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One of my craziest ideas is that language created minds and not the other way around. One view of history is that humans evolved brains sufficient to host langu

One of my craziest ideas is that language created minds and not the other way around. One view of history is that humans evolved brains sufficient to host language, invented language, and then our brains grew around language. My crazy idea is basically the thesis of this article except swap out "art" and swap in "language". In my view, art is just one form of expression. That is, language predates life. Although, language is a bit provocative, and I probably mean something closer to semiotics.

dieselgate 2mo ago
Language and "minds" are not unique among humans.
- stillpointlab 2mo ago
  Right, but the question is what came first, minds or language? That is, is language a product of mind or is mind a product of language? Of course another position is that they co-arise and the question of order is ill-formed. But these ideas have to be placed with respect to the modern and typical materialist/physicalist view of reality. If we trace back time, there was a time before our solar system existed, before our Earth existed, before any kind of physical lifeform existing on the Earth's surface that we could associate with a mind. And we might be tempted in this view to draw a line or identify a point in time where we say "before" and "after". We might say "before this point no minds of any kind existed" and "before this point no language of any kind existed". And if we are to do so then we can talk about how those two points relate to each other.
  - dieselgate 2mo ago
    How does one consistently define "language" and "mind"? I present the following in genuine good faith: A good case study may be the octopus. They are highly intelligent organisms and a strong argument could be made they have "mind". A quick search [0] shows some evidence they communicate via "posturing and changing color"--is this language? How does one prove an individual has mind? Regarding the definition of "mind" the mirror test seems very relevant but does "mind exist without the sense of self"? What about emergent phenomena amongst highly social animal groupings...? Edit: I must be in the "mind" came first camp but in this case mind === consciousness but mind != consciousness [0] https://www.livescience.com/53514-octopuses-lead-social-lives.html https://www.livescience.com/53514-octopuses-lead-social-live...
    - stillpointlab 2mo ago
      As I mentioned in my earlier post, what I mean is closer to semiotics [1], precisely because "language" is too fuzzy a concept and leads to the wrong conclusion. In that view, communication using posturing and changing color is obviously signalling. As for minds vs. consciousness, etc. we'll just end up in a language game there which isn't productive. Personally, I am more interested in a more abstract conception of "attention" which I see as preceding "awareness" (which may or may not precede self-awareness). But again, how people use these words in different circumstances makes any discussion of the topics nearly impossible unless they are rigorously defined so as to avoid confusion. But in a "food for thought" kind of diversion, not an argument or even really a point, consider you are walking through a forest and you see some berries and your mouth starts to water. There is some relationship between your attention, your awareness and some kind of information being communicated between nature and you. The berry is signalling something to you and your attention is drawn to it. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics
      - dieselgate 2mo ago
        I've been slowly getting through the entirety of the original article but it's written out well: > What I mean here is that art did not serve to express a humanity that already existed. Rather, it acted as the mirror we needed to catch sight of our own image in the flux of nature. The question of when humans invented art leads us to imagine early humans much like ourselves, deciding one day to express themselves through symbols and figures. The assumption hidden in the question is that they already had minds like ours and simply chose, out of all the things they might have done on a frigid day in the Ice Age, to pick up ochre and make animal pictures. But the evidence, it seems to me, points the other way: it was the practice of making images, repeated over hundreds of generations, that occasioned the emergence of those minds we take for granted. We are putting the cart before the horse when we understand ourselves as the source of sense and meaning. In reality, we are participants in something that exceeds us, and the aesthetic, poetic dimension of great art reconnects us with that excess as a matter of course. It's interesting to think about iterating over "drawing pictures of animals" before starting to "draw pictures of humans"
godzillainaneck 2mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Instance_of_the_Letter_in_the_Unconscious,_or_Reason_Since_Freud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Instance_of_the_Letter_in_... people have been talking about that same thing for a very long time
- stillpointlab 2mo ago
  Sure, I'm not claiming originality. Although I come at it more from a process philosophy/pragmatism angle (Whitehead/Peirce), but that is probably due to my own background and not because any other treatment of similar ideas is better/worse or more or less correct.

dieselgate 2mo ago

Language and "minds" are not unique among humans.

stillpointlab 2mo ago
Right, but the question is what came first, minds or language? That is, is language a product of mind or is mind a product of language? Of course another position is that they co-arise and the question of order is ill-formed. But these ideas have to be placed with respect to the modern and typical materialist/physicalist view of reality. If we trace back time, there was a time before our solar system existed, before our Earth existed, before any kind of physical lifeform existing on the Earth's surface that we could associate with a mind. And we might be tempted in this view to draw a line or identify a point in time where we say "before" and "after". We might say "before this point no minds of any kind existed" and "before this point no language of any kind existed". And if we are to do so then we can talk about how those two points relate to each other.
- dieselgate 2mo ago
  How does one consistently define "language" and "mind"? I present the following in genuine good faith: A good case study may be the octopus. They are highly intelligent organisms and a strong argument could be made they have "mind". A quick search [0] shows some evidence they communicate via "posturing and changing color"--is this language? How does one prove an individual has mind? Regarding the definition of "mind" the mirror test seems very relevant but does "mind exist without the sense of self"? What about emergent phenomena amongst highly social animal groupings...? Edit: I must be in the "mind" came first camp but in this case mind === consciousness but mind != consciousness [0] https://www.livescience.com/53514-octopuses-lead-social-lives.html https://www.livescience.com/53514-octopuses-lead-social-live...
  - stillpointlab 2mo ago
    As I mentioned in my earlier post, what I mean is closer to semiotics [1], precisely because "language" is too fuzzy a concept and leads to the wrong conclusion. In that view, communication using posturing and changing color is obviously signalling. As for minds vs. consciousness, etc. we'll just end up in a language game there which isn't productive. Personally, I am more interested in a more abstract conception of "attention" which I see as preceding "awareness" (which may or may not precede self-awareness). But again, how people use these words in different circumstances makes any discussion of the topics nearly impossible unless they are rigorously defined so as to avoid confusion. But in a "food for thought" kind of diversion, not an argument or even really a point, consider you are walking through a forest and you see some berries and your mouth starts to water. There is some relationship between your attention, your awareness and some kind of information being communicated between nature and you. The berry is signalling something to you and your attention is drawn to it. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiotics
    - dieselgate 2mo ago
      I've been slowly getting through the entirety of the original article but it's written out well: > What I mean here is that art did not serve to express a humanity that already existed. Rather, it acted as the mirror we needed to catch sight of our own image in the flux of nature. The question of when humans invented art leads us to imagine early humans much like ourselves, deciding one day to express themselves through symbols and figures. The assumption hidden in the question is that they already had minds like ours and simply chose, out of all the things they might have done on a frigid day in the Ice Age, to pick up ochre and make animal pictures. But the evidence, it seems to me, points the other way: it was the practice of making images, repeated over hundreds of generations, that occasioned the emergence of those minds we take for granted. We are putting the cart before the horse when we understand ourselves as the source of sense and meaning. In reality, we are participants in something that exceeds us, and the aesthetic, poetic dimension of great art reconnects us with that excess as a matter of course. It's interesting to think about iterating over "drawing pictures of animals" before starting to "draw pictures of humans"

godzillainaneck 2mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Instance_of_the_Letter_in_the_Unconscious,_or_Reason_Since_Freud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Instance_of_the_Letter_in_... people have been talking about that same thing for a very long time

stillpointlab 2mo ago
Sure, I'm not claiming originality. Although I come at it more from a process philosophy/pragmatism angle (Whitehead/Peirce), but that is probably due to my own background and not because any other treatment of similar ideas is better/worse or more or less correct.