The idea of this chapter is speculative. It is included
here to demonstrate the power, which the self-reference paradigm offers.
The justifying research and a scientific proof should follow. It must
show if the picture drawn here is correct, an oversimplification, or wrong.
Consider hominids with well functioning social structure, which bounds
group members together by exchanging social signals regarding individuals
like signals refering bringing up children, hierarchy in a group, common
threats, etc. Let us further as a simplification imagine that these signals
regard only social issues and are processed in some instance in each
individuals psychic.
As far as it reflects details of human feelings such a system posesses enough
complexity to be one day (possibly accompanied by some collapse in the psychics,
by which I understrand the usage beneath its' proper applicability) applied
to describe issues from the physical world outside of this social group.
It appears than that threes, mountains and lakes acquire personal features e.g.
the'll be managed by the same mental structures as individuals from ones
social group. With one relatively sudden step such hominids acquire powerful
means to handle symbolically their physical surrounding and these symbols come
from social group symbols. Not only became trees, lakes and mountains "he",
"she" or "it", such hominids begin to "hear", what mountains "are saying", etc.
Obviously its' just a misuse of a social competence, but it works. Let's
see how it does and why it develops fast :
It is crucial to notice that this false application closes a strong feedback
loop. Such hominids suddenly acquire abstract (symbolical) means to handle
their environment in a new way, which on the other hand drives the redefinition
of the mental social structures mentioned above. What was a social behavior
is a behavior-substitute (a symbol) now. What follows is an explosion of
language and a human culture. As a reminder of this development some "ghosts"
stay back. People hear even to inanimate nature the way the used to their
parents (to members of their former social group). Some overwhelming certainty
of a presence of a human-like being like one's father pervading the nature
which we used to call god might be another consequence of such a rapid
development promoted by a new feedback loop beeing closed.
Trying to explain the emergence of language the usual starting point
is to expect some sort of adaptation. Scientists ussualy search for
any selection mechanisms.
(22)
The picture drawn above on the other hand did not require any selection
pressure, which drives slow adaptation.
No competition, nor natural selection, nor any genetic drift,
but only a pure strong feedback closed suddenly suffices for a
new complexity to appear. It is even not necessary that
the psychics of such hominids is the most skilled (the biggest) between
neighboring species. It is rather a weakness, which made a wrong use
of possessed social skills, which could closes a feedback.
(23)
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An interesting question arises when asking if
such a development was necessary and it could be foreseen. It is
for example known that elephants show the similar affinity to this
type of "error": They consider dead relatives as if they were
not dead, which appears to be the starting point for social
competence structures used for dealing the purely physical
inanimate objects. |
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that could be crucial.
Another point regards objections to the accepted hominisation model, which
claim that the development of a human kind was not a stright line
from australopitecus to homo sapiens, but rather a discontinuous random link. Such
fossil records fit much better to a sparkling short circuit picture
and thus to the
EbS model. The hominisation was a suddenly
closed self-reference with gains seen only after some period of time. The
aquired ability to kill ourselves and our loved ones proves that this
development could be valuated rather as misuse of capabilities and surely
not as slowly addjustment to the environment.
Continuously talking language structures in our head are qualified as
foreign and strange enought by some philosophers, which makes them to
postulate giving up any language and a deep quiet and as a proper
stance for a human to recognise the reality.
This could also be considered as a proof, that the emergence of language
poses rather a rapidly closed circut, than a slow and smooth evolution
by adujstement to the environment in Darvins' sens.
An example described in this chapters stresses once again the ability
of
EbS to explaing and describe sudden changes.