SubscribeIn the last post I began sketching out a plausible theory regarding the evolution of consciousness. I suggested that our phylogenetic history led us down a dead-end path of painful contradiction – the emergence of the first symbolic animal: a creature that desperately craves meaning and purpose, but exists in a physical world that has […]
In the last post exploring language and consciousness, I tried to argue that the human being is not just another animal programmed by evolution and layers of operant conditioning, but one that navigates within a world of symbolic meanings and modes of reference. The human creature would evolve to be part flesh-and-bone, part symbolic self. […]
Existential Isolation and the Limits of Language Much of our uniquely lived human experience involves our capacity for subjective and self-conscious perception – our experience of the world, of ourselves, and of others, through a collage of ephemeral sensations and memories of a lived history, giving rise to a distinct self-awareness in the present moment […]