[Steve] Which of these two people is the inventer of language? [Arlo] The obvious answer is that "language" was the result of collective activity of biological individuals. No "one" invented it. It took, at the very least, two. Two biological individuals engaged collectively (in this case awareness of mutual attention and negotiation of symbolic referents). As always it is not "individual versus collective" but "individuals engaged collectively".
To posit that one lone individual invented language is akin to asking which red blood cell "invented" the human body. The human body is the result of the collective activity of many red blood cells (among other types of cells), just as language/culture is the result of the collective activity of individual biological humans. In that earliest hypothetical moment, it was a profound "AHA!" moment of mutual recognition of awareness, occurring simultaneously for both biological individuals, that set of the negotiative process of symbol creation that would lead, as the result of thousands of years of cultural evolution, to the languages/cultures we see today. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
