The Origin of Absent-Mindedness
Absent-mindedness, characterized by defective self-presence, is attributed to defective assertiveness in speech, stemming from a confused perception of communicative efficacy and finality in early hominids. This confusion arose from their inability to fully grasp the connection between their signal-making and the communicative effects produced, leading to a flawed understanding of their own assertiveness and a tendency to experience their speech as a repetition of a pre-existing reality.
Absent-mindedness, as a fundamental flaw in human consciousness, has profound implications for how we understand ourselves and navigate the world. It leads to a distorted perception of our own agency and a tendency to misinterpret our experiences, shaping our beliefs, values, and actions in ways that we do not fully comprehend. This inherent flaw in our conscious experience poses a significant challenge to achieving a clear and accurate understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.
The emergence of consciousness was a remarkable and accidental event. It transformed animal life and gave rise to a new form of reproduction based on language and culture. However, consciousness also carries with it the potential for flaws, such as absent-mindedness, which continue to shape our understanding of ourselves and the world.
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