A problem I have been dealing with in Heidegger is that In BEING AND TIME, Heidegger takes a very radical view of dasein's authentic appropriation of tradition which, by necessity, completely takes it apart and puts it back together again as dasein actually knows it instead of the 'everyday' passive acceptance of a vague theme of what tradition is that never examines it rationally in detail or judge even if it fits together coherently.

May 2004.

Richard Sansom:

I am pleased to see you put “primitive” in quotes. In connection with languages among those so-called “primitives,” it is well established that they contain every bit as much and in some cases more in the way of complexity, nuance and sufficiency to deal with their world (which is also our world) as the languages of so-called “civilized” languages. “Primitive human situations” demand the same kinds of thinking and speaking tools as those of the PhD in his microbiology lab, and the reason for this is that the set of macro-situations one deals with in life are universal, and it is bound to be those situations that have formed the way we think and speak. We think and speak the way we do because we need to. As for the oldest texts, they offer few hints as to the origins of language and such origins must remain speculative. But I see nothing wrong with speculation if it is plausible, logical, reasonable and perhaps interesting. I find nothing in current texts on language that suggests language was born full blown in its variety and complexity – therefore I must assume that much like the increasing complexity of evolving organisms, language and thought at one time was less complex and rich. (Pinker’s “mentalese” merely confuses the issue!)

Gary. C. Moore: Dear Jud, Richard, Jon, and the philosophical community at large-- This is my fault. One of the points I was trying to make was that it is literally impossible to know anything whatsoever about the 'origins' of the 'birth' of language. Nothing. And we never will. We can see plenty of clues some kind of communication was always present-at-hand. Complex communication does not at all have to be by words. Worse still, one does not even have to be fully conscious of it. Swarm mentality can adapt to complex situations -- after all, it has only two choices: adapt or die, and the dying has been plentiful over the ages, inclusive of all animals including human beings. Swarm mentality is composed of swarms within swarms. Communication is constantly going on in the body, something that has not been seriously treated yet because it is 'scientifically' not respectable. However, the issue has become so pressing because of technology itself, scientists are being forced to address it because the lack of understanding of it is causing numerous problems else, in places completely unexpected. Environment is not all just 'outside', it is inside also. It is one of those questions blazingly obvious yet terribly inconvenient to deal with. But 'convenience' and 'respectibility' have no place in science. This has actually become a major problem that is totally unanticipated. 19th century science had so many things to learn, it didn't feel the need to investigate every nook and cranny. But now we have got to the point of having to figure out the most important question of all-- How do all these systems, micro and macro, work together? Afterall, once again, it is blazingly obvious they are working together because they are, in reality, together. It is Werner Heisenburg's theory taken to its extreme implications-- That not only does the observer 'interfere' with the results of the observation, but that is the way reality is and always has been. There never has been a state of 'pure' science. It has always been formed by the purpose of the observer. Now, scientists realize they no longer can ignore this as 'magical' thinking but must actually problem-solve it. Far too many major problems have arisen in science that, being socially unacceptable in the scientific community--which means such research gets no money, that the very notion of science as a UNIVERSAL problem-solving behavior has become thoroughly corrupted even more so than it always has been. The notion that everything is tied together because it always already is tied together, is very frustrating because there is no secure viewpoint from which to easily conceive all its implications. However, in creating more and more intelligent computers it has become an overwhelming problem that has to be addressed.

It is also one of the primary reasons why I have raised the question of the existence of the self. There is absolutely no doubt that Jud is right about the self is a priori, always already 'there' operating before we begin, and exactly the same applies to language. Always. It has always been there is some sense. In a real sense, communication per se, using verbal and all other means, has been around for millions of years. So any notion of 'origin' or 'birth' either becomes extremely 'relative' or outright unnecessary, a 'Which came first? The chicken or the egg?' question. But with a computer, we are in a real sense 'before the Creation' and do not know how to get 'there' from 'here'. One reason this is so is that we have no real idea how complex a 'simple' animal's 'mind' is. We approach the situation with an already imposed but completely un-problem-solved moral standard that there are more and less complex animal 'minds' and that the more demonstrablt complex 'minds' are -- 'better' -- by a purely self-congratulatory standard. Not only, though, can I raise the problem that certain forms of life have survived much longer than human beings on this earth, an objective standard, but also I raise the problem we have no really clear idea at all how this was done. The more scientists learn about massive extinctions, fortunately for subduing our overweening egotism, the less they realize they really know anything about evolution as such. This is now in evolutionary theory far more unsolved problems than there is any theoretical certainty at all. And this is the way, for once correctly, it SHOULD be. One SHOULD know there are problems that need solving. Problem-solving behavior is a necessity to live. Language is primordially problem-solving behavior. Having a self is somehow necessary in this process. But it is not at all clear what a 'self' is or what 'language' is or what 'evolution' is because all these problems have been set aside for -- more important immediate purposes. However. as those purposes are more or less resolved, then the context in which those purposes arose in the first place becomes more and more . . . 'clear' . . . sort of. The primary fact we understand about that context is that we do not understand it. That we have great difficulty even formulating it as an intelligible problem. But that IS the problem that is now at-hand. It has even become one of politics and economics, therefore 'someone' is going to try to solve it 'somehow' without really understanding what the problem is. Or, in other less gentle words, the problem is being moved from the shoulders of those qualified to solve it (and this is a complex twoway problem in itself) to the shoulders of those least qualified to solve it. Do you agree or disagree with this conclusion?

Richard Sansom: I agree that it is very complex. But today, as you say, what to some are obscure texts because they lack understanding of the context and lexicon, are, upon detailed analysis (if one is so inclined and most are not) are found to be sets of basic propositions, statements, opinions, speculations, etc. that are fundamentally simple. However, I have come across many such (non-scientific) texts that are unnecessarily burdened by language that is gratuitously rich in circuitous and needless verbosity, apparently to sound more scholarly. (One can choose to write that way, or not.)

Gary. C. Moore: You are talking about systems of writing. I am talking about systems that must be memorized. The second completely encompasses the first since systems of writing are always already within systems of memorized language. And it is much earlier and has lasted much longer. That is where systems of writing get their motivation in the first place. In the earliest memorized texts like the Rig Veda, the Zend Avesta, the Iliad, the cuniform tablets of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley, the tortoise shells of the Yellow River Valley, etc., that round-aboutness A) had a practical immediate necessity to the actual writer concerned which will never accord to our purposes, and B) was necessary for the process of memorization. They memorized these very long texts by formulas. They were ALL originally intended to be memorized. Even the cuniform tablets were just originally intermediate and purposedly temporary process between memorizations because they were written on wet clay NEVER INTENDED TO BE BAKED AND MADE PERMANENT. They became baked and stone-hard totally through historical ‘accident’. We still do not speak as we write, so we are still in the same situation. Nothing has changed. We are still primarily in a memorized mode of language in which written texts are mere help-mates. The clues for this situation are abundant. However, we have been taught that, morally, the written text has priority over memorized and spoken text. Even a mathematical text, though, finds its entire use and justification through memorized and spoken words.

Richard Sansom: This does not hold in serious texts on mathematics or science, since the axiomatic bases for these disciplines are many layers buried beneath the surface. While I got a degree in mathematics, I would be hard pressed to comprehend a current book on pure math.

Gary. C. Moore: Not nearly as far as memorized text, the vast majority of which one is not even conscious of.

Richard Sansom: Your remarks beg a definition of “human being.”

Gary. C. Moore: Yes, it does. But are we to arbitrarily to impose one or to search for one, knowing we do not know, in a problem-solving manner? Of course, just as with the a priori self, we always already have one in hand and must proceed from it. But we have a choice—Either we can proceed from it as an answers, and therefore there is no problem, or we can proceed from it knowing the whole context is thoroughly in question. Which would you prefer?

Richard Sansom: While it may be reasonable to assume that homo sapien sapien have always been the same (same in what way?) . . .

Gary. C. Moore: Hungry.

Richard Sansom: . . . to me this means they have always had to deal with the macro-world (TWTWI) in more of less the same ways. However, it is not reasonable to assume their progenitors were “the same.”

Gary. C. Moore: Solving the problem of hunger was not their primary and over-riding concern? It becomes exactly the same way for us, now, if we are denied easy access to food. Therefore primordially we are fundamentally the same in our fundamental purpose which has always been and always will be the primary motivation for problem-solving. Merely because food is abundant now and very easy to obtain does not at all mean the problem has receded into the background and become somehow unreal compared to more important things (How could anything be more important than food?). Hunger is still the primary motivation for everything else and into which everything will fit in a positive or negative way when the problem of hunger revives as a fundamental problem.

Richard Sansom: I doubt very much that they were. I agree that “modern man” perhaps originating some 200 thousand years ago, probably is “the same” not only in his general morphology, but in his thinking and possibly in much of his language. I don’t believe we can separate the three things: MODERN MAN, THINKING, and LANGUAGE.

(Incidentally, I agree with Jud that the addition of “being” to “human” is not necessary.)

Richard: I respectfully disagree with Sartre’s simplistic focus only on hunger. All organisms have the requirements of, to greater and lesser degrees, sustenance, shelter, procreation and defense.

Gary. C. Moore: Without ‘sustenance’ one leaves one’s shelter. Without ‘sustenance’ one does without and probably cannot procreate. Without ‘sustenance’ one has nothing to defend because one is dead.

Richard Sansom: Sustenance is only one requirement, and the others play large parts, depending on the organism. The maintenance of life is not one dimensional.

Gary. C. Moore: Why not? What your situation is at present is not the explanation of all possible situations. Being one dimensional obeys Ockham’s rule that the simplest explanation amongst a number of more complex one is most likely the right one. Being one dimensional does not multiply unnecessary explanations. Being one dimensional as hungry can be scientifically tested by taking away all of your food, putting you in the center of an uninhabited place, and leaving you. You may set up shelter first and make weapons, but, if no food was readily available, that would be because they would be next in rank of necessities. However, if food remains inaccessible, you will leave the shelter and take only the weapons you can carry. As you become more hungry and more weak, you will discard the heaviest weapon until you have no weapons at all. Hunger will be the last thought you have.

Richard Sansom: As for the relation of language to thinking, I see no reason to attempt to pry open an organic separation between these.

Gary. C. Moore: That I certainly never wished to do. I apologize if I gave you that impression.

Richard Sansom: We have given names/concepts to both, but we are hard pressed to see them very far apart. I don’t mean that one requires language to think – global aphasics have been shown to think, and other animals who have no language (that we can discern) certainly think, make discernments, plan ahead, make choices, engage in deception, etc. However it is my belief that human thought, as we understand it (barely) and human language grew up together, so to speak.

Gary. C. Moore: I would make it more simple: Using language is thinking. There is absolutely no room at all for difference. I would also say causality is language: You, in effect, ‘read’ from cause to effect. This would also be why someone like Hume can come in and say causality is not a logical necessity. It is only a linguistic necessity. And I agree with everything else in this section.

Richard Sansom: Here is a section from my paper on TWTWI that relates to this matteRichard Sansom:

“My youngest daughter, who went from the bottle to the pacifier, hearing us use the word pacifier as we fetched it, acquired one of her first words: pa-fooh, and used it when she wanted the device. Not only was she associating the pacifier with the name or sound, she used the name (her name -- pa-fooh) to utter a command or express a need. By getting it, she instantiated the fact that her words had an effect -- they were intentionally chosen and the cause-effect relation of the utterance to getting the pacifier was further instilled. I say “further instilled” since I believe that causality, like language, had a preconditioning wiring resulting from millions of years of evolving within the milieu of TWTWI. This whole process, association of an uttered sound with an object, witness of the causality, and perhaps equally important, her awareness of a connection with other sound-making objects (my wife and I), was one that was the beginning of her thought-language abilities. I see this development in her as containing the following more or less simultaneously occurring things in the mind:

1. Awareness of association of word (utterance) to thing,

2. Acquisition of the causal request-response knowledge

3. Connection with other language users.

4. Awareness of expressibility -- thus, individuality

5. An inculcated sense of self as separate from, but integrated with others

Her incomplete speaking skills was witness to her immature vocalized mimicking ability, but the other things I mentioned were sufficiently mature to take hold in her very young brain.”

I maintain that the above five interconnected things occurring in her mind were the formation of thoughts, aided by the giving and taking of words.

This does not argue for the theory that seemingly embryonic behavior signals a relationship to early species performance of something - like the gills on human embryos pointing to our sea-going progenitors of the Paleozoic era, but it does suggest that my daughter’s ability to begin the process of verbal communication was instinctual – Locke notwithstanding.

Gary. C. Moore: Believe it or not, I actually have no disagreements. All of this one can literally see for oneself. It is self-evident THAT it is. What it is and means is another thing all-together. But you are not addressing that here. You are saying what is, that is, what is present before us. And I would certainly say that language was instinctual. But that word is so vague it is meaningless if not restricted to hard core facts. Why is it instinctual? Is there an immediate and simple explanation? Yes. All animals have it to the degree their morphology can use it. The more usable extremities, the more use of language. Why do they need it? The first need is sustenance. The second need is shelter. The third need is procreation. The fourth need is defense. All of these can be moved around in priority. (If this was all you meant originally. I apologize. But I did not get that notion clearly.) If you are being attacked, you stop eating and defend yourself, etc. But, still, hunger takes overall priority over the other three, that is, overall they are ‘for’ hunger, hunger is not ‘for’ them. One can do without shelter and procreation for periods of time, but without a realistic availability of food, all the other modes must either give way completely or, in the case of defense, adapt itself to the priority of hunger. One does not defend one’s life for the sake of defending it. One defends one’s life for the sake of staying alive. Defending one’s life provides the opportunity for getting food. However, I can also see your point that having food provides for the ability for defense. I can see their POSSIBLE equivalency. I will think on it. However, shelter and sex in this context definitely become RELATIVE. Did you know that the Australian aboriginines did not –supposedly: this is hearsay only – know the connection of sex and procreation? Also, there is this to consideRichard Sansom: Helpless dependants are a liability and certainly not a necessity. Now, different cultures do approach this differently. However, the presence of an extreme case scenario lasting over hundreds, maybe thousands of years, should give one pause. The Phoenician culture, the next door and closely related culture to the Jews, had MASSIVE infant sacrifice in times of emergency. This is not only witnessed in historical texts, but in Carthage there are thousands of clay containers of little practical use for containing anything one is going to re-use such as food or water. These are also historically testified to be containers for sacrificial infants. So, the importance of ‘procreation’ is purely a relative thing. Also, in times of stress, many animal parents eat their young. Male bears do it as a matter of course even if they are their own procreations all the time. That cuts down the four to three. Animals only use shelter when it is available and they need it. The same applies to human being. So, though less relative, it is still relative to hunger and defense. In fact, two of the purposes of shelter is for defense and to store food. So, now, we are down to two natural necessities. Food and defense. I can leave it at that. Except that if one is by oneself – and this can be quite deliberate, there are a number of animals who seek complete solitude, and men – one does not need defense. Hunger, however, is still ever-present. Could we call it, possibly, an ontology of hunger?

Gary ORIGINAL:

Gary. C. Moore: Now, it is natural to impose the imagined form of your life history upon the history of language. This is how one makes strange things familiar and quickly learns to get around in them. I, on the other hand, am deliberately raising obscure, incontinent, and irritating trivialities. What is the history of language I can literally account for? Accounts of others. Can I trust them? Only so far as there is self-consistency in the evidence, which means if one discovers a flaw in the very type of evidence itself, the whole scheme becomes invalid. Literally, but trivially and interfering with getting on with the matter, it is uncertainty based on uncertainty. So, there are two ways (and I am sure there are others just as valid) to approach the history of language: A) The oldest texts, and B) the most present-at-hand known 'primitive' human situation.

Richard Sansom: I am pleased to see you put “primitive” in quotes. In connection with languages among those so-called “primitives,” it is well established that they contain every bit as much and in some cases more in the way of complexity, nuance and sufficiency to deal with their world (which is also our world) as the languages of so-called “civilized” languages. “Primitive human situations” demand the same kinds of thinking and speaking tools as those of the PhD in his microbiology lab, and the reason for this is that the set of macro-situations one deals with in life are universal, and it is bound to be those situations that have formed the way we think and speak. We think and speak the way we do because we need to. As for the oldest texts, they offer few hints as to the origins of language and such origins must remain speculative. But I see nothing wrong with speculation if it is plausible, logical, reasonable and perhaps interesting. I find nothing in current texts on language that suggests language was born full blown in its variety and complexity – therefore I must assume that much like the increasing complexity of evolving organisms, language and thought at one time was less complex and rich. (Pinker’s “mentalese” merely confuses the issue!)

Gary. C. Moore: The oldest texts, when we understand them, seem simple. But they are public announcements for the average reading mind. Exactly the same applies today. When we do not understand a text, we say it is obscure as if it were defective in some way. But if you actually look at it, it is not a public announcement. It is for a select group of people who know the context within which it is addressed in more detail. In other words, it is complex. We do not need to consider its worth now. and the great effort needed to undecifer it that will probably result in something trivial, but we just need to realize it was important then. It is conveying a great deal of information to those in the know of an already at-hand complex situation, i. e., religious rites, details of sacrifice, the way to approach divine images, etc. It is trivial to us. But it is very complex.

Richard Sansom: I agree that it is very complex. But today, as you say, what to some are obscure texts because they lack understanding of the context and lexicon, are, upon detailed analysis (if one is so inclined and most are not) are found to be sets of basic propositions, statements, opinions, speculations, etc. that are fundamentally simple. However, I have come across many such (non-scientific) texts that are unnecessarily burdened by language that is gratuitously rich in circuitous and needless verbosity, apparently to sound more scholarly. (One can choose to write that way, or not.) This does not hold in serious texts on mathematics or science, since the axiomatic bases for these disciplines are many layers buried beneath the surface. While I got a degree in mathematics, I would be hard pressed to comprehend a current book on pure math.

Gary. C. Moore: With the most primitive more or less present day observed societies (and that is an almost overwhelming problem in itself), languages are presupposed beforehand to be simple because these people are presupposed to be simple. But, to take something from Hume that also can serve as a corollary to Jud's principle that your self is always a priori in every situation of knowledge, human beings have always been the same. I pretend I hear sputtering and 'But . . . but . . . but . . . but . . what about this and what about that? Human beings have never really been the same.'

Richard Sansom: I promise not to sputter a lot of “buts.” BUT, your remarks beg a definition of “human being.” While it may be reasonable to assume that homo sapien sapien have always been the same (same in what way?) to me this means they have always had to deal with the macro-world (TWTWI) in more of less the same ways. However, it is not reasonable to assume their progenitors were “the same.” I doubt very much that they were. I agree that “modern man” perhaps originating some 200 thousand years ago, probably is “the same” not only in his general morphology, but in his thinking and possibly in much of his language. I don’t believe we can separate the three things: MODERN MAN, THINKING, LANGUAGE.

(Incidentally, I agree with Jud that the addition of “being” to “human” is not necessary.)

Gary. C. Moore: ….. Sartre begins the whole dialectical historical evolution of the human mind with one concept: hunger. All living entities hunger. This literalness causes a number of fundamental problems with other people. They want to say things about the animal’s mind that distinguishes it from human beings. I say it is exactly the same. Why complicate the matter with unnecessary concepts? They say, But an animal cannot do this and an animal cannot do that. I say, That is because of the form of their bodies. That says nothing whatsoever about their minds. How is a human mind supposedly, and I do mean supposedly, constructed. Everyone says: BY language. And if you do not have language, will you think in language. They say, But language is thinking! I say, No. Thinking is like the concept of the building of bricks. The bricks of thinking are only, solely, and absolutely sensation. The facts of ‘simple’ perception itself, no matter whose, involve choices and judgments. What are these choices and judgments motivated by? Hunger.

Richard Sansom: I respectfully disagree with Sartre’s simplistic focus only on hunger. All organisms have the requirements of, to greater and lesser degrees, sustenance, shelter, procreation and defense. Sustenance is only one requirement, and the others play large parts, depending on the organism. The maintenance of life is not one dimensional.

As for the relation of language to thinking, I see no reason to attempt to pry open an organic separation between these. We have given names/concepts to both, but we are hard pressed to see them very far apart. I don’t mean that one requires language to think – global aphasics have been shown to think, and other animals who have no language (that we can discern) certainly think, make discernments, plan ahead, make choices, engage in deception, etc. However it is my belief that human thought, as we understand it (barely) and human language grew up together, so to speak. Here is a section from my paper on TWTWI that relates to this matteRichard Sansom:

“My youngest daughter, who went from the bottle to the pacifier, hearing us use the word pacifier as we fetched it, acquired one of her first words: pa-fooh, and used it when she wanted the device. Not only was she associating the pacifier with the name or sound, she used the name (her name -- pa-fooh) to utter a command or express a need. By getting it, she instantiated the fact that her words had an effect -- they were intentionally chosen and the cause-effect relation of the utterance to getting the pacifier was further instilled. I say “further instilled” since I believe that causality, like language, had a preconditioning wiring resulting from millions of years of evolving within the milieu of TWTWI. This whole process, association of an uttered sound with an object, witness of the causality, and perhaps equally important, her awareness of a connection with other sound-making objects (my wife and I), was one that was the beginning of her thought-language abilities. I see this development in her as containing the following more or less simultaneously occurring things in the mind:

1. Awareness of association of word (utterance) to thing,

2. Acquisition of the causal request-response knowledge

3. Connection with other language users.

4. Awareness of expressibility -- thus, individuality

5. An inculcated sense of self as separate from, but integrated with others

Her incomplete speaking skills was witness to her immature vocalized mimicking ability, but the other things I mentioned were sufficiently mature to take hold in her very young brain.”

I maintain that the above five interconnected things occurring in her mind were the formation of thoughts, aided by the giving and taking of words.

This does not argue for the theory that seemingly embryonic behavior signals a relationship to early species performance of something - like the gills on human embryos pointing to our sea-going progenitors of the Paleozoic era, but it does suggest that my daughter’s ability to begin the process of verbal communication was instinctual – Locke notwithstanding.

Gary. C. Moore:

….The ‘primitive’ hunter-gatherer finds something that looks like a bean. They ask, Is this a bean? What kind of bean is it possibly? What are the appropriate signs that this is truly a bean? Are there signs that it is poisonous? Do other animals eat it? What stage of development is it in? What are its possible signs of ripeness or unripeness? Are there other things that look like this but are not beans/ Are there signs it is edible? What kinds of animals eat it? Are these animals similar to human in what they eat? What are the different signs of its different levels of edibility? Is this simple language? I don’t think so. Words with specific tenses and modes are going to be made or have already been made to account for every single difference implied here. Why? Why not just eat the bean and find out? Because you could very well get sick and become helpless and prey to competitors or predators or die. You are all alone many miles from any one else you know and will not get any help. You absolutely have to maintain your self-sufficiency above all else which means never ever ever ever being careless. You must pay exhaustive attention to every detail in your perceptual field or you will certainly, not probably, die. Are you going to have a very complex language to properly account for all these possibilities? I think so.

Richard Sansom: All this may be true, but the decisions that are involved were surely made prior to having a complex language.

Gary. C. Moore: This already is a complex language.

Richard Sansom: We are the heirs to the hunter-gatherer, but increasingly distant ones.

Gary. C. Moore: Maybe vertically in valuation, but not in actual possibility as temporally or spacially. If the occassion arises, one has to become a hunter-gatherer. There is no choice.

Richard Sansom: Our lives deal with a host of decisions that would be incomprehensible to our hominid progenitors. And, conversely, were we, civilized man, dropped naked onto the African savannah, would be ill equipped to survive.

Gary. C. Moore: But the 'savannah' is the fundamental situation from which all other possible situations derive including every and any modern one which, in time of hunger, the situation of the 'savannah' comes back whether we are ill-equiped or not.

Richard Sansom: By entering a world of technology, a plethora of possible directions to take in life, a jumble of possible systems of belief, histories and institutions (i. e. Popper’s World III) we are faced with entirely different challenges than those of ancient hominids. But as complex and diverse as these challenges are I believe the tools for dealing with them are exactly the same tools used 100 thousand years ago – at the basic level of decision making: we do what feels right, helpful and life-preserving, and avoid doing what is wrong, harmful and life-threatening.

Gary. C. Moore: I tend to get confused. This seems to be exactly what I have been saying. That there is a long string of connections historically means only and siumply there is a long string of connections. No qualitative difference whatsoever. You need to know how to make a weapon from a stick first. Then you see adding a sharp stone tied to the stick helps. You add a 'few' more steps along the way and you are making a computer. We have no difference here.

Richard Sansom: As for the role of just language in all this, I am not sure.

Gary. C. Moore: 'Communication', being much, much broader, would be preferable. After all, even spolen language is not just words but tones and body language also. Written language is a highly restricted medium.

Richard Sansom: Since I do not separate language very far from thought (not in the Whorf-Sapir sense, however) I wonder how much better off a person is who has a vast vocabulary and has mastered the art of eloquent speech than one who is not so endowed?

Gary. C. Moore: There are extremely different ideas of what eloquence is. Clarity for the Greek rhetoricians was the primary virtue. You read a speech by Demonsthanes or Georgias, they may say a lot of useless things in a 'stage' or 'presentation' speech, but it is always perfectly clear for the lowest common denominator in the audience. But if the context is the court of law -- the rhetorian gets right down to the nitty gritty of the matter, the bare nuts and bolts. For the rhetorician wins the case who makes the most factually convincing case to the jury. The facts can be manipulated but the clarity is indispensible.

Richard Sansom: On a summer job, while in college, I was a carpenter’s helper. The guy was in his sixties and probably didn’t have much life left since he had painted and worked on bridges much of his life and breathed in toxic fumes for years. His conversations were sparse but very wise in subtle ways and I learned a lot from him, not just about carpentry, but about life – the approach to problems, a kind of gentle fatalism, a humility without weakness. All this without complex language skills.

Gary. C. Moore: Strangely enough, Heidegger has several times made this same point. And most of the time, to make any sense of him at all, one has to transpose him into this mode. Many times this does not work, or maybe I just do not have the ability. One does not have to do this with Hume. I value Heidegger now only in as far as he makes problems evident in Hume that were missed in the first superficial reading. HOWEVER, THAT SUPERFICIAL READING WAS CORRECT THE FIRST TIME AROUND! This is NEVER EVER true of Heidegger. You get what is sufficient for the moment with Hume the first time around. Then one goes back and reads the language in extreme detail because the way he says things brings out much more than what was on the surface BUT UNLIKE HEIDEGGER DOES NOT EVER CONTRADICT IT. However, Heidegger's main problem is that he is working in a metaphysical tradition. England, on the other hand, starting with Bacon but deeply developed by Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley completely revolted against this tradition and wanted to be able to write for the common rational literate man, not a highly 'sophisticated' and 'self-prestigeous' audience ('self-prestigeous' in the sense that that prestige only exists in there own minds -- another MODERN problem in other field that needs to be resolved now). ALSO-- my talking of 'hunger' is precisely trying to develope this mode of writing on a very plain level still WITHIN and applicable to much more complicated levels when additional context is added on.

GCM: Dear Jud, Richard, Jon, and the philosophical community at large--

This is my fault. One of the points I was trying to make was that it is literally impossible to know anything whatsoever about the 'origins' of 'birth' of language. Nothing. And we never will.

Richard;

Dear Gary, I agree with you, and I agree that my speculations are pretty useless as authentic “.. ology” of any variety. My interest is in the possible mechanisms that led to the thought and language of modern man and in the process of thinking about them it is natural to ponder and speculate on the various stages involved. From all that I have read from you, I think there is more agreement than not – the key harmony being that modern humans have been the same in terms of complexity and mental abilities from the time at which they could be labeled “modern.” (However this, as I am sure you will agree, is also speculation!)

Gary:

We can see plenty of clues some kind of communication was always present-at-hand. Complex communication does not at all have to be by words. Worse still, one does not even have to be fully conscious of it. Swarm mentality can adapt to complex situations -- after all, it has only two choices: adapt or die, and the dying has been plentiful over the ages, inclusive of all animals including human beings. Swarm mentality is composed of swarms within swarms. Communication is constantly going on in the body, something that has not been seriously treated yet because it is 'scientifically' not respectable. However, the issue has become so pressing because of technology itself, scientists are being forced to address it because the lack of understanding of it is causing numerous problems else, in places completely unexpected. Environment is not all just 'outside', it is inside also. It is one of those questions blazingly obvious yet terribly inconvenient to deal with. But 'convenience' and 'respectibility' have no place in science. This has actually become a major problem that is totally unanticipated. 19th century science had so many things to learn, it didn't feel the need to investigate every nook and cranny. But now we have got to the point of having to figure out the most important question of all-- How do all these systems, micro and macro, work together? Afterall, once again, it is blazingly obvious they are working together because they are, in reality, together. It is Werner Heisenburg's theory taken to its extreme implications-- That not only does the observer 'interfere' with the results of the observation, but that is the way reality is and always has been. There never has been a state of 'pure' science. It has always been formed by the purpose of the observer.

Richard:

I agree with all you say. It is quixotic to pursue anything that is either perfect or pure. The investigator has an agenda, perhaps even unknown to him. Why did Godel go after his undecidability idea? I have always been suspicious that the edifice of mathematics and therefore all science was a kind of house of cards that depended on a very small set of “self evident” axioms or assumptions, and that real proof of anything was always contingent – not pure or final. But I am ill-equipped to formulate any solid mathematic proof, as did Godel. Godel’s agenda was probably a similar gut feeling. The same might be said of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, or Einstein’s relativity theory, or black holes or the big bang, etc. We often go after “proofs” that substantiate what we feel is the case. How and why these gut agendas arise is interesting, but I am not one who believes that the “truth” lurks somewhere in the gray matter, awaiting discovery. But I will suggest this: Our thinking has come about through millions of years of hominids dealing with the way the world is, on the macro level. That is the thesis of the TWTWI paper that I am about to mail to you as soon as I can get it printed.

Regards,

Richard