Meaning, Perceptions, Mimicking and Language: Who is the Driver?
October 9, 2014 Key Concepts : Existentialism, Knowledge, Language, Meaning, Mimicking, Perceptions, Sense Organs ∞
There exist some fashionable intellectuals who concluded in their final analysis that there is no meaning of life, after all. However, they failed to realize that the proposition they are propagating "Life does not have a meaning" itself convey a meaning [Via Negativa still paradoxically conveys a meaning]. So if you are a Nihilist or Existentialist or Absurdist, and claim that life has no meaning, then you are just trying to escape the fact that you could not find the meaning of life by yourself. Stop fooling yourself and especially stop fooling others. When you start talking about meanings, you already acknowledge that life has a meaning but you are not aware of it. This is because you have forgotten it in the long chain-of-thought processes. Before claiming that life has no meaning, you need to work on your memory skills and recover what are the facts that you have forgotten. As a matter of fact, you cannot escape the need for meanings. The need for meaning is the birth of pattern seeking phenotype of beings which is deeply embedded and entangled to their own existence. The most primitive [if not The Primordial] pattern recognition ability is manifested as mimicking. Mimicking aims to capture what is really happening out there [Mimicry is the first sign of Love, remember?]. In fact, the Effects that we can perceive are just faithfully mirroring the Cause and expressing itself as, what we call, Mimicry. What is happening out there comes to you through the organs of perceptions. When there is a way to represent the external stimuli, as captured, albeit imperfectly by the organs of perceptions, by mimicking with the same kind [i.e. Sound by Sounds, Light/Vision by Light/Vision, Touch/pain with Touch/pain, etc.] which is also recognizable by others, it carries a definite advantage over other modes of communications based on mimicking than those perceptions that has to involve other modalities [i.e. Mimicking sound by vision, mimicking touch/pain by sounds etc.]. In fact, mimicking by the same kind is minimalist, self-contained and more likely to be successful in probabilistic terms because only the minimum numbers of variables involved. The joint probability of successful events involving few participants or variables is always higher than many variables or participants, remember?
What are the sense organs that can assess what is happening outside or inside? Vision is the most obvious organ of perception, but those visual perceptions cannot be directly communicated by the same kind easily. We do not have any organ that can produce light like a projector or hologram generator. So our Light/visual perception cannot be communicated directly by mimicking light that can be recognized by others. You cannot project your imagination on air [like a projector or hologram generator] captured by visual organs! The only way you can communicate your visual perceptions in visual ways is by drawing which is grossly imperfect. Again the other person has to be close by to see your drawing and you have to have a suitable tool and surface to draw it correctly in order for any meaningful communication. Additionally, it takes a lot of time and you cannot do it if there are some considerable distance, or there is some barrier [such as, you are on the other side of a wall or a room] obstructing to display your drawing to others. Time, distance, obstructing barrier, need for drawing tools, your skill of drawing and efficiency for communicating a wide variety or visual perceptions makes the vision of lights not the best of every day mode of communication by mimicry. With skin, you can only partially mimic what is happening to you by skin stimulation to others. Only limited things can be communicated this way. You can express your pain by inflicting pain on others by skin stimulation or in other words hurting others, which your fellow people will not like. The other person has to be physically close enough to you so that you can communicate this by same kind, i.e. mimicking it. The number of situations you can communicate, such as pain, touch, proprioception, vibrations by similar mimicking skin stimulation is extremely limited. Anything outside your body surface, i.e. skin, you cannot communicate with mimicking with same kind. Suppose you need to communicate that you want to go for hunting. Can you mimic that by skin stimulation, especially if someone is located not so close by? Not quite possible. So, touch is not a good way of communication by mimicking the same kind. Smell and taste have very limited value in communication by the same kind because they are mostly chemical signals that does not have any physical representations to be mimicked. You cannot produce a taste of chicken to communicate the taste of chicken to others. You cannot produce a smell of flower from your body to communicate the smell of flower to others. So taste and smell sensations are not designed to communicate with same kind efficiently in the first place. They are just for your own personal [may be some other intimate/sexual] use. They play a very limited role for communication in everyday life.
This leaves us to our last and 5th conventional sense organ, the hearing. Hearing has a unique vantage point for communication by mimicry. In the macroscopic [Non-Quantum] physical world that we live in, is full of mechanical events. Many of them produce vibrations in the medium that can be sensed by hearing apparatus. The Proto-Hominids were bombarded with sounds from all kinds of sources. They listened songs of birds, roaring of lions, the sounds of leaves of trees, distress calls of other animals, mating calls of birds, sounds of thunders, sounds of water drops of rain and so on. Natural sounds that enter through the ears can be easily mimicked by the gift of vocalization. Although this vocalization is no way close to perfect, but this quasi perfect tool of vocalization can mimic to reproduce the sound that they just heard! This is the minimalist approach for communication by same kind which is also inbuilt and self-contained. This is analogous of frying a fish with the oil that fish already has! What a delicious recipe! The inbuilt Hearing-Vocalizing apparatus complex that we have is the unique tool of communication by mimicry that other sense organs [such as vision, touch/pain, smell and taste] lack which I have explained earlier. By the principle of Ockham's Razor and Bayesian probability, this is the best minimum set and self-contained. You perceive things that you can produce with very close approximation, without the need for any external tool. Additionally, it can be used to mimic a wide variety of situations that other organs of perception cannot do. Suppose you want to communicate that you heard a sound of a tiger, which is of utmost importance and time constraints to produce the distress-call is also extremely important. Best way to go is vocalization. You can communicate at a distance, quickly, without any external tool, even against a barrier [like wall/fence/trees] with high fidelity to be understood by others [The fellow people have the receiver of the thing that you can produce!] and everything is in built. This is why hearing and vocalization exerted a potent evolutionary selection pressure to be kept and utilized over other sense organs for communication. This way of reasoning also strongly suggest music and songs are more primitive than language and words. Experiments from neuroscience also corroborate with this view because people with Medial Temporal Lobe (MTL) lesions who display impaired memory and word use, as in cases of semantic dementia [all of which are examples or manifestations of language], still retain their ability to understand, recognize, recollect and reproduce music, songs and poetry. Additionally, without hearing ability your vocal ability is also severely impaired, suggesting a strong functional connection between these two systems. This can be illustrated by the fact that congenital or early childhood acquired deafness inhibits the ability to speak naturally and to acquire verbal language, which again validates this concept. Embryologically, Hearing [Middle ear] and Vocalization [Larynx] apparatus, develop from same Foregut and neuroanatomically, Auditory cortex, Wernicke's area and Broca's area in the cerebral cortex [the critical areas for language], are all located in close proximity than any other sensory cortical areas and heavily interconnected by axonal projections. All these evidences strongly point to the fact that the language and thought process itself, in general, is intimately connected with hearing-vocalization apparatus complex. This can be further strengthened by the fact that the distorted thought process of Schizophrenics typically includes auditory hallucinations rather than other sorts of hallucinations. So, it is no surprise that the language is dominantly based on hearing-vocalizing apparatus complex, which in turn have an Evolutionary and Probabilistic selection pressure because of its efficiency and superior utility in communicating about what is happening out there. Your thought and language [i.e. Your Mind] is heavily dependent, composed of, and a derivative of the organs of perceptions at the very root. So when you say “I think, therefore I am", your "I" who is claiming to be independent and superior of your body [i.e. Organs of perceptions] is grossly misleading. The "I" that you know of, cannot exist without your organs of perception or your body. The "thou-ness" that exist prior to this false "I" will not claim anything because at those levels such claiming is meaningless. Hence the Cartesian dichotomy of mind and body and superiority of this false "ego" or “I” is unjustified. However, this perception-derived language or "ego" or "I" cannot explain the original need for meaning or pattern seeing behavior in the first place, which is many, many levels or layers before the emergence of language or "ego" or "I". The true nature of the existence of the original need and the ability to seek pattern by mimicking remains "Esoteric" in nature which is beyond the scope of this "Exoteric" Webbook essay.
In summary, what you perceive, you mimic [Monkey See, Monkey Do]. This is the most primitive pattern seeking drive. You continue to mimic and retain the useful and meaningful mimics even without conscious awareness of their meanings. Hearing-Vocalization pair is the minimalist, inbuilt, efficient, quick, wide spectrum, can act-at-distance, can be transmitted against the barrier that other perception cannot, all of these create strong evolutionary and probabilistic selection pressure to make it thrive. Your mimicked sounds that others can understand and can act upon adds additional meanings. Those mimics now have their own meanings and hence retained. Those sounds become words. Words represent encoded information coming from the organs of perceptions. This is the birth of language. This Language engenders self-awareness and "ego", which in turn can produce problems, especially if you do not understand the "why". So even language is not intrinsic [in contradiction to Chomsky's theory], instead it is perception-derived. They just serve a very useful purpose to communicate what you are perceiving which in turn has a survival benefit. So even the Cartesian "I" or Vedantic "Self" is not intrinsic, but what is intrinsic is the need and ability to be aware of pattern recognition. In general, Words, and Language arose out of that need and ability to seek meanings. Words and language evolved out to describe the external world and what is actually happening as captured and encoded imperfectly by the organs of perceptions. Those tools of perception exist not to describe what is unreal or for lying. From the very beginning of your existence, the need and ability to recognize patterns and their meanings, exist. They are as deep as your own existence, long before your so called “ego” emerged. So the formula of existence to seek meaning which in turn created you, cannot have no meanings, i.e. Existential nihilism is a false concept. By the same token, you cannot escape from the need for, either positive or negative, meanings [which is itself a meaning, nonetheless].
But you have the freedom to use your language accordingly or on your own wish or caprice. Just because that you have the ability to lie or deny, doesn't invalidate the power of hearing-vocalizing complex based language to capture and encode the reality. Indeed, pure, unadulterated, pristine, honest perceptions as captured by these sense organs are trying to tell you something useful. They are not there to fool you, as many deluded philosophers or scientists claimed, although there can be some false alarms, but in the majority of cases they are serving you well. Think how you can walk [Propioceptions] most of the time without falling. Think how can you see [Vision] food and can take them [Touch] for your lunch. Think how you used your ear [Hearing] to escape the car behind you. How you avoided some unhealthy place full of putrid and poisonous gas [Smell] because you perceived it. How your taste guided you most of the time about the wholesomeness of the food [Taste]. Your sense organs are your best friends and they are helping you to survive. Just because they are not always perfect, you cannot abandon them altogether, just like the mothers who cannot abandon their babies just because they are crying. That cry might mean something important. Listen patiently and carefully, you will know the meanings of your perceptions. Those are the only tools you have for your mind or thought! A master mason or master carpenter will not complain about their tools. If they feel they are not working properly, they will sharpen it, instead of complaining about them. Only the novice apprentice will complain about their tools. Stop blaming the tools when you chose not to use them according to its original purpose, i.e. to capture the meanings that they can provide. Perceptions and Language exist to help you find the meaning of life, but they will not take you there. You have to go there with their help. When you have found the meaning, discard perception and linguistic intricacy [poetry], bureaucracy [grammar] and their limitations [Wittgenstein’s Limits]. Keep the meaning that you have found so far. Do not allow the tools of perceptions [The Servants] to be the Master and do not allow them to over-analyze the meanings. If you allow, they will distort the meaning and there will be the existential crisis ad absurdum. Remember, you are free to argue over anything, even the obvious truths. Do not misuse your intellect. Try not to be puppets of the perceptions. Be the Master of the puppets. Keep the Meanings, hold onto it, nurture it and it will show you the next Door.
