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Glossary of Terms
Absent-minded (adj.), absent-mindedness (n.) - A state of consciousness characterized by a lack of awareness of one’s own mental activity in acts of (conscious) experience, or a culture pervasively afflicted by this defect. Absent-mindedness predisposes people to project aspects of consciousness onto reality, as if, for example, it is reality itself that speaks through the individual, rather than individuals who speak about reality. Examples: The scientific concept of the Laws of Nature, and the religious notion of Intelligent Design, both absent-mindedly attribute to the world what is actually proper to humans who think and speak about the world. Speakers of languages characterized by verbal predication are typically absent-minded.
Adjustive - Qualities which enable organisms to adapt to their environments. Dewart uses this term to discuss the interplay between an organism’s ability to adapt and its ability to reproduce, which results in natural selection. Note the absence of any force or compulsion “driving” evolution, only the emergent effect.
Apodictic speech - A variant of thematic speech characterized by the obligate use of verbs and verbal predication to assert predicates in relation to subjects. The implicit assumption of Apodictic speakers is that their assertions are repetitions of what reality itself says, as if reality were speaking through them. Apodictic speech is characterized by assertions that are presented as absolutely certain and unquestionable, because Reality says so, as it were.
Assertiveness - A key concept in Dewart’s account of human consciousness. It stands in opposition to the conventional understanding of consciousness as representation of reality.
An experience is assertive when it “states or declares” its object and terminates at the object, not in the mind. The speaker is asserting their experience of an object, and this implies that conscious experience is not a repetition of what the object “communicates” about itself.
Assertiveness is acquired and developed during the process of learning to speak (in both the individual and pre-historically at the level of the species). Initially assertiveness occurs in conjunction with vocal communication. Vocalization becomes speech when the vocalizer learns or experiences that their vocal behaviour has a communicative effect. Eventually assertiveness becomes unbundled from vocalization, and assertiveness is established in all sense modalities. According to Dewart, communicating (speaking) with oneself silently (thinking) serves to heighten assertiveness.
Being (v. “to be”) - The verb “to be”, used by ontic speakers in both copulative and predicative ways, is (sic!) required in many situations where action of which to speak. Dewart notes that the vast majority of non-IE speakers across thousands of examples, don’t do this. The pervasive use of the verb “to be” invariably marks an Ontic speaker. Linguists trained in an ethnocentric discipline may dispute this, until they can learn to not see what isn’t there.
Communicand - The recipient of a communication.
Communicator - The originator of a communication.
Consciousness - The human specificity.
Conscious experience - Self-present experience.
Cultural evolution - The transmission of learned behaviors and knowledge from one generation to the next through communication and social learning, as opposed to genetic inheritance. Dewart argues that cultural evolution is distinct from and operates independently of organic evolution: “Cultures…“evolve,” not according to the mechanism of organic evolution, but independently of it.”
Cultural Neurosis - A state of dysfunction within a culture, characterized by maladaptive behaviours, beliefs, and practices.
Depositional speech - A variant of thematic speech characterized by the absence of verbs like “to be” and the use of juxtaposition to assert a thesis in relation to a theme. Depositional speakers are more aware than Ontic speakers of their own role in the act of assertion and much less inclined to project their assertiveness onto reality. Depositional speech is characterized by assertions that are presented as tentative and open to questioning: “In depositional speech, the simple juxtaposition of thesis and theme is sufficient to convey the speaker’s assertion.” Note that the field of linguistics, having been established principally by ethnocentric non-depositional speakers, is liable to infer the presence of the verb to be where it is in fact absent.
Efficient Causality - The relationship between a cause and its effect, where the cause directly produces the effect.
Emergence of Consciousness - The process by which consciousness arises from the interaction of simpler components or processes.
Emergent - A property or phenomenon of a system that arises from the interactions of its components, rather than being explicitly programmed or present in the components themselves. Dewart uses this term to describe properties like consciousness and socio-cultural life, which are not reducible to individual organic functions. Emergent effects are not reducible to their causes.
Ethnocentricity - The tendency to view one’s own culture as superior to others and to interpret all cultural phenomena through the lens of one’s own cultural norms and values: “Ethnocentricity can prevent the recognition of cultural differences.” Note that it is entirely possible for bias and prejudice to persist even in the face of diligent effort to overcome it and disavowal of it.
Evolution - a description of an emergent process, and a causal explanation of a pervasive phenomenon or property of certain complex systems which accounts for their change over time, the effect of the interaction of diversity and reproduction. Note that many philosophically naive scientists and other commentators mistake evolution for the operation of some kind of force. Dewart strictly abides by the most conservative and conventional and non-mystical scientific understanding of evolution. Please recall evolution is a statistical phenomenon, and Dewart wrote his PhD dissertation on Karl Popper, the founder of modern statistics. The irony is that Dewart cleaves so close to the narrow scientific conception of what evolution is, that many casual readers have trouble because they don’t have the scientific background to follow the argument. Dewart adopts in one or two lines in his book a set or premises for his thesis, that it takes undergraduates years to understand.
Feral children - Children who have grown up with little or no human contact, often in isolation or raised by animals. Dewart uses feral children as evidence to support the claim that consciousness is not innate but acquired through social interaction.
Final Causality - That aspect of why something happens, which concerns the goal or purpose. In this context, it refers to the ability of pre-humans to act in ways that satisfy their wants, even without conscious awareness of those wants. Conscious cognition integrates efficient and final causality.
Force - A fiction invented by Newton to explain motion. In the ontic mind, a Reality.
Gene-culture co-evolution - A theory proposing that human evolution is shaped by the interplay between genetic inheritance and cultural transmission. It suggests that cultural practices can influence the selection of genes, and vice versa.
Genetic - Genetic has two meanings. First, it refers to the biological transmission of traits through genes. Second, it is used figuratively to describe the transmission of learned behaviours and cultural information through communication: “This cultural inheritance does the same thing for man that in the sub-human world is done by the genetic system, which transmits its “information”…in the form of a DNA chain… Besides his biological system, man has a completely new “genetic” system dependent on cultural transmission.”
Infrahuman - Refers to organisms below the level of humans on the evolutionary scale, such as animals. The term distinguishes between the evolutionary processes of humans and other species. It is not meant to imply any inherent superiority of humans.
Language - the system of (typically but not exclusively) sounds and words used to speak with, but distracting from Speech.
Natural selection - The process by which organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and reproduce more successfully than those less well adapted, leading to the evolution of species. Natural selection is the cause of organic evolution, but human evolution involves an additional mechanism which it is the burden of Dewart’s book to explain.
Ontic - Relating to the nature of being or existence. In this context Ontic refers to a form of consciousness characterized by the belief that reality is objective and the ultimate source of our experience, which is fundamentally a representation of reality. “Ontic cultures are characterized by [the] apodictic form of speech.”
Ontic variant of consciousness - The form of consciousness mediated by apodictic speech. Ontic cultures (those established by Ontic thinking peoples) tend to interpret reality and causality in terms of objective, absolute truths and are prone to projecting their own assertiveness onto the world: “The ontic variant of the self-defining consciousness is characterized by a belief in absolute reality and a tendency to interpret experience as a repetition of what reality asserts.”
Phenomenal - Relating to appearances or perceptions. In the context of Dewart’s text, it refers to a form of consciousness based on depositional speech, characterized by a fluid sense of self and a normal capacity to notice and take into account the mutual dependency and interconnectedness of all things. The vast majority of non-Indo-European human cultures, indeed nearly all “indigenous” cultures from all over the world are phenomenal. Absent mindedness is rare in phenomenal cultures.
Phenomenal variant of consciousness - The form of consciousness and culture mediated by depositional speech. Phenomenal cultures tend to be more aware of the subjective nature of experience and are less likely to project their own assertiveness onto the world: “The phenomenal variant of the self-defining consciousness is characterized by a greater awareness of the subjective nature of experience and a tendency to interpret reality in terms of relationships and interactions.”
Phenomenology -
Potentiality - The inherent capacity or possibility for something to become actual or to develop in a particular way. Dewart distinguishes between two types of potentiality: notional (theoretical possibility) and real (based on existing structures or capacities): “It is true, then, that all human organisms, however immature, even from conception, have the potentiality for consciousness and selfhood. Nothing indicates, however, that this potentiality is any but a purely notional one.”
Reality -
Self-Coincident - A state where something coincides with itself, or is unified. In Dewart’s use, it refers to the experience of efficacy and finality becoming unified within the pre-human communicator: “…becoming inchoatively self-present — that is, self-coincident — before consciousness had appeared…”
Self-defining consciousness -
Self-presence -
Self-selection - Dewart’s proposed term for the mechanism of human evolution, distinct from natural selection. It suggests that human evolution is shaped by the conscious choices and actions of individuals, by the need for self-identity and self-definition: “[M]ore fittingly, however, I shall call it self-selection. My reasons are, first, that the human form of evolution involves the selective agency of the very consciousness whose characteristics are selected by the evolutionary mechanism; and second, that the process selects specifically for characteristics whose value depends not on meeting requirements laid down by the physical environment, but in satisfying the demands that consciousness imposes upon itself by virtue of its presence to itself.” Whereas natural selection is the effect of the interaction of the adaptive and reproductive functions of organisms, self-selection is the effect of the interaction of experience and speech.
Semantic complex - The interconnected system of interpretations of speech, experience, and reality that arises from the apodictic ‘idea’ of speech. It involves understanding speech as a representation of objective reality and interpreting experience through the lens of this semantic framework.
Socio-cultural - Relating to the interplay between social structures and cultural practices within a society. Dewart argues that human consciousness and selfhood are socio-culturally generated and sustained, irreducible to individual organic functions: “Thus, conscious processes occur exclusively in individual organisms, but are generated and sustained only by the interaction of a multiplicity of individual human organisms.”
Speech - In the context of this text, “speech” refers to a specific form of communication unique to humans, characterized by assertiveness and the ability to convey not just information but also the speaker’s communicative nature. Dewart proposes that speech is the key factor in the genesis and transmission of consciousness: “The transformation of the child’s native ability to communicate into the ability to do so assertively leads automatically, by virtue of the properties of speech, to the transformation of his ability to experience into the ability to do so consciously.”
Superorganic - A term used to describe phenomena that are considered to be above or beyond the level of individual organisms, such as culture and society. Dewart critiques the concept of the “superorganic” as being inconsistent with the idea that social processes can only exist within the conscious experience of individuals: “Biologists concluded that human life had ‘superorganic’ (i.e., socio-cultural) aspects, whose evolution did not depend on the natural selection of genes.”
Synthetic theory - Refers to the dominant theory of evolution in the 20th century, which combined Darwin’s concept of natural selection with the principles of genetics. Dewart critiques the synthetic theory for its inability to fully account for the emergence and role of culture in human evolution.
Thematic speech - A mode of speech that involves asserting a thesis (a statement or proposition) in relation to a theme (the subject or topic of the assertion). This allows for more complex and nuanced communication than non-thematic speech. Non-thematic (or pre-thematic) speech, on the other hand, asserts a single idea referring directly to the object of experience: “Thematic speech emerged as a more sophisticated form of communication, enabling humans to express more complex ideas and relationships.”
Theme - What is spoken about.
Thesis - What is asserted in relation to a theme.
Thought -
Understanding -
Verbal predication - The act of asserting a predicate (a quality, state, or action) in relation to a subject by means of a verb. This is a defining characteristic of apodictic speech and reflects the speaker’s belief that the predicate is a property or action of the subject, as if emanating from it: “Verbal predication is the hallmark of apodictic speech, reflecting the speaker’s tendency to attribute predicates to subjects as inherent properties or actions.”
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