Richard Sansom

The British Sansom Society comprises of a group of Britsh admirers of the Californian philosopher and poet's output, which since it has been accessible on the internet is gradually becoming more widely acclaimed. He is now known and appreciated more widely in many countries, not only for his poetry, but also for his important contributions to philosophy.

1. Introduction

I agree with John Searle in this, and it is critical that what he calls “the framework” be established from the outset in any discussion, however speculative, that purports to deal with how the human mind relates to and presents what we call the real world -- what I call The Way The World Is (TWTWI.). This paper presents ideas on how our modern thought and language may have come about as a result and only as a result of the physical milieu during our evolution. I do not wish to bring up the old philosophical arguments dealing with whether or not there actually is such a thing as that world; they have been written about and discussed for millennia, and most of us will find ourselves on one side or the other as to this question. It quickly becomes an ontological, not an epistemological argument, and from the outset it should be made clear, lest the reader wish to avoid going where he or she doesn’t want to travel, I must make it quite clear that I am what is typically called a naive realist. I believe there is a physical world in which we have evolved, along with all organisms on the planet, and further, that that world -- TWTWI. -- has shaped not only our physical, but our mental morphology, how we see the world, think about it and speak about it.

We come to theories about how we think, speak and function from a variety of experiences and learning, and many of us eventually come to believe that we are right, and that our voices should be heard. I personally believe that any suggestion by any thinker that there is such a thing as some ultimately right or correct theory about thought and language is wrongheaded from the outset -- it being the nature of theories to be overtaken by subsequent ones, especially as progress is made in the sciences. As for the need to be heard, I believe that this amounts to the announcement of our search. The search for these kinds of things is a journey, and it is the journey that beckons — not only the objective. There is something in the human mind that compels us to hold forth our ideas, place them before others, test them against all criticism, and defend them as best we can.

In one sense, this is a paper about realism. Simply put, realism (or “naive realism”) is the belief that there is a real, independently existing, sensible world, in which we human organisms have evolved to have the ability to represent and deal with that world symbolically and physically. We are members of the animal kingdom, having no privileged position that affords us some cosmic superiority. "Superiority," in this context, is a concept we have invented to assure ourselves stature above all other animate and inanimate entities in the world. In a wider sense it is a paper about how TWTWI. has influenced human thought and language from the very early Hominids and even before them. It is my hypothesis that not only is there a real physical world, but that the characteristics of that world, and its macro-features, have been the shapers of how we think and speak. Further, I assume that language and thought are inextricably bound together as a result of this influence. To quote Ludwig Wittgenstein: “Die Sprache ist ein Teil unseres Organismus” -- “Language is a part of our organism.” While we are not privileged in some cosmic order, we are privileged to the extent we can articulate among our species what we experience, make models of the goings on in the physical world, and advance ideas pertaining to those experiences and models -- these things no other organism can do.

Our cognitive powers have evolved over millions of years, and though they offer us a special dominion among our animal kin, it remains to be seen how such a position will be maintained throughout the ages to come. We know that some species of microbe could annihilate all humanity in a short time, defeating all attempts by science and medicine to eradicate it before our demise. In that case, where does the idea of "special dominion " and "superiority" come into play? This fact should keep us humble. No doubt it will not.

This paper is a presentation of ideas regarding the evolution of human thought and language. I connect these two attributes of our minds with the specific intention of focusing the reader’s attention on them as integrated phenomena in the modern mind of Homo sapiens. It is too easy to imagine the very early minds and thought processes of Homo sapiens and their precursors, Homo habilis and Homo erectus, as being very much like our own. They surely were not. While it is impossible to know with any certainty what those minds and thoughts were like compared to ours, if we are to ferret out the evolutionary process that has led to our modern mind and language, we must try to place ourselves as close as possible to the survival milieu of their time, and use our imagination to make reasonable conjectures. This requires that we eliminate as much as possible all cultural, intellectual, and logical assumptions and biases as to how the ancient Hominid mind worked. This in itself is quite difficult, simply because those very aspects are the ones we now use to think through problems and deal with life. This does not mean beginning with an all inclusive Cartesian suspicion and doubt about what we can know, a completely presuppositionless stance that renders all points of approach inapplicable -- such a stance is impossible, and unnecessary. But it is essential that whatever personal presuppositions we bring are bracketed, held aside as an understandable part of the way we think, and not necessarily a part of the way our early forebears did.

The main thesis of this paper is that, like all organisms, we have evolved in the environment of this planet and everything about our species has been biologically shaped by that environment and our relationship with it -- including the way we think and verbalize those thoughts. All our actions, especially those of our early forebears, were geared to dealing with TWTWI., and it is my belief that our thought and language had no evolutionary choice other than to comport with it. This means that TWTWI. was, and still is to a large degree, both the shaper and the constrainer of our evolved physical and mental morphology.

I always start my thinking on philosophical matters with the awareness and statement: “We are animals.” I try hard to maintain this as my guiding principle throughout. If I lose sight of it, the lurking temptation is to confer upon humans some transcendental characteristic, something mysterious, or spiritual and thus inexplicable. While it may be necessary or perhaps convenient for some to think of humans as a very different creature, blessed with "God-given" capabilities and a uniqueness that strains any credibility of us being like our cousin animals, I maintain that such thinking thwarts objective investigation -- in fact, stops it cold. All issues concerning our thought, language and behavior must be based on a combination of clear evidence and reasonable, imaginative speculation. There is nothing wrong with conjecture and speculation provided it is grounded in premises which can be well defended without recourse to pure dogmatism -- religious or otherwise. It is obvious that any discussion on the origins of language and reasoned thought must be speculative, since those human characteristics evolved long before the written word, or any real evidence that indicates the nature of their existence in times long past. When I read about what it means that Neanderthals buried their dead in non-random positions, I am struck by how we so easily analogize those activities to our own burial rituals, and assume that they are indicative of, for example, some awareness of an afterlife. The key premise of this speculation is that what they did is like what we do. This is a risky assumption. We have not the slightest idea as to the meaning of why a person was buried in a certain position. What if the original reason for burial was to prevent predators from devouring the dead, not because the dead were in some way especially regarded, but for the sake of safety of the clan? What if the reason they were buried in a certain position was related to the fact that the surviving kin had a strong empathetic and thus protective feeling about them? When looking into the distant past of human evolution, it is necessary to begin with an attitude of de-analogizing, at least as much as possible. Sure, there are undoubtedly many characteristics we have in common with Homo erectus or Habilis, but we must be careful as to which of these are arguably irrefutable, such as bipedalism and our general physical morphology, etc.

Therefore, it is the set of premises which present the guiding vector of investigation and reasoned speculation. It is difficult, though clearly necessary, to attempt a separation of one's personal nagging predispositions and core beliefs from a set of premises which are supposed to be objectively founded. How do we arrive at sound, defensible premises, if they do not come from our core beliefs? I believe that they are necessarily a combination of what we have read and studied, experienced and imagined, together with aspects of our world that can be realistically deemed indubitable. We each have our own uniquely personal view of the way the world works and our role in it -- this is unavoidable. But we must be on guard that none of these influences dominate and completely dictate our approach, and that we end up as apologists or antagonists for or against certain preordained and dogmatic prescriptions of what language and reasoned thinking is and how it originated. The following are my going-in premises. I have given them much thought over the years; I claim no degree of originality.

The Premises:

Each of these demands elaboration, since they are the foundation of what follows in this paper.

We Are Animals

This appears to be self evident, however many will place Homo Sapiens in a category that is quite separate from other forms of animal life. There is absolutely no evidence to support this position. While we clearly have certain skills which, taken as a whole, far exceed those of other animals, they are a matter of degree, not type. Many animals build habitats and have means of communication; some species of ants even harvest their food; some animals build and use tools. I will not get into the key differences between humans and other animals, except to say that we do the same kinds of things listed above that other animals do, but usually with reasoned intentionality, and for purposes that may be different from the basic animal needs of Sustenance,

Shelter, Procreation and Defense (SSPD). (The more recent human need of expressiveness is discussed in Appendix 2).

We Evolved

All organic life on the earth has evolved from a previous state, and we are no different. Some animals, such as sharks and cockroaches, have existed in their present state for many millions of years, apparently having reached a point of evolutionary stasis -- that is, they are seemingly in evolutionary equilibrium with their environment. While we Homo sapiens have existed as a species for only a few hundred thousand years, fossil records allow us to trace evolutionary lineage back several million years. Our relatively speedy evolution to an animal with a proportionally large brain, capable of reasoned, intentional thought and language, may be an incorrect interpretation of the capabilities of our progenitors. Language might have evolved in previous species, such as Homo erectus and Homo habilis -- there is no way of knowing for sure. It may be the case that the conflation of evolving thought and language, combined with continually increasing complex life styles, socialization and problem solving, induced a kind of positive feedback in the development of our cognitive and language skills. This is discussed in later sections.

Our Cognitive Capabilities Evolved

In this paper I make no distinction between the functions of the physical brain and the mind -- or thought process. When I refer to the mind, I am talking about the brain-mind. Cognition is the process (carried out by the electro-chemical activity and physical synaptic connections of the neurons) executed within the physical brain, but related in complex ways to the rest of our body. I stress process, since I wish to avoid any suggestion that the mind, i. e., our thoughts, is some disembodied entity which animates the activity of thinking via the physical brain. Process can indeed be separated, for purposes of discussion and analysis, from the physical host that is animating the processing, but it cannot exist without the host. Nor does the host have any real functionality as the host without the process it executes and embodies. As for the evolution of our cognitive capabilities, I see them as co-evolving with the physical brain -- especially the neuronal and synaptic connections, or "wiring" of the brain. The process of reasoned thought is one that no doubt began with simple problem solving and gradually (or rather quickly relative to geological time!) became more and more complex as the requirements of social and physical life became more complex and demanding. The Features of TWTWI.

The various features and processes of our physical environment are the shapers and impeders of the evolution of all organic life. Together with genetic mutation and natural selection within environments these features are the permanent surrounding forces that both guide and constrain the mental and physical morphologies of all organisms.

These premises form the foundation for what follows in discussing TWTWI. and its relationship to the evolution of our thought and language.

A word is in order regarding whatever vestiges of the idea of the ghost in the machine, deus ex machina, may remain in the minds of philosophers and perhaps even neuroscientists and others in the field of cognitive science: Since the early Greek thinkers, there has been a lingering belief that there is something like a sixth sense that operates to organize our perceptions into conceptions -- conceptions about our very perception. It is perhaps natural to endow ourselves with this sixth sense because it feels like it is there -- surely there is an innate or a priori organizing agent that brings together the matrix of our perceptions of appearances into a whole and can itself be perceived! Indeed, there may be such an agent, but I think it unreasonable to assign it, whatever it may be in some physical sense, some kind of aloofness above and beyond the evolutionary results that surround perception itself. In a very general way, our human life begins with perception from the senses, and proceeds through a process of producing more things to be perceived, valued, judged, used, added to, and improved upon, within the human community of language, building and action. Whatever we do is related, to varying degrees, to TWTWI..

2. The Way the World Is -- TWTWI.

The reality of the world should require no explanation, since very few, if any, in their behavior, act in ways that exhibit any real doubt. They can philosophically chew on questions that our language and our imagination allows us to ask, but at the end of the day, they go to sleep in a real bed, awake to a real breakfast, go to a real place of work, driving a real car. Their entire life is lived in a milieu that not only suggests such reality, but demands that it be accepted. All organic life senses and reacts to the real physical world. The evolution of all life is a function of how the process of replication is affected by chance mutation in relation to the physical environment. What exists and occurs in the physical world today, has been so since the origins of the earth, and is TWTWI.. It is a matter of investigative choice as to what level of process and ingredients are chosen for analysis. Biologists focus on the behavior of organic cells and their mechanisms; physicists focus on sub-atomic particles and force fields; paleontologists focus on the evidence of prehistoric life via fossils, etc. These are all epistemic, in that the investigators come to their conclusions and speculations as a result of their own cognitive process, and their investigations are founded on and bounded by a great many assumptions garnered from research and from the cognitive processes of others. They generally do not deal with the highest, or the macro level of TWTWI., but rather with levels of process and matter well below the surface. They investigate how the world is the way it is, at the micro, not the macro level. Nor do I propose to deal with why TWTWI. is the way it is. This why is the purview of metaphysics and religion. It is the case that two atoms of hydrogen combine with one atom of oxygen to form the molecule we call water. The process of this combination -- the allowable sharing of electrons -- and the reasons for the existence of water in various states (solid, liquid, gas) is an example of the micro level of TWTWI.. The fact that water always flows downhill, is an example of the macro level.

All organic life senses and reacts to various aspects of the physical world. The behavior, morphology, and organic processes that comprise any organism have been shaped by how that organism, given its capabilities, functions in relation to the physical world. That physical world demands, by its various aspects, that the evolution of organic life be constrained in certain directions, and allowed it to be free in others. One might even say that all organic life evolves along a path that is both directed and bounded by TWTWI. As Charles Darwin so eloquently said in The Origin of Species:

It is tempting to call TWTWI. the result of a set of “laws of nature.” The term “law” represents the concept of either a natural or man-made principle that must, for some reason, be universally adhered to. So-called natural laws or laws of physics suggest immutable principles that exist independently of what they govern. While I hold that TWTWI. is indeed immutable, I attach no laws to it -- the source or reason for its existence and processes is of no concern here, and I will say why. First, I believe such inquiries are ultimately metaphysical in nature. Second, I have serious doubts that the laws of physics, for example, exist independently of what they govern, and independently of our cognition. If we assume that the origin of the cosmos began with the “Big Bang,” prior that event there was supposedly nothing -- no time, no forces, no matter as we know it. If there were laws of physics they would have to have existed prior to the Big Bang in order to effect the changes that occurred at and after that event. But this means that those laws were somehow cosmically codified and existed as laws even “before” time itself. But all such laws all deal with causality -- and causality is a temporal process, at least as we know and experience it; we have defined what such laws are and deal with via our cognitive process. It may be the case that these “laws of physics” came into being (as we see them) as the result of the seminal interaction of matter and processes and were created by the process -- not the other way around. In any case, I do not find the so-called laws of nature or of physics to have much if any bearing on this paper -- even if they do exist, it is of little consequence in terms of the way sentient creatures react to the world, and one can surely rest assured that no such creature has any a priori or a posteriori cognition related to them.

(Roger Penrose, in his The Emperor’s New Mind, presents mathematics as among what he considered “God-given” laws or realities of the universe. For him, there are indeed transcendent mathematical truths that exist independently of the human mind. Indeed, Frege had a similar concept regarding number. I consider this to be a position fraught with difficulties for many reasons. I address this briefly in the Appendix 1 to this paper. )

TWTWI. is defined herein as a collection of properties of the worldly milieu of all organic life, from the beginnings of organic life -- whenever, and however that occurred. It began with the replication of organic molecules, for reasons that are so far unknown. It is taken as a given (after Darwin) that such an event did occur and commenced the ever increasingly complex development of a wide variety of organic life over billions of years. With each replication, there was sometimes a slight variation in the genetic composition of the resulting organism, and each resulting organism had to function within the environment it was born into. One overriding element of such an environment was the presence of what we call gravity. There are many such elements, and these are discussed below.

The Elements of TWTWI.

It is vital that when developing and thinking about the composition of TWTWI. we do not impose (or try hard not to!) epistemic or human cognitive origins to them. We have names for them, but it must be kept in mind that these are elements that are, to varying degrees, experienced by all organic life, and not the product of human invention. Organic life is aware of the presence and effects of these elements by virtue of their sensory capabilities, and I use awareness cautiously to mean the ability of an organism to sense and react to some aspect of TWTWI.. Some organisms are blind in that they have no sensory means to react to the presence of photons of light using a retinal system. But all plants are not blind since most do react to light by virtue of their molecular composition. Not only do they synthesize light for metabolic purposes, sessile plants behave heliotropically, either growing toward or away from a light source. Thus, I maintain that they possess a kind of “awareness” of the presence of light -- even as much as this is a purely chemically induced “awareness.”

Organisms have the ability to be aware of and react to some or all of the following elements of TWTWI.: (later referred to as the first tier of the elements):

[It is important to state here that I do not assign these eight elements of TWTWI. some ontic reality or existence. But I do claim that they are perceived as existing, even if the nominalists would argue their real existence.]

These elements are discussed below:

The Effects of Gravity

Gravity should be put in quotes. A seed planted on a slowly revolving table, will grow in a direction that is aligned with the resulting vector of the force of gravity combined with the centrifugal force affected by the rotation of the table. Thus, the plant is aware that, due to its genetic make up, it will progress in its growth in a direction that has always gotten it above ground, to the light. It is constructed to grow in an opposite direction to the force vector it encounters. This force vector is normally pointed on a line that goes to the center of the earth --i. e. to the center of gravity of the earth. The rotating table fools it into an awareness of a different direction of that force vector. Other organisms deal with gravity in a multitude of ways, their general behavior being governed by what they can and cannot do in terms of their mobility and activities. Our own bodies are built to deal with the effects of gravity. For example there are tiny valves in the veins that prevent the flow of blood from going the wrong way due to the effects of gravity. We maintain our balance in walking through a mechanism in the middle ear that senses the direction of the vector of gravity -- or any force that artificially creates the sensed awareness of gravity. Birds fly as a means of defeating the effects of gravity, and so on.

The Motion of Objects

Objects move in the world, and the movement of objects is an aspect of TWTWI.. Many organisms have the ability to discern the motion of objects. We sometimes call this ability pattern recognition and change detection, i. e., the ability to distinguish one kind of pattern from another, statically and over time. We know that many animals have this ability, and we know that objects do move. All sensed motion is relative motion (that’s the only kind there is) in that either motion is observed relative to other objects, or relative to the observer.

The Relative Magnitude and Characteristics of Objects

Objects in the world are of different sizes and of different composition. Mountains are larger than pebbles, and many organisms have the ability to discern these differences in magnitude. In addition, objects in the world have characteristics that may be said to possess magnitudes of those characteristics -- such as color and temperature. (While color does not exist, per se, in the world, the causal effects of different wave-lengths of light on many organisms are unquestionable -- as is the case of different temperatures.)

Phenomenal Persistence and Change

It is the case that many objects and their characteristics have a persistent state. In fact phenomenal persistence is one of the most overriding aspects of TWTWI.. Mountains are always “larger” than pebbles; the effects of gravity are always present; hummingbirds do not ever suddenly become locomotives. Due to the earth’s rotation, angle of tilt and annual orbit around the sun all organisms experience diurnal and annual changes -- to greater and lesser degrees of awareness and reaction.

Morphological Persistence and Change

All organisms depend on the fixity of many aspects of their environment. The squirrel depends on the persistent shape and composition of a tree to remain that of a tree. While many things do change morphology, location and composition, such as water, for the most part organisms are dependent on a high degree of a persistent environment.

Spatiality

Many organisms have the ability to sense spatiality, in that they can discern two objects do not occupy the same location at the same time. Put another way, all objects in the world are not all bunched up, forming a single object. Some animals are quite adept at gauging the space or distance between two or more objects.

Causality

David Hume, following the ideas of the second century skeptic, Sextus Empiricus, refuted the existence of causality (and Bishop Berkeley refuted the existence of all sensed objects in the world!) and offered an interesting argument against it. Hume said:

Thus, for Hume, causation is an epistemic, not factual event or process. Yet we know that animals other than humans deal with causality all the time, and unless we confer on those animals the same kind of human perception and cognition we possess, his argument is flawed. It is quite easy to imagine that the world is a grand hallucination of the human mind, but such a position leads us no where in terms of understanding ourselves and our surroundings -- it is a dead-end, solipsistic belief. We know that many organisms use the existence of cause and effect, without what we would call the kind of cognition humans possess.

Is it possible to separate out our human cognition, imagination, our deductive and inductive logic from the fact of causation in TWTWI.? Since causality is such a ubiquitous part of our existence, not only do we take it for granted, we assume that it is really not in the least problematic -- unless we are bent on a mission similar to Hume’s, and have a further assumption: that everything we see and relate to is merely and only a product of our minds. I maintain that causality not only is a reality in TWTWI., but all organic life is dependent on it for existence. It is the sine qua non of all organic and inorganic processes in the cosmos. No other idea has been shown to adequately characterize causality beyond the proposition: Every effect has a cause. [In no way is this a defense of “determinism” which, in its broadest interpretation, means that precise predictability is, in theory, possible. I do not accept this.]

I believe the intellectual problem surrounding causality arises from our ability, and sometimes philosophical inclination, to question and refute what is most obvious in our world and what has gone before in terms of explanation. Hume refuted Aristotle; Kant refuted Hume; modern epistemologists refute Kant; deconstructionists/post-structuralists refute just about every thinker of the past, in some way. Many of these modern thinkers assign nothing more to aspects of TWTWI., including causality, than to the realm of the invention and use of symbols as a means of representing and using the world, in a community of language users. Many eschew any kind of theory that is based on assumptions which they believe to be merely products of the human mind and language. But this in itself is a theory, based on their assumptions. This proclivity and necessity for making assumptions is inescapable, regardless of the final position one ends up with. The final test that one can apply, in the case of causality, is to demonstrate at least one example where causality fails as a means of explaining some process or phenomenon related to TWTWI.. I have yet to see or hear of such a demonstration.

When I speak of causality, I do so in connection with the observable or sensed macro-world, ignoring the possibilities that lie within the emerging discoveries in quantum physics (See Appendix 4). One can postulate all kinds of metaphysical challenges for causality, but in terms of our evolution and that of all organisms on the planet, I do not think it profits one to deny that causality is perceived to exist -- no matter what their metaphysics is.

Plurality

The issue of “plurality” opens the entire question of what should really constitute the elements of TWTWI.. My original thoughts on this matter went something like the following: What are the aspects of the world that not only exist in the absence of any organism’s awareness (via sensual contact) of them, but are instrumental in exciting such awareness in the presence of those organisms? It seemed rather straightforward at the time of my original thinking -- my intention (based purely on a hunch) being to establish a very fundamental set of natural forces and conditions that both constrain and allow for the various evolutionary directions of life, especially Hominid life, and eventually Hominid thought and language. I thought long and hard about what those elements might be, trying to avoid any anthropomorphic applications -- something that is rather hard to do, since I must see and deal with the physical world through the lens of my humanness. Perhaps some of the elements can be challenged on the grounds that I have indeed stepped over the line -- for example. “The relative magnitude of objects” can be challenged, since it is sentient creatures that cognitively discern relative magnitudes -- they do not exist in the absence of such sentience. Or do they? While it requires an awareness of differential magnitude to establish that, could it be established without the very existence of differing magnitudes? My initial answer was, and remains no. The basic tenet being: Things in the universe are of different magnitudes/sizes -- without any sentient awareness of this. This is obviously open to debate, but in the absence of any convincing argument I will keep to my opinion.

Now, regarding plurality, I see this as related to differential magnitude in the following way: “Many” may be seen as “large” in the sense that large is a composite of arbitrarily separable entities. (This gets into atomism, infinitesimals, continuums, etc -- it is unavoidable). Of course this is rank anthropomorphism -- we are undoubtedly the only creature that ventures such abstract ideas about objects in the world. But is it only an anthropomorphic take on things? “Quantity,” (a term Aristotle used) in my opinion is a poor choice of words, since it implies enumeration, or counting. It seems reasonable to assume that a characteristic of the world (or the universe) is that it is not one solid thing – but, rather, composed of separate entities, separated by space. If one wishes to call this a bold and unprovable assumption, then so be it. While “space” is not necessarily material (though that is possibly arguable) it is measurable, in that two separate locations of an object implies spatial differentiation, and in any arbitrary coordinate system this can be determined. All of this points to a plurality of objects in the world and the universe as an inherent aspect, and one that is not simply an anthropomorphic deduction. The question arises as to the perceptibility of this attribute -- does it exist in some organisms, and if so, is it purely a perceptive or also an epistemic process at work in discerning multiplicity? And, does it really matter? I am beginning to think that it probably does not matter, even though one could claim that I have overreached my criteria of perception. Further, I could argue that the combination of magnitude and spatiality are the formative ingredients of perceiving multiplicity. In any case, I have come around to the conclusion that, for purposes of this paper, it should be included.

One may ask why, if I have included spatiality have I not included temporality. The reason I see is simple: no animal senses time; we do not deal with time in the same way we deal with space. Space can be physically measured, while time is a construct of the mind, and even if we have an internal “thalamic clock” that ticks at about 40 cycles/second our ideas of time arises from the relative motion of objects, and it is motion that we observe, therefore time is an internally created awareness.

The existence of “time” as an independent feature of the universe has been debated for a very long time, with little consensus as to what time actually is -- if it is anything. I have claimed that motion is an independent feature, one that is present in the absence of any sentient cognitive function, and thus the point rebounds to a discussion on the relationship between motion and time. If we can assume with reasonable surety that motion is indeed an independent feature of the TWTWI. (or indeed of the universe) then it is my belief that time is an epistemically created parameter that prescribes a way to deal with motion – and, more specifically, relative motion. When confronting motion we today can represent it in terms of a vector, a parameter with magnitude and direction, and can further ascribe to a moving object any derivative such as acceleration, in vector form. But in defining the (scalar) linear distance traversed by a moving object, we use the familiar (first order) equation D = V x T -- or distance is equal to the velocity of the object times time. But that time must, in turn, be defined as a function of some other motion -- that of a clock, which is nothing more than a moving object with a known and predictable state of motion. The equation above is not only an invented tautology; it implicitly embodies two parameters that are elements of TWTWI. -- spatiality and motion, though neither have explicit nomenclatures. The equation is circular. If T is the ratio of distance to velocity, time is on both sides of the equation, since velocity is distance traveled per unit of time! Thus we see that the variable time has been invented to relate motion and distance, both of which are elements within TWTWI.. This is not suggesting that the variable time is useless or without meaning -- it certainly is useful and meaningful in terms of explaining phenomena, and Einstein considered time as the fourth dimension, one that is orthogonal to the other three Cartesian x, y, z, coordinates. But this too is a construction of the human mind, useful in explaining the behavior of the universe.

It is clear that elements of TWTWI. have no ready classification or parametric name. Motion means the relative change in location of objects, but cannot be pinned down as to any useful meaning until the introduction of the parameter of time. If we think about motion we see that it is both a simple and a very complex phenomenon -- things move, that is simple enough, but to lay out the constituents of that activity, to define what it is becomes quite difficult and we resort to those things for which we have models or descriptions that seem to be appropriate. We are forced to introduce time because that parameter is seemingly stable over all instances of motion -- time is seen as an absolute. But in reality, time is nothing more than the linear demarcation of motion along a chosen and arbitrary axis for which we have control -- namely, some kind of clock  -- including our internal “clocks.” We cannot describe motion in any perfect system, with complete accuracy, because we are not privy to all the various forces at play in that motion, nor will we be ever to do so -- we are not omniscient gods. All remains approximation. It is simple because we see it happening around us all the time and it is part of our world. It is complex when we try to assign it a functional prescription that gives us predictability and surety, and we end up realizing that there is always something left over, some little piece of uncertainty that lingers beyond our grasp.

Much has been said about time -- how strange it is, how difficult to define and deal with. IMO motion itself is far stranger and it is, along with causality, the heartbeat of all science.

Concluding Thoughts on the Elements of TWTWI.

At the beginning of this section I said, regarding the elements of TWTWI.: We have names for them, but it must be kept in mind that these are elements that are, to varying degrees, experienced by all organic life, and not the product of human invention. One might argue that I have simply broken my own rule here, by claiming that something that is a product of my cognition has a fixed place in the cosmos -- something very close to Platonism. My rejoinder for this is to confess it to be so -- but with the caveat that were one to doubt the existence of these elements they would be faced with explaining the most basic things all organisms experience. As I mentioned previously, assumptions and speculations, i. e. products of our human cognitive process, are to be taken as something on which to build a system of explication, and must be reasonable and even indubitable. Further, I believe that my singling out the specific elements of TWTWI. is an act of direct connectivity to those elements through my experience and observations, and have not been arrived at as abstractions that were dreamed up out of whole cloth. An interesting exercise would be to compare my thesis, regarding the unquestionable omnipresence of the elements of TWTWI., to Kant’s views on what “knowledge” consists of. While I claim that these elements are self evident, Kant might disagree, claiming that they are nothing more but a posterior synthetic judgment based on my personal experience, mediated by my a priori synthetic knowledge. How can I speak of “causality” as an irrefutable aspect of nature without bringing into play my own concepts of what causality is? And are those concepts not merely the result of inductive reasoning from experience? Well, he has a point. But while he considered those mediating a priori synthetic judgments as transcendental, I consider them the result of my ability to articulate what all animals deal with, but cannot articulate -- there being nothing transcendental about it. My basic assumption is that I can have basic assumptions -- not absolute truth, not transcendental knowledge. His basic assumptions were that certain flavors of assumptions rise above mere assumptions to a level of transcendental indisputability. I am not nearly so presumptuous. I am an animal, and like all animals I deal with and take in TWTWI., but, being a human animal, I can speak them out in words.

(Another element, that of the existence of objects, or as Ruth Millikan calls them, “substances,” may be seen as an obvious omission in the list above. I found it unnecessary to have an element that is: Objects exist. This is taken as a given. If we state that TWTWI. is independent of any sentient awareness of it, this implies the existence of TWTWI. in the first place, or, is implicitly analytic).

3. The Logic of TWTWI.

“Logic” here must be put in quotes since I am using it in a different manner than is generally used. The king of ancient logic is considered to be Aristotle, and it has been the subject of debate and analysis ever since Aristotle laid out his opinions on it. Logic is frequently put in the two categories of inductive and deductive, the former being that related to experience and memory, and the latter associated with deducing one event or situation or proposition from another in a way that is independent of experience
--using only the appropriate rules of deduction -- and those within the confines of one‘s thought and language. In this paper, I use logic as meaning the immutability of the processes contained in TWTWI.. This is a rather simplistic use of the term, but it is important, and I believe at the core of how, as a species, we eventually came to have the kind of thought and language we have. It will be easy to criticize this use of the term, but consider it definitional in the context of the paper. I am saying that it is logical that the observable, sensed processes of TWTWI. are fixed. All the ingredients of TWTWI. listed in the previous section are permanent characteristics -- there are never any revolutionary changes in them, nor can we expect there ever will be. (One might call this “extreme realism!”). It would be, as this term is defined, impossible for a tree to become a not-tree. It would be impossible for water to suddenly start flowing uphill. Such impossibilities I call illogical.

Given that TWTWI. is composed of objects and processes (at the macro-level of sensibility) whose existence and behavior are fixed in their constitution, it is quite reasonable to assume that all organic life evolved within the constraints and functional and physical allowances of TWTWI.. Variations in the genetic composition of organisms, due to mutation, resulted in different morphologies that dealt with TWTWI. -- either successfully, or not. Successful adaptations resulted in the continuation of an organism’s genetic characteristics -- successful, in that they adapted well to the environment and produced similarly successful progeny. But in every case of adaptation there was the requirement of an organism’s capabilities to operate, to solve problems related to survival, within the ingredients of TWTWI.. All successful adaptations had to conform to those ingredients -- there was no choice in the matter. The evolution of organisms under the heading of phylum Chordata, for example, (those with spinal chords) was both guided and bounded by the requirements of gravity and those related to movement of the organism in search of sustenance, shelter, procreation and defense. (SSPD). One might then say that such an evolution was a logical process, given those constraints and requirements. If an organism, via mutation, acquires some heretofore nonexistent feature, such as claws or the precursor to what we call claws, such a feature allows that organism to defy the effects of gravity to some extent, allowing it the ability to climb, or grab hold of something if falling. It is then more capable of avoiding predators and obtaining additional food sources, etc. Had it not been for the ubiquitous presence of the effects of gravity, the utility of such a mutation might have been problematic, or not necessarily advantageous. Had it not been for the ubiquitous diurnal presence of light, the advantage of vision would be problematic, as would the process of photosynthesis.

4. Problem Solving

I have tried to set the stage for this move into considerations of our species as it relates to TWTWI.. This is not an easy job for two reasons: First, much of the above is speculative and definitional in nature, and second, it is always the case that using my thought and my language to discuss thought and language as a common human characteristic is fraught with complications. My thesis is that TWTWI. is intimately connected to the way we modern humans think and use language, and, put even more strongly, we could not think or speak any differently than we do because of TWTWI., and what I have called its logic. This is quite an assertion, and impossible to prove. However, consider this: Can anyone imagine us humans possessing a cognitive process that is not restricted to the facts and influences of TWTWI.? Had our cognitive functionality evolved in someway that did not comport with TWTW, I doubt very much that we would even exist as we do today -- or exist at all. Our minds have evolved in no way different from the way our liver or heart evolved -- responding to the allowances and restrictions placed on us by TWTWI. and as a result of genetic changes that gave us survival advantages within those allowances and restrictions.

It is necessary to begin at a point in the far past, and discuss what I mean by thought. This is a tricky subject, since there are many, widely varying meanings for thought, and one must “put their cards on the table” regarding their assumptions and presuppositions leading up to any definition. In addition, the rather chimerical consciousness may come into play, exacerbating things even further. I go back to my original and very fundamental axiom in all this: We are animals. Indeed, we consider ourselves to be very special animals, particularly in this modern age with all the gadgets that make us more productive and supposedly better entertained, but all these modern conveniences do not alter the fact that we are simply biological organisms that have evolved, going our special way, as did the palm tree and the mongoose. It is my belief that certainly most, if not all organisms, “advance” in terms of capability as the result of two things: Evolution, through variation and natural selection, and what I call problem solving. What are problems? A Problem exists when a given situation, demands, for whatever reason, that another situation be attained which alters the first one.

Problems can be simple or complex, depending on the situation one wishes to change. If one is hungry, the first situation, one finds something to eat. However, in finding something to eat other problems often come into play, since other situations must be dealt with. One may be without money to buy food to assuage the hunger, therefore, a secondary situation, that of being broke, may arise to be altered, and so on. A more complex problem may be to change the situation of not knowing something one considers vital, for some reason, such as a scientist not knowing the mass or charge of a subatomic particle. We may therefore divide problems into convenient categories: those that deal with physical needs or situations, and those that deal with acquiring knowledge that may or may not be directly related to physicality. By physical situations, I don’t mean necessarily those that deal with SSPD, but, in general, those that deal with changing a physical situation, such as building a bench, or rearranging the furniture. I call these two kinds of problems Physical Problems and Knowledge Problems, and they are clearly not mutually exclusive.

Animals solve problems too, and we can envision early hominids dealing with problems that are not that far removed from those solved by other animals, in their dealings with SSPD. I believe that all of these early problems were physical in nature, and this is why I call them Physical Problems, as opposed to Knowledge Problems -- to be discussed later. Physical problems are those that deal with immediate physical needs and physical objects and processes in the environment at hand. A crawling insect, encountering a rock or some other impediment, will normally go around it, maintaining their general direction. They alter their direction in order to cope with the obstruction they have sensed. Every aspect of dealing with SSPD requires some kind of physical problem solving. In the lower forms of life, I refer to the solutions as reflexive as opposed to reflective, in that no apparent thought is gone into the solution, but rather a simple reflexive alteration of a situation. While gardening, upon unearthing an earthworm, I witness it struggling to get back into its earthy home, solving the problem of being exposed to an environment it has evolved to avoid -- a nearby robin will take quick advantage of its failure to return home.

All organisms have evolved to use the problem solving abilities they have acquired. (Ruth Millikan refers to these evolved abilities as “proper functions.“). When a situation is encountered that cannot be solved, depending on the objective at hand, relative to survival, they will either perish or luck out. Thus, the acquisition of problem solving skills is paramount in the ability to pass on genetic material. Better problem solvers survive; poor ones usually don’t. I am not suggesting that there is nothing more to evolution than that -- many other factors come into play. However, as we work our way up the chain of complexity of organisms, more and more broad spectrum sensory systems, a larger and more complex nervous system, and ultimately to what we normally call brains and thinking, we find that problem solving becomes more varied and more complex. Finally, in Hominids, problem solving abilities eventually outweigh the value of physical strength and physical adaptation to environment. The environment can be altered; nature can be used, as opposed to only dictating behavior and placing restrictions.

So, I see the stage was set for what we call reasoned thought in the distant past, when problem solving was simply reflexive. What happened to allow early Hominids to engage in reflective problem solving? Was there some single mutation that conferred some such ability to a single (genius) human, who then spawned a race of reflective problem solvers? I doubt this for the same reason that I doubt any such single advantageous mutation is the cause for the general process of evolution. Many such mutations have to occur, simply due to the probabilities of success being no doubt low, for any single individual to accomplish the task.

I see the process of evolving thought beginning as far back as, for example, the origins of the spinal column, when organisms reacted purely on the basis of a very tight stimulus-response feedback loop. By that I mean the physical responses to sensed environmental stimuli happened quickly and automatically -- as in the case of the quickly retracting tentacles of the sea anemone when touched. If it could be sensed, it was generally reacted to; that was the result of the evolved sensory system in the fist place. If food was present and sensed, it was grabbed; if a threat was present and sensed, it was avoided or dealt with, and so on. With but a sparse, if even existent “brain,” there were no decisions made based on anything more than what was sensed, relative to what the organism was designed to use and cope with. (I use “design” not teleologically, but rather the design evolution conferred). So, there was a built in correspondence of stimuli to an advantageous response. Some animals from the Ordovician period (about 500 million years ago) had spinal chords, which are evolutionarily linked with our own vertebrae. For the same reason, we are also linked evolutionarily with those prehistoric creatures who possessed only reflexive response to stimuli. We still have reflexive responses, such as the eye blink when something comes at the eyes, the quick reaction to grab something we have dropped, our physical fight or flight responses if attacked, etc.

But what happened next? The answer is simple: complexity. The evolution of organic life has seldom if ever produced more simple organisms, but advances toward higher complexity. The reason for this must be that coping with the environment produces adaptations that go a notch higher in complexity if the organism is to survive. Genetic variations in progeny are not always (and probably are seldom) advantageous to survival, but those that are add a component to the capability repertoire of the organism, and this added component means added complexity of the organism. Eventually this complexity reached a point at which the relatively simple reflexive problem solving was not sufficient to deal with what was encountered in the environment. But how is the complexity of morphology and general functionality, such as the increased complexity of the spinal chord, the lungs, the circulatory system related to increased complexity and capability in the area of problem solving? I maintain that there is no difference in the causes, and no difference in the effects -- i. e. the organ that begins to solve physical and eventually knowledge problems in more effective ways evolves in the same manner as the stomach, evolving to cope with more and varying foods in terms of metabolism and nourishment to the body. All organs of the organism are solving problems of different kinds -- why should the brain be any different?

In very broad terms, our brains have the functions of: vision, memory, thought, language and the autonomic nervous system, and each of these deals with a wide variety of problem solving in maintaining the health and well being of the body. It is a mistake to draw a firm line between the brain and the rest of the body in terms of functionality and behavior, since the whole organism evolved as one, and the interrelationships are legion between them. Physical problems are generally solved using the eyes, arms, hands, fingers, and memory. As Gerald Edelman points out, a complex of mappings occur in regards to our abilities to form stable concepts of objects and events. Memory is not like a file cabinet into which we store what is witnessed, but a far more complex interaction of various areas of the brain, which result in a coalescing of what may be called the identification of a thing or process. Upon each additional encounter with something, the categorization of that something is reinforced. (I like the analogy of concrete getting a bit harder each time it is wet) What then of problem solving?

In early hominids problems were encountered that mainly dealt with SSPD, and I would assume required immediate attention. Solutions no doubt were a combination of accident and invention, but accident played a large role early on. We know that many animals, not only primates, can be taught things. Behavior can be shaped by various means, such as reward or punishment, which indicates that certain encounters will elicit certain behaviors -- i. e., a fixed mapping of relationships becomes established. But without any directed management of this process (i. e., as in training an animal to perform or react in a specific way) encounters with problems of survival, reflecting TWTWI. to a particular animal, could have a similar effect. Problems that are frequently encountered become installed as an identifiable condition, and solutions, by chance or accident, also become an identifiable process, or part of the repertoire. The two, problem situation, and successful solution, become a paired process, wherein encounters with the same or similar problem situations will trigger the same solution, since they are connected via neural mapping mechanisms in the brain. Thus, situation initiated training has occurred. One might say that a selection repertoire has been formed.

Nowhere in this argument has intentionality been discussed; things happen in the external world in conjunction with bodily activities and are automatically brought into the internal organism. We generally do not picture thinking as being this kind of mechanistic and automatic process. We modern humans do many things with the intention of doing them. We solve problems by various means, supposedly using deductive and inductive logic. But the roots of this thinking skill lie in the distant past, when all problem solving was reflexive and dealing with physical situations. We can look at this process as the conflation of TWTWI. with survival requirements. In what way is this conflation constructed?

Problems that were encountered were all composed of some or all of the eight TWTWI. elements. For example, if one slips on the edge of a precipice, made to fall by the effects of gravity, one instinctively reaches for something to hold onto -- a reflexive solution to the situation. Each of the above elements will come into play in one form or the other as animals deal with surviving. Eventually associated neural memory mappings of the element or combination of elements with the successful solution is established, and the species is thus trained (over long periods of time) to cope with similar situations in the future. None of this is memorized or identified in their own right as abstractions, but only as they relate to their association with surviving and the successful solutions -- if they occurred.

The issue now is how to move from purely reflexive and automatic training, to what we now call reflective thinking -- intentional behavior related to problem solving. We cannot leap too far, as in leaping to the belief that an awareness of causality was a recognized process in nature, but can only assume that the effects of causality were experienced and utilized. How did this experiencing and automatic training eventually move into intentional behavior? That is the big question.

First, it is helpful to distinguish the real differences between reflexive and reflective problem solving. It is easy enough to simply say that the latter is intentional -- this simply begs the question as to what intention means. I believe that reflective problem solving began when a novel problem was encountered -- one that the reflexive or automatic solution could not deal with. There are two approaches here: First, reflective problem solving could be seen as an extension or modification (or evolution) of reflexive, or second, it could be seen as an entirely different process in the brain. But processes in organisms don’t spontaneously appear out of nowhere, they evolve. It could it be the case that after millennia of dealing with TWTWI., its elements became installed as associative maps for their own sake, so to speak. This would mean that there existed in the brain some ready ammunition to deal with novel problems, by an associative process. Put another way, this can be seen as a selection process, as opposed to an instructional one. While TWTWI. presents problems, it also presents solutions because it has become part of the repertoire of representations in the brain that can be drawn upon for problem solving. I believe it could be that as this repertoire became complete, to some degree -- i. e., many of the problems associated with the elements of TWTWI. had become permanently installed -- the stage was set for intentionality. By this I am suggesting that given an encountered problem, representing one arrangement of TWTWI., the repertoire of other elements of TWTWI. was drawn upon intentionally -- “searching” for a solution that matched the problem. Such searching I will call our first reflective problem solving -- i. e., our first intentional thinking. Here’s a very simple example:

Digging for roots a large rock is encountered, impeding the search for food. If the dealing with the effects of gravity, relative magnitude, movement and causality are in the repertoire, the large rock perhaps can be moved to continue the search. Without such a repertoire, the animal may simply continue to dig around the rock, making no attempt to move it. The TWTWI. elements of magnitude, gravity and existential persistence were the ingredients of the problem, and other elements combined to provide the solution.

The issue remains of the transition point, when such a selection process was used, therefore introducing intentionality. How did such a point arrive? Concomitant questions have to do with the animal’s awareness that it had the ability to use such a selection process, and thus the question of consciousness.

Innateness

It is necessary to say something here about innateness. I have claimed that dealing with the first tier or macro level elements of TWTWI. is innate to the extent organisms appear to possess the ability to function with regard to those elements with little or no (self) training. Their whole system, bodies/brains, are tuned to, and built for, dealing with those elements. Lenneberg in a 1968 paper in Science, points out the four criteria used to determine innateness -- they are (paraphrasing):

These criteria are useful to a certain extent; however the last one, discussing the necessity for an organic correlate is somewhat problematic. Organisms that have little or no similarity between their organs, nevertheless have an innate connection with and response to the first tier elements of TWTWI..

5. The Evolution of Thought

Thought is an ambiguous term, meaning different things to different people. We normally consider thought to be volitional and conscious, however this is problematic. We are doing a kind of thinking when we dream, and we clearly do things, as we drive our car, for example, that we do not, seemingly. consciously think about. In addition, the brain is busy executing a multitude of activities that are never made conscious, such as its job of controlling bodily functions, not to mention the billions of processes occurring within the cells of the body. When we encounter an object of a certain color, do we think about it being that color, or is that perception at some other layer of our awareness? When we experience pain, is that experience thought? So, it is an over simplification to say that everything the brain is engaged in is thought. But it is not an over simplification to say that all thought is biological and physical, since we now know that neuronal and synaptic activity are the mechanisms for thought. The idea that thought is some disembodied agent is by now passé, at least in the cognitive science community. This has been admirably discussed by Lakoff and Johnson. [Philosophy in the Flesh]

As discussed in the preceding section it is convenient to divide the issue of thought into two parts: (1) intentional or reflective problem solving, and (2) reflexive problem solving. The definition of thought I will be using herein is the former. This definition makes dreaming a bit problematic in that there is no physical or knowledge-based problem at hand. However the dream creates its own set of situations and problems, using our memories and the often seemingly helter-skelter productions of the unconscious. Lest one think (1) is too restrictive, let me elaborate. Unfortunately, it is necessary to involve consciousness. That is a state or condition of the mind that has produced a multitude of theories over the ages, and remains a matter of some disagreement among philosophers and scientists alike. It is easy enough to state when we are not conscious, but more difficult to state when we are. We are not conscious in a coma or dead. I believe it is reasonable to state that we are conscious when we are capable of stating or knowing we are conscious. This is not as silly or as circular as it sounds. I say, knowing, since even though a global aphasic may not be able to tell us in words he or she is conscious, they probably know it. Language is certainly not a prerequisite for consciousness -- but what is? I think it safe to say that human consciousness is the demonstrable ability to reference one’s self as an object. Are apes such as chimps conscious? I recall reading about an experiment in which a chimp was anesthetized and a smear of white chalk put on the top of the animal’s head. Upon waking and, some time later confronting itself in a mirror and seeing the chalk smear, it rubbed it until it came off. It immediately knew that the chalk was on its head, thus, it knew that the reflection in the mirror referenced its self. In my estimation, that chimp was conscious and thinking -- it was demonstrably able to reference itself as an object.

For millions of years, the animals belonging to the line of evolution leading up to Homo sapiens, experienced and reacted with TWTWI.. In doing so, the elements of TWTWI. not only influenced the way they lived, but were reflected in the development of their whole morphology, including the brain/mind. There can be no explanation other than this for how such morphology came about. The effects of gravity are the most obvious, since all animals live in a gravitational environment, and in a sense, gravity poses a continual problem that the body solves in various ways. The motion of objects -- the fact that objects can and do move about -- made it necessary for mobility in the pursuit of food and escape from predators. There is no such thing as a truly stationary or immobile animal, [with the possible exception of the coral] and the majority of animals perceive the motion of objects around them to greater and lesser degrees. The perception of relative magnitudes, common to many animals was originally related to distinguishing threats, mates, hiding places, the size of food, etc. Each of these elements eventually became part of the brain’s repertoire of expectation of its daily milieu. Without such a built-in repertoire of expectation there would have been continual confusion and the inability to survive. That repertoire of expectation became a physical part of the brain -- instinctual and permanently fixed in the animal. I must add here, that as it relates to thought and the precursors of thought, the brain’s complete functionality is not instantly created at conception, and is not “complete” in its maturity until some later point in an animals growth. By that point, and it varies widely among animals, the repertoire of expectations is fully formed -- or at least formed to the point where a very minimal self-training period is required for a full and useful repertoire. This aspect of the brain is different from, say, the lungs or the liver, organs that require no equivalent kind of training to acquire full functionality.

A slightly different but very related take on the expectation repertoire is discussed in Michael Gazzaniga’s Nature’s Mind, when he presents the finding of Elizabeth Spelke. Her research indicates the ability of infants, (4-5 months) to display awareness of an expectation when presented with various object situations. Gazzaniga states:

Thus it is seen, via experimentation, that we are born with certain “wiring” of the brain that provides a ready made foundation for understanding the world in terms of its constituent features -- what I have called the elements of TWTWI.. I maintain that this innate preconditioning is the result of the continued contact with TWTWI. over millions of years.

This evolved, built-in set of expectations of TWTWI. provided the means to have reflexive problem solving abilities. All problems in one way or the other, are associated with the elements of TWTWI., and without the repertoire of expectations at hand, those problems could not be solved. At some point the means of problem solving changed -- no doubt quite slowly -- but in a profound way, to the point that it became more than merely reflexive. This change was to reflective thought. Instead of automatically using only the repertoire of expectations, an intermediary or augmenting process evolved that altered the animal’s ability to solve problems. How did this change come about?

Additional Repertoires

As mentioned earlier, organisms evolve to more, not less, complexity. This in itself is a curious matter -- why should they do this? Actually it is rather simple. Organisms that fail to survive as a species, for whatever reason, have failed to adapt. Adaptations are additions to an organism’s complexity, seldom if ever a reduction. (Fish that lose their sight after very long periods in a subterranean water home do lose the complexity associated with sight, however other adaptations are no doubt required to deal with a dark environment. In addition, the adjunct mechanisms, such as dealing with space and objects that were present during the sighted period will remain and have influence over behavior and other adaptations.) Therefore it is reasonable to assume that successful adaptation demands additional complexity. If evolutionary stasis is reached, and the organism is in evolutionary equilibrium relative to its environment, this means that additional complexity is not required or useful. Or, if genetic mutations do occur, they do not enhance survival in any way since the prevailing survival problems have already been solved. Hence, for any organism to evolve and acquire additional complexity, it must be challenged by its environment. Evolutionary problems have to be dealt with, and higher complexity due to genetic variations is the result. Humans are apparently at the top of the complexity list -- not so much in our general physical morphology, but in our brains. It has been reported, and by now is general knowledge, that the DNA for chimps is around 99 percent identical to that of humans. That one percent difference is undoubtedly almost all in the brain.

In tying the evolution of thought and language to TWTWI., it cannot be forgotten that the brain does not evolve alone; it evolves in conjunction with the rest of the body, and indeed cannot be separated from the body in terms of the (obvious) physical connections that are present in all organisms. Lakoff and Johnson, in their Philosophy in the Flesh, present the concept of the “embodied person.” I quote from their book here, interspersing my take on their ideas, as they relate to the thesis of this paper (their quotes are in italics):

Yes and those perceptual and motor systems do what they do in problem solving in direct connection with TWTWI.. There is no choice in the matter.

I read “every understanding that we have of the world” to mean what I have called “awareness” by the body/brain of TWTWI.. In the following paragraphs I present an additional level of that awareness that is acquired from the increasing complexity of interactions with TWTWI. by the body/brain.

The question boils down to the type of complexity that occurred in Hominids to provide them with much improved problem solving capabilities, and eventually the ability to think and to reason -- as I have defined thinking to be. As I mentioned above, additional complexity is the result of successful adaptation for solving the problems of survival. If the problems remain the same over long periods of time, there is little opportunity for new adaptations. But if the animals migrate, for example, due to diminishing food supply, predators, competition with other animals or changing weather conditions, a new set of problems arises due to a new environment. The genetic variations that were heretofore ineffectual in terms of useful adaptations are now active and additional complexity of the organism takes place. An environmentally stressed population must either adapt, gain in complexity or perish (or relocate) If early Hominids were a migrating species, for which there is considerable evidence, it makes sense that they would be more likely to require more adaptations, thus more complexity than static ones. So it is possible that speciation in the Hominid line occurred as a result of great increase in complexity -- primarily in the brain and its capabilities. What had TWTWI. to do with such an evolutionary event?

Hominids, along with all animals, having acquired an expectation repertoire, reflecting the first tier elements of TWTWI., must have acquired another kind of repertoire, one that provided a greater increase in problem solving abilities. Such a repertoire was probably one of a finer degree of distinction within the various elements of TWTWI.. Let us take the example of morphological persistence and change. Many animals have the instinctual ability, for example, to expect a tree to remain a tree. This is not a conscious, or thoughtful act, but rather the way their brain works when encountering trees. Each time the squirrel approaches a tree there is no confusion as to it being a certain kind of thing it is familiar with and expects to be the same as it was a few minutes or even days before. In one sense, to the squirrel, all trees are more or less the same. If we move to higher animals, we see that monkeys prefer certain trees over others -- they make distinctions based on how they use the tree. Moving to still higher primates, us, we use trees for a wide variety of purposes, hence the distinctions we make are many and often quite fine grained in detail -- not only the species of tree, but the details of individual trees. Pines and firs are useful in construction, balsa is not. Thus, it is very likely that the ability to make finer distinctions among objects was an important survival mechanism. This in turn means that some mechanisms had to evolve in the brain that allowed such distinctions to be made. As these distinctions were made they had to have a neural mapping to accommodate them, and not only them, but also the functional means to create and manage the mappings. The following section on Language deals with this process.

What kinds of evolutionary stresses would have resulted in adaptations that led to such neural mappings? There was a shift towards another level or kind of relationship to TWTWI.. I believe that this is where the concept of consciousness comes into play. If consciousness is the demonstrable ability to reference one’s self as an object this introduces a level of TWTWI. that includes the behavior of the self and that of others. It introduces a finer degree of differentiation among not only objects and events, but of others of the same species. Another way of stating this is that TWTWI. begins to include a wider variety of phenomena that includes the self. What might have caused this transition?

We can envision the complexity of Hominids reaching a point at which that complexity must be managed, and the enhanced survival would be the result of effective management. This suggests that those individuals who best managed it were more apt to solve problems associated with survival. What would have to happen to instigate such a management capability? I believe it would be selection for neural mappings that made finer distinctions possible, organized those distinctions, and used such organizations for beneficial actions. Thus, a second tier of expectation repertoire was required. While the same elements of TWTWI. were used, they became graduated into what we typically call categories. The following are some of the possible second tier set of elements:

These are examples of second tier elements of TWTWI. and would have provided a more detailed interaction with the environment. But the difference between these and the first tier elements is this: They were not instinctual, but were communally or culturally inculcated, and they had to be learned; they represent the first true concepts. In addition the means had to be available for accurately communicating such concepts or ideas.


I reject the homunculus theory -- that there is a little person inside the brain at the controls of thought and behavior -- as tempting as this is. However, if I assume that some kind of management of complexity is going on, the idea of management suggests some managing agent in the brain. What could be a possible paradigm for management that does not involve an homunculus?

Michael Gazzaniga, in his The Mind’s Past, discusses the interpreter, a reasonable replacement for the homunculus concept and has a sound basis that deals with observable phenomenology of the physical brain.

The brain is not infinite in size or in the potential number of neural connections. There was no doubt competition for neural mappings in terms of space. Everything sensed and conceptualized could not be tossed into some large unorganized set of neural groupings as today we might, given a very large hard drive, pay little mind to how much or in what way we store information. Space and organization were important aspects of the added complexity demanded by the second tier of TWTWI. elements. The critical point here is that a dramatic shift must have occurred in behavior that accompanied the shift in cognitive organization and management. Early Hominids became more social, no doubt due to the higher degree of required cooperation. More socialization was added complexity, but it also demanded a more stable second tier and communally communicated organization of the world. Agreements as to meaning and utility of objects led to stability of concepts within a community, and eventually within a species. It was during this period of transition into the ability to form concepts (second tier elements of TWTWI.) that language, as we know it, began, and I suggest that it was language that was the organizing feature of thought. The ultimate stability of second tier elements (concepts) was provided by a common symbolic system of communication -- words, and the arrangement of words -- i. e., language.

6. The Evolution of Language

So far I have attempted to move from the elements of TWTWI. to their relationships to animals, to a finer level, the second tier of detail of those elements among early Hominids, to the possibility of the organizing function of language in the brain of Homo Sapiens, and possibly earlier Hominids. This section is devoted to these latter hypotheses. Lest the reader imagine that I am going to adhere to what is typically called “ontological relativism,” that depends on what that term means relative to this paper. If it primarily means that language influences thought, then I am but partially guilty. I would say that: language-influences-thought-influences-language! Or, more precisely, the mechanisms that are the foundations for language -- that make language possible -- are the same as the foundations of thought as it exists today. Manifestations of that mechanism are to be seen most readily in language, since we cannot see thought.

The question arises: which came first, the ability to form concepts, the finer details of TWTWI., or the ability to assign meanings to symbols? Could “water” have had a name prior to its recognition, within a language community, as a conceptual or universally recognized entity? We know that research has discovered that vervet monkeys have distinctly different calls signaling different kinds of predatory threats, but is this phenomenon the same as naming water or fire, and can we expect that vervet monkeys have a concept of snakes and leopards, in the same way we conceptualize water or fire?

To start this section, I quote Terrence Deacon:

I maintain that what Deacon calls “a common adaptive content” is the ability to form and recognize elements of TWTWI. and eventually the second tier of those elements. Not only did language arise out of this convergent evolution as such an adaptation, its functional substrate concomitantly served as the organizing principles of what I am calling thought, or more appropriately, reasoned thought -- the two being inseparable as evolutionary processes. In other words, the functional substrate that provides for language is bound by the elements of TWTWI. in much the same way as any evolved morphology of the body. We cannot think or use language in any way that does not, fundamentally, comport, at a very basic level, with TWTWI.. The obvious reason language (and thought) is a convergent evolutionary process is that all languages must adhere to the formative conditions and forces of TWTWI. that are common to all organisms -- thus, to all humans.

Language and the Second Tier of TWTWI. Elements

Recall an example of a second tier was:

While many organisms can be aware of morphological persistence and change in terms of their physical needs, these are inculcated in the physiology of the whole organism -- not necessarily or only in the brain. But when distinctions among things becomes essential to survival, and must be recallable, the brain is far more active and responsible for making these distinctions.

At some point finer distinctions among sensible entities in the world became necessary because such distinctions became vital to survival. I do not mean only things like the ability to distinguish a poisonous plant from a non-poisonous one, but rather distinctions that were made for intentional utilitarian projects -- such as making containers for food, chipping the best flint stones, using appropriate materials for a hut or a weapon or a boat, or some ornamentation. The array of utilitarian possibilities among objects in the environment is large, and the variety of objects is also large. Therefore it is reasonable to conjecture that selection for distinction making, remembering and categorizing distinctions must have been important. In order for the distinctions to be useful for the community they would have to have some kind of designation --a name or some other symbolic representation. This is a critical point in my thesis, since acquiring a name or symbolic label is the beginnings of language.

Five things have to exist in order for this process to occur:

This process would eventually result in neural mappings in the brain that are organized to accommodate the association of symbol-to thing -- or, the signifier to the signified. A relationship is constructed such that upon hearing (or seeing, in the case of a gesture) a word, what it signifies is brought up imagistically -- and upon seeing an object, the corresponding word or gesture is brought up when needed for use. This means that the physical brain has been “trained” to organize inputs in a certain way, a way that is configured by symbolic correspondence, or bilateral association. This bilateral association was the formative stage in language.

Naming objects, events, people and processes would clearly provide an enormous communal as well as individual survival advantage, but the next stage in language would provide far more. Once the brain is capable of bilateral association of names with things, the stage is set for the ability to bilaterally associate not only names, but actions, processes and modifiers. All modifiers, what we typically call adjectives today, were the result of distinction labeling, but were also locational labels as well. A thing might be heavy, or light, or hot, or sharp, but it would also have a relative location and distance label to be most useful, and it would most likely have an association with a utility that required the use of the body.

Another key point: while bilateral association suggests a correspondence theory, I should add that I seriously doubt that there is a single location in the brain that represents an object, by name. Within the brain, the various associative mappings are unique to individuals. I call these multilateral associations, and an observed object conjures up a host of different associations which are different in different brains. This means that there really is no one-to-one correspondence between the signified and the signifier, but rather a pattern or matrix of brain activity that forms the end result concept of the signified. In fact, I picture the process within the brain as a somewhat  turbulent, or quasi-chaotic, electro-chemical activity that I discuss in Essay 24 of Volume I.

The step from what I have said above to the structure of language, its syntax, requires that we see the brain/mind not as a computer with various storage mechanisms, but rather as an organ that deals primarily (or only) with responding to stimulus -- and not only sensory stimulus from outside the body, but what might be termed second order, or internal stimulus. While language is uttered and received linearly in time, there is no reason to necessarily assume that it is constructed in a linear process, prior to or during the utterance. Multilateral associative mappings occur more or less simultaneously, in a parallel fashion, and only when a thought or an idea is made public is its structure organized linearly. The question is: is that structure in any way related to TWTWI.?

Noam Chomsky holds that all languages of the world share a common substrate of grammatical organization that is innate, and I share this belief. I suggest that commonly shared organizational substrate was originally a mechanism that dealt with not only representing aspects of TWTWI., but with organizing how it was dealt with in problem solving. I hold that the human mind is primarily a problem solving organ, and that to solve problems, be they physical or knowledge problems, or social/human ones, an organization of the repertoire of problem solving tools had to exist. A solution to a problem is not found by some logical steps, but rather by the selection of a possible solution from a variety of solutions. Language, or the substrate of the organization of language, provides the means to consider problems, to express them, to analyze them and to solve them. I am not claiming that one uses language in the actual solution thought process, but that the underlying mechanism of the solution uses the substrate of the language mechanism of organization in that solution. How does this relate to the elements of TWTWI.?

All physical problems contain one or more of the eight TWTWI. elements, and all solutions to problems also contain them, as well as the second tier elements. In dealing with TWTWI. language would have eventually evolved the symbolic representation of these elements in various forms.

While we can only be aware of and deal with these elements, we eventually dealt with them as a cooperative community, and that dealing had to involve communication of the symbolic representation of TWTWI.. The development of second tier elements was carried out by language, thus language was the agent for organizing thought in dealing with TWTWI.. We do not sense that one tree is a maple and another is a birch, but we have acquired the ability to distinguish that they are not the same species of tree, and can assign them different names. We are aware that a mountain has larger size than a pebble, but “larger than” is an invented expression that codifies this kind of awareness in symbolic form. We do not sense directly that one object is “behind” another object, relative to us, but we invent that word/concept to represent that condition of TWTWI. as we see it

Regarding the order of language development, Derek Bickerton says the following: