Artifact, praxis, tool, and symbol

“Artifact, praxis, tool, and symbol” is a review of tools as artifacts and their relations with praxis and symbolic capacities. We focus on co-evolutionary perspectives, arguing that tool-making and tool-use are appropriate analogs for understanding the expansion of hominin symbolic thought because they rely on similar behavioral and neuro-cognitive mechanisms. After comparing human and nonhuman tool-use and tool-making, we highlight major advances in hominin technological skill as evidenced by preserved artifacts. We then review praxis as a valuable concept, citing empirical literature in psychology and related fields which directly links material culture and tool-behaviors to extant human symbolic capabilities, including natural language. We then discuss various definitions of symbolism, focusing specifically on how they relate to preserved artifacts including undeniably representational examples in the Upper Paleolithic and examples related to stone tool-making, with deeper evolutionary roots. We close with fruitful directions for future work on the co-evolution of symbols and tools.

Paul Ricoeur on Evil

Paul Ricoeur represents an important source in Western culture who refuses to adopt a sharp separation between humanity and the rest of nature, while recognizing the importance of human distinctiveness. This chapter will engage Ricoeur’s works, beginning with Freedom and Nature, where he emphasizes the preconditions for human sin and the distinctions between scientific explanations and philosophical understanding. Another work, Fallible Man, distinguishes between the finite and infinite and describes the preconditions for human sin. Here, Ricoeur takes steps to fill in the gap between what he terms the pathétique of misery and the transcendental. He resists the idea that the source of evil arises directly from animal passions, but presents a more complex argument related to the force of what he terms ‘the fault’. In The Symbolism of Evil, Ricoeur further describes his recognition that the Fall of humanity admits a voluntary quality to specifically human sin; therefore, guilt is distinct from suffering. Ricoeur’s interpretation of the significance and problematic nature of Augustine’s account of the Fall is instructive in this respect. How far is the explicit human propensity for sin also dependent on prior language and symbolic thought? Ricoeur’s thought also frames the discussion that follows as a dialectical relationship between the natural propensity for evil and its voluntary, symbolic/semiotic character.

Deception, Lying, and Lust

Primatologists have identified the apparent ability to deceive others in more dominant positions in order to gain sexual or other privileges. Evidence for the deliberative quality of deception in primates is much harder to assess. This chapter explores the biological capacity to deceive and shows how common it is among social animals even though relationships involving honest signalling are usually dominant. The chapter investigates the potential evolutionary roles for deception and how it plays out in the human sphere at different societal levels. Lying, however, which relies on language, brings in aspects to deception which are unique to our species. The human capacity for complex symbolic thought in which language emerges also influences the biocultural evolution of language and associated capacity for lying. Theological ethical debates about whether Thomas Aquinas ever permitted lying in situations where greater harm would ensue are worth considering in the light of the biological advantages of deception. Lust (illicit sexual desire) is another of the seven deadly sins and has been given perhaps greater pride of place in the Christian tradition because of a common interpretation of Augustine linking sex with original sin.

Artes gráficas mayas precolombinas: consideraciones semióticas sobre el continuo escritura-imagen

The writing-image association is one of the fundamental characteristics of art in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. This combination was particularly developed and used by the Maya for almost 20 centuries. Far from constituting only an artistic process, the joint use of these two modes of visual communication allowed the transcription of a very complex symbolic thought and was one of the main tools of the propaganda of the (political) power of the Maya elites. In this article, the main principles that govern the pre-Hispanic Maya scriptural and iconological systems will be exposed, especially insisting on the continuum comprised by text and image in their artistic expressions. Here will be particularly examined and discussed the swinging and mixing games between iconic or non-iconic figurativeness and symbolism in the construction of the signs used to generate meanings with which they entertain relationships of different kinds, often metaphorical, based on cultural conventions, rich of teachings for our understanding of the ancient Maya.

Reasoning Through the Disjunctive Syllogism in Monkeys

The capacity for logical inference is a critical aspect of human learning, reasoning, and decision-making. One important logical inference is the disjunctive syllogism: given A or B, if not A, then B. Although the explicit formation of this logic requires symbolic thought, previous work has shown that nonhuman animals are capable of reasoning by exclusion, one aspect of the disjunctive syllogism (e.g., not A = avoid empty). However, it is unknown whether nonhuman animals are capable of the deductive aspects of a disjunctive syllogism (the dependent relation between A and B and the inference that “if not A, then B” must be true). Here, we used a food-choice task to test whether monkeys can reason through an entire disjunctive syllogism. Our results show that monkeys do have this capacity. Therefore, the capacity is not unique to humans and does not require language.

Funerary Practices as a Testimony of Ideology in Western Linearbandkeramik Culture

The Linearbandkeramik (LBK) is behind the spread of the Neolithic way of life in a large part of Western Europe. This period is often regarded as the beginning of social inequalities whose ideological frameworks deserve to be highlighted. According to social anthropologists, funerary practices are relevant for this debate as they reflect the symbolic thought in relation to death. In addition, as they are perpetuated by the living, funerary practices are pertinent in addressing the ideological values, symbolic systems, and thoughts that support social organisation. Whilst examining how grave goods are allocated amongst the LBK population, we have identified a small group of dominant men characterised by a specific burial kit (adzes, arrows, lighter set, and red deer antlers), a richer protein intake in diet, and their local origin. Comparing them to other social categories characterised by minor marking of identity in grave goods, poorer protein intake in diet, and of diverse origin, we aim to explore the ideological frameworks and values sustaining the social LBK system. LBK dominant ideology appears to revolve around hunting and exploits in warfare, manhood, and virility, in short around violent behaviours perhaps linked to a territorial competition.

SignBase, a collection of geometric signs on mobile objects in the Paleolithic

In the Paleolithic, geometric signs are abundant. They appear in rock art as well as on mobile objects like artworks, tools, or personal ornaments. These signs are often interpreted as a reflection of symbolic thought and associated with the origin of cognitively modern behavior. SignBase is a project collecting the wealth of geometric signs on mobile objects in the European Upper Paleolithic, African Middle Stone Age (MSA), as well as selected sites from the Near East and South East Asia. Currently, more than 500 objects of the Aurignacian techno-complex (ca. 43,000 to 30,000 years BP) are registered in SignBase. They are linked to information about geographic and archaeological provenience, the type of object and material, size and preservation, and respective literature references. We identify around 30 different sign types found on these objects across Europe in the Aurignacian and illustrate how SignBase can be used to analyze geographical clusters. Ultimately, we aim to enable quantitative analyses of abstract graphical expression before the emergence of writing.

Antaios: a mythical and symbolic Hermeneutics

The aim of my research is to define the Religious Hermeneutics that can be identified as the specific core of Antaios (1959-1971), the German journal directed by the historian of religions Mircea Eliade and the writer and philosopher Ernst Jünger. We’ll focus on the philosophical-religious interpretation of Antaios contents: the so called “mythical-symbolic hermeneutics” is probably the most interesting theoretical theme connected to the Weltanschauung of Antaios. This cultural journal could embodies a counter-philosophical perspective that is at the same time intrinsic to Western speculation. This position has been repeatedly emerged in many phases of our cultural history. I am referring to a mythical-symbolic thought, characterized by an analogical interpretation of the world, whose structure is considered as a stratification of truth levels, that are complementary ontological levels of reality. This tradition sees reality as a specific kind of totality that allows human perception to take place through the structures of myth and symbols. The theoretical unity of the project is rooted in the mythical-symbolic tradition that, starting from the religious and esoteric pre-philosophical meditations, crosses the Platonic thought, the various neoplatonisms, passes through medieval mysticism and alchemy, reappears in Romanticism and is revealed in the twentieth century by the reflections of the “thinkers of Tradition”. With this paper I would like to communicate the main topics that from this Hermeneutics can be identified: speculations about symbol, myth, coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of opposites), archetypes, ontological pluralism are at the core of this paradigm.