human evolution, cosmetics, arts

cave paintings, cultural technology,

songwalking, micronesian navigation
2trailing, chasing, hunted walk along the trails, trailing back, story of a consciousness, evocation,
demon
3 construction of the mind
mindterraforming
fictionality of the mind,
Wittengestein: farming, training form of life
actuation
trailing
narratives
performance, Pirandello
construction of an audience, the self of the deployment, terraforming of the audience,
Cultural technology
Hutchins, cognition in the wild
Cultures are tools available for cogntion to perform tasks ! sutdy from "#$ shows how the habit
of population "#$ to e%press verbally their location is a pressure to get their bearings on a constatn
basis
&ut the knowledge of a culture can e%tend in even more complicated and dangerous operations
Hutchins was interested in the studying the cognitive performance within a specific culture He
started on the assumption that cognition is computation and he looked for situation where cognitive
perfomances can be ob'ectively assessed (avigation is a perfect task because is a spatial movement
with fi%ed constraints and re)uierements, regardless of the determiend culture in which is applied
He focussed on the micronesian people *his people have found an ingenious way to get their
bearings in open sea without any sort of instrument +instruments in the Western sense of gadget,
*hey divided the territory in units, -etak., and they linked them to spatial distance with the
constellations you encounter when you are travelling in that specific area &ecause they paddle, the
speed is constant and when you are going from one point to the other, the stars are literally guiding
your 'ourney *he amount of information to connect reliably your movements from island to island
have been supplied with stories #ou recall the myths and legends that cover a particular island and
you/ll represent the 'ourney in that specific area 0n this fashion, they are able to travel in a territory
with only 122 of land, in open ocean, with no instruments !nd because they don/t have a written
alphabet, they internali3ed all this system within a corpus of myths and legends, that can be easily
remember because they entertain and teach in a olistic unit of customs and technology *hey rely to
cross the open ocean with a small canoa and a bunch of stories 4uccesfully
!ustralia
!borigenes in !ustralia cross enourmous territories, including deserts, arid plateau in very
unhospitable situation, e)uipped only with stories When you start your 'ourney, you commence
also to interpret a story !longside your walking, you encounter places described by the song *he
song contains precious information about direction but also about resources along the way and you
are instructed about e%ploitation accordingly to the song *herefore the information is embodied
with the walking and the direct way to get the information is to walk as it is prescribed by the
tradition 0t is not impossible to e%tract the information, but the content is structured in a way that
only by feet you will recogni3e immediately the surroundings and also the actions to be taken
0nterestingly aborigens start the singing as an evocation of a guide spirit to accompany them during
the crossing
*he spirit is a pro'ection of their performance5 nonetheless they recite the song with the confidence
that it is the spirit revealing the way 6ost important they believe this and face the challenge with
this state of mind We note that during the crossing the morale can be challenged by fatigue, stress
and fear *his enterprise is undertaken alone and days of solitary walking in the desert can impair
your character *he feeling of being lost and mistaken can be overwhelming and the reassurance of
a guide spirit is essential as the location of water 7f course if you take the song as mere
cartography, when in despair, there will be little to do *he confidence of being in control of internal
map, of the resources of the desert and most of all, of the sensation of dominance against perils can
be an arrogant and deadly companion 7n the contrary the evocation of a guide spirit is also a
morale support against desperation and nervous breakdown *he aborigenes prefer to submit the
ubris of their 'ourney to the protection of a guide spirit
*he spirit is evoked by their performance, is nothing more than their own recitation and rhymes We
are ama3ed by their mastery of memory and timing &ut we overlook the state of mind that is
e%ercised *hey are able to master their enterprise also because they adopt that specific, humble
stance *hey throw themselves to the protection of a representation, that is generated by themselves,
but with a hopeful submission to a greater force *hey rely on words and songs and by the trust they
hold in these mere words, they face crossing of deserts 4uccesfully We almost forgot what does it
mean to believe 0( the Western even the most ardent prayer will be reluctant to give himself so
entirely to his hymnes 4o 0 think that we should consider an integral part of the navigation system
of this people also the sentiment of devotion
4elf representation and the deployment of comple%ity
*he human brain serves the purpose of maintaining and reproducing the living program of an ape
7ur ancestors conduced a life that was the same of the one lived by chimpa3ee and gorillas *here
are some peculiarities5 for e%ample the consistent use of ob'ects 0t has been e%tensively observed
the capacity by chimpa3ee to make use of sticks and other tools, but the capacity of early hominides
in manufacturing and implementing tools in their routine it is a different degree #et, it is important
to note that the first family of sophisticated ob'ects, items referred to the 7locene technology
remained unchanged for more than 811 milllion years !long all those generations, not a single
innovation emerged5 so it is fair to say that there were differences and also to put them in conte%t
0n the process of evolution we can see changes of anatomical features, accompanied by
improvement in tools manufacturing *his trail reaches the anatomic modern man around 9:1 111
years ago 7ur current physiology is the same of the early man/s one, it is absolutely e)uivalent
4urely there have been small variations5 for e%ample the tolerance to lactose in adult age amongst
descedants of population engaged in ;sheeping &ut with regards of the cognitive potential, we can
assume that a Homo 4apiens 4apiens of 9:1 111 and a contemporary one will have e%actly the
same capabilities
4o it is even more suprising that they were living the same lives of the other hominedes and
conseu)uentely of the other apes *hey have improved the tool manufacturing and very likely
developed more sophisticated hunting strategy &ut if you compare the form of life of a 4apiens and
and of the other apes, the differences would be negligible
!round <1=>1 111 years ago it is reported a first, massive wave of differences 0n what has been
called the ?reat @eap, we observe a dramatic change in habits and behaviour *he findings of
ceremonial burial, cosmetic items and artistic artefact are testimonies of a cultural e%plosion We
are led to think that in that particular moment our ancestors ignited a form of life that is e)uivalent
to the one e%perienced by our consciousness *he sensitivity towards beauty, the )uest around the
end of e%istence, the appreciation of the passing present are all characteriscs of a mind working at
her full potential
0f we try to track back the feelings and the cognitive e%perience that left those traces, we can start to
chase the early minds 0n cosmetics and artsm we see the deployment of a cosciousness that it is
representing to herself her own capacity to represent
We observed cognition in all the other living begins and in all those cases we have a representation
of the sub'ective environment, a representation of being there *he natural representation of life
pro'ects itself
0n cave paintings, the early men were clearly aware of the differences between real animals and
animals in effigy &ut when they started to chase the representations, they knew that they weren/t
hunting for meat
*hey were trailing their own representations, firstly with a silent ama3ement for this capacity, but
very soon with confidence and mastery, these apes reali3ed that the prodigious representations
pro'ecting from their arm and fingers were coming from themselves *hey tracked back down to
very source of representativity, *hey went upstream till the representative hori3on of cognition
We can image that the first 4apiens scratched in caves and adorned themselves with flowers and
plants, pretty much like gorillas or chimps sometimes do &ut when these first traces have been
started to be walked more and more, when the environment has been polluted of signs and the
semiotic trails, the human cognition started to wander in these trails of meaning
*he clumsy attempt of carving, become the model for a more confident incision, the surroundings
of signs started to rhyme with the neuronal resonance of new generations *hey were inspired, the
broken episodes become a narrative *he environment supplied the scaffolding for cognitive
e%tension
*he early semitoic environment offered the infrastructure to new cognitions to e%plore their own
comple%ity *he infinity of the internal starred sky of the brain found a way to walk in tis own
comple%ity *he neuronal re=entry, the swarm of mutual trilling of the brain found a way to cross in
front of itself *he e%tension of representation pro'ected its own comple%ity in front of itself
When the first 4apiens have been offered the path to walk his own comple%ity in front of himself,
they have been accelerated
*he process of being thrown in representing your own comple%ity in front of yourself, is the
process of brain accelearation, the mind technology to navigate a brain in its own comple%ity
6ind terraforming
*he representation of being there always deploys itself in the surroundings, 0t transforms a region of
time and space in the sub'ective world that will host its presence *he designer environment that
offered semiotic trails to developing cognitions, produced the mind terraforming for human
consciousness
0( a human world, all the differences refer to the consciousness that will interpret them as
reminders Wittgenstein proposed the gradual introduction of a mind to the grammatical ground of
concepts When we are children, we swallow meanings alongside facts of life *he e%istence in
which we are immersed We learn implicitly of the e%istence of material ob'ects, by looking in
drawaings and wardrobes We are told stories and we walk through the narratives of these form of
life
4tep by step, if you can follow a story, you can tell you 0t/s because you understand what you are
able to do (arrativity is mind terraforming
When we are starting a semiotic trail for the first time, we lack everything: happenings, agents,
actions meanings are all indistinct 0t/s a desert of resource &ut we are attached to facts of human
life, we are surrounded by embodiements of these representations When we are told a story,
gradually we are pushed to evoke a guide spirit We recite the walking through of representation and
when finally we understand a story, it/s because we can tell one
*o walk in to the narrative, you need to be led by a mind #our brain will start to pro'ect a mind to
navigate in the narrative environment
(arrative mind
#ou can follow a story, because you can tell one 0n linguistics Chomsky called generativity the
capacity of a brain to generate a language Avery native speaker properly generates the instance of a
new idiolect, that is uni)ue We can relate single idiolect in a vast, mutual intelligeble family, that is
a language Avery speaker learned a language in the sense that it was e%posed to a natural language,
which will fomr a model to generate a new one !mongst all the possible human languages, a child
is e%posed to select possible, consistent variations 0t is simply a marvel that parents speaking a
pidgin, which is a communication vehicle, formed by mi%ing two natural languages, will be
transformed by their offspring in a creole language, which is a human language with all the
e%pressive potential of any other one
*he e%posure to narrations produces a similar generativity ! human brain immersed in the narrative
reminders of its world, will be accelerated in generating a new istance of narrativity, a new human
mind
Bacts are transformed in events, the flow of happenings becomes a narrative thread: we are actually
convinced that the bumbing of facts has a meaning and that the human affaris are channeled by
intentional agency We are pro'ecting authorship all over the world, because our brain can only see
an environment of narrations
*he pro'ection of authorship brings a brain on stage Pirandello
6ind technology
6ind is the technology employed by the brain to navigate its own comple%ity 0ti s a tool, not
dissimilar to the stick of a the blind that is incorporated in the man/s perception 7ur brain e%tends
in to a mind, it is accelerated in to it !nd properly speaking we define ourselves as the minds, not
the brains
We are led to focus in this by=product of cogntiive representation, but actually the self is a fiction to
navigate in the comple%ity of a human brain 4uch architecture would be unavailable without the
fictional introspection of a narrative mind &ut we are oblivious of that, we want to be oblivious
We like to be engaged in all the affairs and the plots of human stories and very often we are
sub'ugated by these intricacies !nd our brains suffer for that C