Innate heuristics
Conceptual tools that can be used to refer to the human being in its syncretic condition exist only to the degree to which we identify them in language. In every system we know of, variety and precision are complementary. Indeed, whether human beings hunt or present personal experiences to others, they attempt to optimize their efforts. Too many details affect efficiency; insufficient detail affects the outcome. There seems to be a structural relation of the nature of one to many, between our what and our how. This relation is scrutinized in the pragmatic context where efficiency considerations finally make us choose from among many possibilities. The optimum chosen indicates what, from the possibilities humans are aware of, is most suitable for reaching the goal pursued. Moreover, such an optimum is characteristic of the pragmatics of the particular context. For example, hunting could be performed alone or in groups, by throwing stones or hurling spears, by shooting arrows, or by setting traps.
The syncretic primitive being was (and still is, in existing primitive cultures) involved in a practical experience in its wholeness: through that being's biological endowment, relation to the environment, acquired skills and understanding, emotions (such as fear, joy, sorrow). The specialized individual constitutes himself in experiences progressively more and more partial. Nevertheless, the two have a natural condition in common. What distinguishes them is a strategy for survival and preservation that progressively departs from immediate needs and direct action to humanized needs and mediated action. This means a departure from a very limited set of options ("When hungry, search for food," for example), to multiplying the options, and thus establishing for the human being an innate heuristic condition. This means that Homo Sapiens looks for options. Humans are creative and efficient.
My line of reasoning argues that, while verbal language may be innate (as Chomsky's theory advances), the heuristic dimension characteristic of human self- constitution certainly is. In hunting, for instance, the choice of means (defining the how) reflects the goal (to get meat) and also the awareness of what is possible, as well as the effort to expand the realm of the possible. The major effort is not to keep things the way they are, but to multiply the realm of possibilities to ensure more than mere survival. This is known as progress.
The same heuristic strategy can be applied to the development of literacy. Before the Western alphabet was established, a number of less optimal writing systems (cuneiform, hieroglyphics, etc.) were employed. The very concrete nature of such languages is reflected in the limited expressive power they had. Current Chinese and Japanese writing are examples of this phenomenon today. In comparison to the 24-28 letters of Western alphabets, command of a minimum of 3,000 ideographic signs represents the entry level in Chinese and Japanese; command of 50,000 ideographic signs would correspond to the Western ideal of literacy. Behind the letters and characters of the various language alphabets, there is a history of optimization in which work influenced expression, expression constituted new frames for work, and together, generative and explanatory models of the world were established. The what and the how of language were initially on an order of complexity similar to that characteristic of actions. Over time, actions became simpler while languages acquired the complexity of the heuristic experience.
The what and the how of mediation tools of a higher order of abstraction than language, achieved even higher complexities. Such complexities were reflected in the difference in the order of magnitude between human work and outcome, especially the choices generated. Parallel to the loss of the syncretic nature of the human being at the level of the individual, we notice the composite syncretism of the community. Individual, relatively stable, wholeness was replaced by a faster and faster changing community- related wholeness. Language experiences were part of this shift. Self-constituted in the practical use of language, the human being realized its social dimension, itself an example of the acquired multiplication of choice.
Indeed, within the very small scale of incipient humanity corresponding to the stage of self-ascertainment (when signs were used and elements of language appeared), population and food supply were locked in the natural equation best reflected in the structural circularity of existence and survival. It is at this juncture that the heuristic condition applies: the more animals prey on a certain group, this group will either find survival strategies (adaptive or other kinds), or indeed cease to be available as food for others. But once the human being was ascertained, evidence shows that instead of focusing on one or few ways to get at its food sources, it actually diversified the practical experience of self-constitution and survival, proceeding from one, or few, to many resources. Homo Habilis was past the scavenging stage and well into foraging, hunting, and fishing during the pre-agricultural pragmatic frame. What for other species became only a limited food supply, and resulted in mechanisms of drastic growth control (through famine, cannibalism, and means of destroying life), in the human species resulted in a broadening of resources. In this process, the human being became a working being, and work an identifier of the species.
Language acquisition and the transition from the natural experience of self- constitution in survival to the practical experience of work are co-genetic. With each new scale that became possible, sequences of work marked a further departure from the universe of action-reaction. The observation to be made, without repeating information given in other chapters, is that from signs to incipient language, and from incipient language to stabilized means of expression, the scale of humankind changed and an underlying structure of practical experiences based on sequentiality, linearity, determinism (of one kind or another), and centralism established a new pragmatic framework. Individual syncretism was replaced by the syncretism of communities in which individuals are identified through their work.
Writing was a relatively late acquisition and occurred as part of the broader process of labor division. This process was itself correlated to the diversification of resources and types of practical experiences preserving syncretism at the community level. Not everyone wrote, not everybody read. The pragmatic framework suggested necessitated elements of order, ways of assigning and keeping track of assignments, a certain centralism, and, last but not least, organizational forms, which religion and governing bodies took care of. Under these circumstances, work was everything that allowed for the constitution, survival, change, and advancement of the human species. It was expressed in language to the degree such expression was necessary. In other words, language is another asset or means of diversifying choices and resources.
Over time, limited mediation through language and literacy became necessary in order to optimize the effort of matching needs with availabilities. This mediation was itself a form of work: questions asked, questions answered, commitments made, equivalencies determined. All these defined an activity related to using available resources, or finding new ones. When productivity increased, and language could not keep up with the complexities of higher production, variety, and the need for planning, a new semiosis, characteristic of this different pragmatic level, became necessary. Money, for example, introduced the next level of mediation, more abstract, that translated immediate, vital needs into a comparative scale of means to fulfill them. The context of exchange generated money, which eventually became itself a resource, a high level commodity. It also entailed a language of its own, as does each mediation. With the advent of means of exchange as universal as language, the what and how of human activity grew even more distant. Direct trade became indirect. People making up the market no longer randomly matched needs and availability. Their market praxis resulted in an organizing device, and used language to further diversify the resources people needed for their lives. This language was still rudimentary, direct, oral, captive to immediacy, and often consumed together with the resource or choice exhausted (when no alternative was generated). This happens even in our day.