The Symbolic Species | Terrence Deacon
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- Опубликовано: 27 авг 2024
- We belong to our symbols as much as they belong to us. Like the planetary environment, our relationship with language and symbols has impacted our culture, even our biology, argues Professor of Anthropology, Terrence Deacon. Our capacity for interpretation allows us to understand one another and work as a collective mind, explaining the incredible leaps our species has made-and also the trouble we’re in.
Terrence joins me to explain our relationship to symbols and how they evolve with the world. We then discuss what happens when our symbols get stuck, or disconnected, simplifying into ideological constructs which fix our identities.
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Charles Peirce is smiling, wherever he is.
Having long considered Prof. Deacon among the most important scientists/thinkers now working, this is a welcome new 'installment'. A key point with respect to meaning and the unplanned virality of both word evolution and conceptual and/or ideological 'meme' spread intersects with the very important work of Prof. Antonio Damasio per his elucidation that emotion is not merely not conflictual with sound thinking, but actually imperative for it. But this fact also introduces the often overlooked factor of the property of valence. It is the intersection of this property with social dynamics which can amplify tribal identification, conformity with, and reflexive defense of that identification, rather appropriate recognition of fact, and/or impartial evaluation of soundness which can obviously become a serious problem. And since so much of 'valence' in such dynamics may ultimately be rooted in perception of threat, the non-triviality of that problem socially and in terms of governance can be very serious indeed; something which the current world provides ample evidence of.
53:02 The problem with AI (imo) is summed up well by what Terence said "it tells us stuff based on what we've already told it" AND because we know we need a paradigm shift, the vast majority of what we've told it is based on the old failing paradigm, and so therefore what it tells us is useless!
Our species is now 3,000 times more numerous than were our last ecologically balanced and sustainable Hunter-Gatherer clan/band living ancestors, and it's because of our jump from real territories/natural resources to symbolic territories, from the self-limiting to the boundless. What could go wrong? Everything?
Very interesting views! Thank you very much for sharing!!
as always, thanks for this. interesting chat.
...easily my favourite PC talk, and great to see Rachel get so animated and engaged during the discussion.
9:13 Also, (very much) within living memory, we’ve watched a visual human religious symbol which meant universal love to being despised and rejected - and even legally banned in some countries.
This a serious earth tremor to humanity’s faith in itself, despite all our advances towards humane, democratic and just sensibilities. The symbol has come to represent a much misunderstood, directly avoided with mis-interaction, collective shadow to humanity. Thus shadow, which humanity is currently falling through the cracks, again. The symbol is largely verboten, but the shadow it represents is a black hole to get sucked into - largely having that force due to our inability to collectively deal with it.
I can only add we haven't heard from whales about their language skills. They're ancestors.
Apparently, our divided brains have an asymmetric pattern of contrasting capacities. In humans, the left brain has capacity for language, tool use, social hierarchy, categorizing and abstraction. It thinks in terms of power, control, mechanism, and determinism (coercion) that underlies technology, consumption and Entropic flow, yet struggles to grasp the complex nature and unpredictible potentiality of integrated living systems (aka the living world). The right-brain has capacity for the latter, which is the basis for love and relationship.
There is a dualistic yet important distinction between syntropic and entropic flow - the former being the coming together of matter, energy and information into more meaningful, cooperative and complex forms (aka living things and the biosphere at large), and the latter being the breaking apart or degradation of those forms through wielding power and control (aka most of humanity's technology and consumption). This distinction is key to answering "What is progress?" because the type of progress matters. Syntropic progress is seen in individual growth and development, and in the ecosystem regeneration with succession starting from pioneer stage and ending in climax stage (the overall system develops to be more resilient, intelligent and beautiful). Advances in technology, weaponry and consumtion are forms of Entropic progress (more degradation of the overall system).
Now, it is important to recognise that our planet does need entropic processes to a degree needed to recycle carbon and other nutrients. When photosynthetic algae and plants (primary producers) dominated the planet, before the Cambrian explosion in animals (who are consumers with entropic drives), CO2 in the atmosphere was depleted, repeatedly plunging the planet into catacysmic "snowball Earth" states lasting many milions of years. The planetary role of animals ("beasts") is to consume plant matter, excrete those nutrients back into the soil, and exhaling CO2 back into the air, which has stabilized the planet's atmosphere (which regulates the temperature/climate). But animals only consumed in order to stay alive, and populations were kept in check by availability of food and other feedbacks.
With gradual development of our capacity for dexterity, communication and intelligence, humans gradually broke free from these limits, and into a new realm of learning, cooperation, power, control, and technology. Unfortunately, we brought the basic drives and mindset of the other animals with us, and have become consumers with no natural limits ("The Beast"). Consumption by our species has become exponential, and nearly all of it is unnecessary, excessive, and with far more entropic impacts than other animals. Not only have we doubled atmospheric CO2, warming the planet and creating a climate catastrophe, but our clever industrialists have been poisoning water toxic minerals and with novel molecules that disrupt the basic functions of living things. Some of these are called "forever chemicals" because they can't be metabolized.
This unrestrained animalistic consumption (entropic progress) is at the root of the climate crisis, and any "solution" will require broadly cooperative human advancement in the direction of Syntropic progress. To a large extent, this will mean learning to restrain our capacity for entropic power and control. There will be a circumscribed role for entropic power and control, as there is in all healthy living systems. As we learn to support greater Syntropic flows, a elimination of most entropic flows will be required, and for these, most will occur "naturally".
Syntropic advance entails material, cognitive-perceptual and spiritual shift away from industrialized civilization based on power, control, precision and consumption. There are numerous examples of individual people and whole cultures based syntropic values and awareness. As many point out, most of these are cultures who have learned how to live sustainably and "harmoniously" with the syntropic flows of Nature in various regions around the planet. Generally, they have done so with remarkable degrees of liberty, health, happiness, and ethical conduct, and with little need for coercive power and control.
For animals, the various flows of power and control are addictive, and are at the root of our "bestial dopamine economy", meaning the release of dopamine in response to certain instinctive mamalian triggers, such as competition, social dominance, consumption and excessive comfort. But there are cognitive and social ways we can modify this by expanding our awareness of, and loving connection to, all the many beautiful inhabitants of our living planet. Little of this entails trying to change what is outside of us, rather it requires learning to stop doing things and opening our awareness to all those who are already flowing around us, and chosing to relate to them with love and respect.
Knowing what we know about the nature of reality on our miraculous and beautiful planet, and our place in it, the only dignified path ahead of us is to to deeply savour the joy and the pride in being true human beings for as long as we are able.
I would like to suggest that, although we are indeed a cultural-symbolic species, as Dr. Deacon and Ms. Donald say, we remain a biological species. As such, we have certain evolved behavioral dispositions that influence our behavior - especially behavior in relation to the ecosystem in which we live & on which we depend ( what we can call "eco-behavior"). I suggest that, along with cultural symbols & ideologies and our modern human-built environments that interfere with our ability to grasp that we remain a part of the ecosystem as Dr. Deacon and Ms. Donald say, certain evolved (genetically based) behavioral dispositions also interfere with this ability. This means that our eco-behavior is more complex but, I suggest, it might allow us to have a more accurate understanding of why we tend to behave as we do in relation to the ecosystem, and thus we might be able to develop better, more effective ways to try to change our behavior.
I suggest that two of these dispositions are anthropocentrism and our deep sociality. These behavioral traits dispose us to focus "inward" on ourselves and block our ability to look "outward" to the larger ecosystem to see other species, and so on. Of course, this is very complex, and there are many factors involved in our behavior, but our biology still plays a role - and not just through our social-cultural nature that itself both evolved within and influenced our biology, as Dr. Deacon says.
Thank you for this presentation. It was excellent.
ShakeUp XR.
Words are one of the few things that differentiate us from other animals. Words can alter the course of history and indeed change the past. Words can tear societies apart.. Or bring them together.
I can never wait until the end to write a comment lol. Thanks for the interview Rachel, I was looking forward to it all day.
Keep up the good fight.
Words could also be the thing that ruins meaning. Animals understand one another without them and this might never be about finding the right words because forcing people to change needs more than words.
Words, books, beliefs, the ease of them getting to you could be the difference between good and evil, words could be the difference between eating the apple or not.
Egotistical and Bankable are two words supposedly used first in 1797, Shakespeare was 400 years ago, coal really started 170, and synthetic fertiliser along with diesel started 80 years ago, what good have words been in that time, other than to entertain or confuse?
Inner ☮️ World ☮️
I have a suspicion that there were many specific examples Terrence could have used to illustrate what he was saying, but he preferred to remain so general to the point of unfalsifyability. That's too bad.
Fascinating discussion. One of Jehovah's Witnesses regularly listens.
The spoken language was transcribed to a hard copy with the evolution of writing like RNA information might be transcribed into DNA. Information can then grow beyond what a single RNA can encode and be worked upon (intentional mutation) at will to create novel tools and structures. Humans are RNA at a larger scale and we've constructed the dissipative structure of civilization.
Your comment, to me, is an example of why words shouldn't be used.
"(RNA) is a polymeric molecule that is essential for most biological functions, either by performing the function itself (non-coding RNA) or by forming a template for the production of proteins."
You meaning, to me, that we can't survive without the spoken language would mean monks who take vows of silence can't exist and this is false.
Writing as you describe is the bible, or any other fable, when words were written down, copied from another story and so on and may have some truth somewhere but in between the game of chinese whispers and now, meaning may have got lost. Ancient Egyptians used to believe in Ra the sun god, and what was written down was that gold was his skin as he rode the chariot across the sky, from that we got gold being valuable, because it was if you wanted some extra sheafs of wheat, and then for thousands of years money has existed. Writing down that Ra was a sun god and rays or gold have any more value than they do, only came around because of the ability to spread mistruths.
"Humans are RNA at a larger scale and we've constructed the dissipative structure of civilization." Means what?
@@antonyjh1234 It means everything.
@@megacancer3426 Dissipative everything? edit : Disappearing everything? means what?
@@antonyjh1234 It means that humans are an intermediary between hard copy information and the tools/structures it specifies. What happened at the molecular scale with RNA and DNA has now happened at the species scale.
@@megacancer3426 I understand your correlating writing as sort of a needed function but for that to be true, it would mean all writing has the same value. RNA could be Fiction and DNA non-fiction.
I think the meaning of what I was saying needs to come through again, words can give meaning just by joining a lot of letters together, that mean nothing overall, but a problem I see quite common is the person who can put the most amount of letters together while giving the meaning of support, is a form of dominance hierarchy that achieves nothing overall. It dissipates any feelings of "us versus them", and lets other people know we are on the same side without anything constructive towards the other part of DNA, action. Humans cells are about doing and being, writing the being and actions of course the doing. Have any words come first that changed actions or are they like chemical damage that hurts DNA and only seen years after because we've been using them wrong.
Both of you seemed to be giving hopeful but self-contradictory attempts at "answers" (a hopeful sentiment all will agree with), but it came across like you both seemed pretty lost here. Though I've never seen anyone actually able to push much deeper. The paradox of it all seems to elude us particularly in conversation (or perhaps public conversation)?
To be fair, Lao Tzu was similarly stumped with∔by the tao that can be spoken
when he said he sees positives in AI - that's when I X out this vid. thanks