I’m just now finishing Deacon’s The Symbolic Species and have to comment on what he says near the end.
First, note that Deacon’s theory of language rests on a set of hypotheses:
1. Humans evolved symbolic language due to some limited set of external, ecological stimuli, such as better group coordination for resources, assisting in warfare against outsiders, protection against predators, etc., no different in principle than the theories of Dunbar, Tomasello, Pinker, Chomsky, Bickerton, and other linguists, 2. symbolic language became so useful for everything else that we wouldn’t let it go, which produces radical changes in the brain over millions of years, and 3. symbolic thinking naturally leads to our dread of death and hope for an afterlife, makng it a kind of “mind virus” (436) which projects the self into the environment, causing humans to make errors about how the world works and producing unscientific theories like magic, sorcery, and religion.
Deacon then sets about trying to unravel what symbolic language is and, presumably, why it can explain why there’s no need to believe in God, etc. On page 438 he says that, by doing so, “we might find the emptiness at the center a bit less disturbing.” There is some analogy here to Generative Anthropology, but at least the center-less (or burning-bush-style) of Hebraic thinking nonetheless admits that “the word” is at the center. But let’s not accept the Greek interpretation of this idea. The Hebrew davar means both “word” and “matter,” indicating that the sign and its referent are the same thing. An idol is the false god, the image is the person, and the name Yahweh is Yahweh. As will be seen later, this “unified field theory of reference” is similar to the ROBA thermodynamic model.
In the beginning was this davar. In fact the first mystical act might have been the attempt to re-conjur the first “word.” Object-based intimidation in chimpanzees appears to be an attempt to “reach” for object-based combat, but it never actually achieves this goal. And yet, humans not only “reach” for and aquire object-based combat (ROBA/violence), but we can also accomplish this without an object. Perhaps this first object (e.g., a rock) of intimidation was a catalyst to first achieve ROBA, which then produced the first word. Violence was no longer the desired outcome: we wanted to achieve the potential of ROBA in order to convert this energy into the word again and avoid violence. The word is violence encapsulated. Perhaps it required that the rock be a certain shape, and this shape was perfected over time to continually kickstart the recursive loop, lending to the universal appearance of Acheulean “hand axes” (which I just call “lithics”). These lithics might have produced more and more words in new situations, until we realized the object itself was unnecessary. Perhaps we realized we never needed an object. And so today, we have no use for the object that kickstarted the recursive loop, and we have retained the recursive loop to produce language, and nobody seems aware that an object was ever involved.
I’ll reiterate what I’ve been saying for years: no scientist, from Darwin to Deacon, has said that “humans are the only species that uses objects for aggression in a recursive way.” Only Andreski said something close to this, but even he limited this to “weapons.” And throwing itself is not minimal enough. No scientist appears to be aware that humans and chimps have this fundamental and mechanical difference in their respective modes of combat.
Therefore, no scientist has a theory on human violence. They have great theories on gravity, quarks, white blood cells, stalagmites, and fungi, but no theroy on violence. None. If you can’t differentiate human and animal combat, you have no theory on violence.
If my recursive thermodynamic model is right, then language is violence repackaged into a symbolic form, and vice versa. If true, then science also has no theory on language. It might think it does, but nobody would die on that sword. They will bet $7 trillion on an AI model that uses some linguistic theory, but I am certain they’re looking for a better, simpler one.
Deacon believes his science is more accurate than ancient sorcery or modern religion because the latter posits unseen things and unmoved movers as instrumental in the world. But 1) sorcery, magic, and religion are also scientific theories, converging more on human behavior and being more willing to understand humans as not only different from animals but as having a unique capacity for understanding the world, and 2) Deacon and modern science are blind to ROBA and therefore have a non-functioning theory of language, and of people by extension. So whatever truth-generation they are using to Merge with the universe, it is either blind or anti-social. We can’t assume it’s blind, because it keeps producing pretty good which non-human theories.
That leaves us only with the notion that modern science is anti-social. This might stem from its assertion that humans have no privileged position or unique capacity to Merge with the world around them to understand its laws (what’s mistakenly been termed the Copernican Principal, but see my take), which means humans have no monopoly in principle over symbolic language. But without recursive violence defining human relations, we wouldn’t have recursive, symbolic language. Humans always monopolize symbols because humans always have ROBA.
The scientists’ blindness to ROBA doesn’t stem from blindness; its a reluctance to accept human differentiation in principle. In fact, violence and language are both recursive functions, but because no object is necessary to kickstart the recursive loop, its absense makes Deacon and science believe that humans and animals are all functioning off the same stimulus-behavior feedback cycle. But in fact human nature itself has recursion, which it must have because our recursive violence is apocalyptic, our recursive language infinitely capable of deferring or deterring it.
There was no external stimuli which produced language: we are the stimuli.
To clarify, this is the thermodynamic model of ROBA: Violence and language are not different things. They’re the same stuff in different states. If I had to give it a cheesy 70s Hollywood name I’d call it recursium or recursia. Recursia is like Uranium which can alternate between power-generation and city-levelling. Recursia flows between active and symbolic states. While active, it’s apocalyptic violence. While symbolic, it’s language/art/culture which can expand freely to help us understand the world, go to Mars, etc. while deferring violence. Recursia can be restructured within the symbolic state to simulate violence, but only if it’s bounded tightly within rules and regulations. UFC, football, and the Geneva Convention constrain human aggression within the symbolic state, but it’s still within a symbolic state. The Russian war in Ukraine looks like a hernia bulging out of the symbolic state, but it’s still technically linguistic (at least, Russians would claim it is). Hamas is linguistic (at least, Palestinians would claim it is). Such claims demand counter-claims from the other side which are usually symbolic and non-violent, so perhaps they’re right, or at least mostly right. (Is the hernia leaking?) All things considered, nobody wants recursia to convert its active state of raw violence, when the symbolic hernia ruptures, and people really start thinking the world is going to end. Language is the process of regathering the goo of recursia into some useful form, patching up the hernia, and allowing language to expand freely again without destroying the world.
Modern science looks at something like recursia and asks, How could we get chimpanzee recursia? How about orca whale recursia? Seaweed recursia? Recursia in parallel universes? Is there recursia on alien planets on the other side of the universe? They ask these things as a religious principle. Deacon’s scientific religion (let’s just call it a religion) rejects recursia as uniquely human. Two of its patron saints, Copernicus and Darwin, have been retconned into pioneering this religious principle, like St. George slaying a dragon. St. George probably was probably a prison reform advocate, but religions mythologize simple ethics into grandiose stories, and Copernicus the “humble” man is one such epic of a scientist whose astrology was a bit alarming to his only student, but eventually he was turned into the skeptical scientific hero.
By contrast, my religion (and basically every decent religion) simply points out the obvious: only humans have recursia. There’s no need for a Copernican epic, or a “man the toolmaker” myth.
If modern science cannot accept ROBA as a differentiator between humans and animals, then it cannot be used to understand language, and it cannot be trusted for anything social.
I wonder what science could be achieved if we combined new physics with the thermodynamic model of ROBA. You would have a theory of the universe that finally confirms the human condition. For now, the two concepts are believed to be at odds, but such is the situation when your religion believes in blood debt but not in redemption.