Stages and causes of the evolution of language and consciousness: A theoretical reconstruction.

Summary

This article refines theoretical explanations for the main stages of linguistic and cognitive evolution in human origins. It introduces the concepts of "concern" and "providing structure" as extensions of biological adaptation within the extended evolutionary synthesis. Concerns about sustenance, safety, sexuality, parenthood, status, and emotional support drive behavioral tries, which consolidate into providing structures—practices, abilities, and attitudes—via interactive rituals and internalization. These structures reshape environmental and group niches, generating new challenges. During African multiregionalism, hominin groups faced demographic bottlenecks where only the most advanced survived. Abilities became innate through the Baldwin effect and multilevel selection, explaining the evolution of language from holophrases to complex syntax and consciousness from expanded attention to self-consciousness and the self.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This article presents a refinement of theoretical explanations of the main stages of linguistic and cognitive evolution in anthropogenesis. The concepts of language, consciousness, self-consciousness, the self, the unconscious, the subconscious, and the relation between free will and determinism remain at the center of active and complex debates in philosophy and neuroscience. A basic theoretical apparatus comprising the central concepts of "concern" and "providing structure" (an extension of the biological concept of "adaptation") develops the paradigm of the extended evolutionary synthesis. Challenge-threats and challenge-opportunities are invariably associated with concerns pertaining to sustenance, safety, sexuality, parenthood, status, and emotional support. The consolidation of successful behavioral tries (tries), in response to these challenges occurs through the formation of a variety of providing structures including practices, abilities, and attitudes. These structures are formed through mechanisms of interactive rituals and internalization. These novel practices facilitate the transformation of both techno-natural environmental niches and group niches. The emergence of new structures gives rise to new challenges and concerns, which in turn necessitate undertaking of new tries. In the context of African multiregionalism, hominin groups and populations that experienced favorable periods of demographic growth, active migration, genetic, technological, and skill exchange also underwent significant demographic disasters. During the most unfavorable bottleneck periods only the most advanced groups, populations and species survived. The achieved potential for these abilities was consolidated as complexes of innate assignments in gene pools through the Baldwin effect and the multilevel selection. This logic provides an explanation for the main stages of language and speech complication (from holophrases and articulation to complex syntax), as well as the emergence of new abilities of consciousness (from the expansion of attention field to self-consciousness and the "I"-structure).