Language and reality:
The constitution of what is human
Maturana, Humberto. (1989). Lenguaje y realidad: El origen de lo humano. Arch. Bio. Med. Exp. 22: 77-81.
Translated into English by Cristina Magro, Revised by Cristina Magro and Julie Tetel
Abstract
The author proposes that:
1.
a lineage of living systems is constituted by the reproductive conservation of a
manner of living under the form of an ontogenic phenotype.
2.
language is a manner of living in recurrent consensual coordinations of
consensual coordinations of actions.
3.
the human manner of living entails among other things, a braiding of languaging
and emotioning that we call conversation.
4.
human beings arise in the history of bipedal primates with the origin of language
and the constitution of a lineage defined by the conservation of an ontogenic
phenotype that includes conversations as part of it.
5.
the magnitude of the involvement of the brain and anatomy of the larynx and face
in speech as our main manner of languaging indicates that language cannot have
arisen more recently than two or three million years ago.
6.
rationality pertains to the operational coherences of languaging and that different
rational domains are constituted by different basic notions that are accepted a
priori. That is, on preference.
7.
responsibility and freedom are a function of our awareness of the participation of
our emotions (preferences) in the constitution of the rational domains in which we
operate.
The human emerges, in the evolutionary history of the hominid lineage to which we belong, when
language emerges.
In the biological realm, a species is or system of lineages constituted as such when a particular
manner of living is conserved transgenerationally in the reproductive history of a series of
organisms. Insofar as every living being exists as a dynamic system in ongoing structural change,
the manner of living that defines a species, a lineage, or a system of lineages occurs as a dynamic
configuration of relations between living being and medium that extends in the course of its
ontogeny from conception until death. Jorge Mpodozis and I call this manner of living or dynamic
configuration of ontogenic relations between living being and medium ontogenic phenotype which,
insofar as it is conserved transgenerationally in a reproductive succession of organisms, constitutes
and defines the identity of a system of lineages. The ontogenic phenotype is not genetically
determined because, as a manner of living that develops during ontogeny, i.e. the individual history
of every organism, it is a phenotype, and as a phenotype it occurs in this individual history
necessarily as a present moment that is generated one moment after the other in an epigenetic
process. What the genetic constitution of an organism determines in the moment of conception is a
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domain of possible , one of which the organism’s history of interactions with the medium will
realize in an epigenetic process. Because of that, when a system of lineages is constituted, the
genotype, i.e. the genetic constitution of the organisms that constitute this system, remains free and
may vary insofar as such variations do not interfere with the conservation of the ontogenic
phenotype that defines the system of lineages. For this reason, if at any given moment in the
reproductive history that constitutes a lineage the conserved ontogenic phenotype changes, from
then on the identity of the lineage changes or a new lineage appears as a new form or kind of
organisms parallel to the antecedent lineage. In these circumstances, in order to understand what
happens in the history of evolutionary change of any class of organisms, it is necessary to locate the
ontogenic phenotype that is conserved in a particular class and within whose limits such changes are
produced. Thus, in order to understand the evolutionary history that gives rise to the human, it is
necessary first to look at the manner of living that, insofar as it is conserved in the system of
hominid lineages, makes possible the origin of language, and then to look at the new manner of
living that appears with language which, insofar as it is conserved, establishes a particular lineage to
which we modern human beings belong. Let us consider this for a moment:
a)
The origin of language, which is a domain of consensual coordinations of
behavior, requires a history of recurrent relationships of mutual acceptation
sufficiently intense and prolonged (Maturana, 1978 and 1991).
b)
What we know about our ancestors that lived in Africa three and a half million
years ago, indicate that they had a manner of living centered around the
harvesting and the sharing of food, the collaboration of males and females in the
upbringing of the progeny, sensual coexistence and face to face sexuality, and a
realm of small groups formed by few young adults and children.
c)
The manner of living indicated in (b), which we still basically conserve, offers all
that is necessary to: i) the origin of language; ii) together with the appearance of
language, the constitution of conversing as the intercrossing of languaging and
emotioning (Maturana, 1991); and iii) along with the addition of conversing as
another element to be conserved in the manner of living of hominids, the
constitution of a particular ontogenic phenotype which defines the system of
lineages to which we modern human beings belong.
d)
The fact that current chimpanzees and gorillas, whose brain is comparable in size
with that of our ancestors, can be incorporated in language through coexistence in
Ameslan (American Sign Language), suggests that the brain of our ancestors three
million years ago must have been already adequate for language.
What distinguishes the hominid lineage from other lineages of primates is a manner of living in
which the sharing of food, with all that it implies of proximity, mutual acceptance and coordinations
of actions in passing things to one another, plays a central role. It is the hominid manner of living
that makes language possible, and it is love, as the emotion that constitutes the domain of actions in
which the hominid manner of living occurs, that is the central emotion in the evolutionary history
that gives rise to us. This is apparent in the fact that the largest part of human illnesses, either
somatic or psychic, belong to the domain of interference with love. The manner of living properly
human, nevertheless, constitutes itself, as I have already said, when conversing is added to the
hominid manner of living, and the intercrossing of languaging with emotioning becomes conserved
as part of the ontogenic phenotype that defines us. When the manner of living properly human
emerges, conversing as action belongs to the emotional realm in which language emerges as a way
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of being in the coordinations of actions that arise through the intimacy of sensual and sexual
coexistence. That this is so is apparent in several ways:
a)
in the tactile images we use when referring to what occurs to us with voices
during speech, such that we say that a voice can be smooth, caressing or rough;
b)
in the physiological and hormonal changes, for example, that we trigger in each
other with speech; and
c)
in the pleasure we have in conversing and in flowing through languaging.
When did languaging and conversing start in our evolutionary history? The enormous structural
compromise of our present nervous system, of our larynx, of our face as well as of other aspects of
our body with speech as our most fundamental way of being in language, indicates that vocal
languaging has to have started several million years ago; I think that it was between two and three.
Realities
Human existence in language configures many domains of reality, each one of them constituted as a
domain of explanatory operational coherences. These different domains of reality are also domains
of activities that we generate in coexistence with others, and that, as networks of conversations
(networks of coordinations of actions and emotions), constitute all domains, ways and systems
(institutions) of human existence. In these circumstances reality in any domain is an explanatory
proposition of human experience.
Emotions
What we distinguish when we talk about emotions is the domain of actions in which the observed
organism moves. Accordingly, I say that emotions correspond to body dispositions that specify the
domain of actions in which an organism moves. I also say that different human actions are defined
by the emotion that supports them and that everything we do, we do departing from an emotion.
Because of that, even if what is human emerges in the evolutionary history to which we belong
when language emerges, the human constitutes itself, in fact, in the conservation of a particular
manner of living in which the sharing of food, the cooperation of male and female in the upbringing
of children, and individualized and sensual recurrent relationships occur in the interbraiding of
languaging and emotioning that is conversing. In other words, all human activities occur in
conversing, and whatever in the ongoing existence of human beings that does not happen in
conversing is not a human activity. Accordingly, at the same time, since all human activities occur
departing from an emotion, nothing that is human happens outside of the interbraiding of
languaging and emotioning, and, therefore, the human is lived always departing from an emotion,
even the most sublime and purest reasoning. Finally, the emotioning in whose conservation the
human is constituted when language emerges is centered around the enjoyment of coexistence, in
the acceptance of the other together with oneself, that is, in love, which is the emotion that
constitutes the domain of actions in which we accept the other. That love is the emotion that, in the
origin of the human, stablishes the enjoyment of conversing that characterizes us, has as
consequence that both our welfare as well as our suffering depend on our conversing, and are
originated and ended in.
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Rationality
In daily experience, reason or rationality appears as a constitutive property of human consciousness.
Nevertheless, in human evolutionary history, reasoning appears with language in its operational
regularities. Because of that, human reason or rationality is a distinction made by an observer about
the flow of discoursive coherences in language, when he or she can say that this discourse occurs
without confusing domains. It follows that every domain or rational system is a system of
coherences in language that constitutes itself from basic premises accepted as valid a priori. It also
follows that:
a)
an argument is rationally valid only in the rational domain constituted by the basic
premises that support it;
b)
those who accept an argument as rationally valid accept implicitly or explicitly
the basic premises that constitute the rational domain in which such an argument
is valid;
c)
insofar as the basic premises that define a domain or rational system are accepted
a priori, they are accepted depending on the preferences of the one who accepts
them, and
d)
the rational domain in which an observer operates depend on his or her
emotioning when he or she moves from the acceptance of certain basic premises
to others, according to his or her preferences at that moment. In daily life we
move from one rational domain to another in the course of our emotioning,
frequently without realizing it. Because of that, the flow of rational discourses in
human interactions depends on the emotional flow of the conversings in which
those interactions occur. This we do not normally see, because we are normally
blind to our emotioning. In short, the validity of our rational arguments does not
depend on our emotions, but on the rational domain in which we find ourselves at
every moment during conversing, indeed.
Conclusions
To recognize that human beings exist as such in the intercrossing of many conversations in many
different operational domains that configure many different domains of reality is particularly
significant because it allows us to restore emotioning as a fundamental realm of human. In
evolutionary history, the human is configured together with conversing when language arises as a
recursion in the consensual behavioral coordinations that occur in the domain of a particular manner
of living in the flow of co-emotioning of the members of a particular group of bipedal primates to
which we belong. Because of that, when conversing emerges with the emergence of language in an
operational domain of mutual acceptance (love) among these primates, the human remains
constitutively stablished with the basic participation of emotioning and, in particular, with the
participation of love. In the delusion of the patriarchal culture to which we belong in the West, and
which presently seems to be expanding throughout the world, emotions have been devalued in favor
of rationality as if rationality could exist independently or contrary to emotions. To recognize that
the human realizes itself in conversing as the intercrossing of languaging and emotioning that
emerges with language gives us the possibility of reintegrating ourselves in these two dimensions
with a more complete understanding of the processes that constitute us in our daily being, as well as
the possibility of respecting these two aspects of our being as legitimate. Since childhood people tell
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us to control or deny our emotions because emotions give rise to the arbitrariness of the nonrational. Now we now that this is not so. In conversing, rationality also emerges as a way of being
in the flow of the operational coherences of consensual behavioral coordinations of languaging.
Nevertheless, the effectiveness of reasoning guiding the coordinations of actions in technical
activity blinds us to the non-rational foundation of every rational domain, and transforms, with its
pretension of non- arbitrariness, any rational claim into a demand for obedience from other people
that limits our possibilities of reflection because it impedes us from seeing the emotional dynamics
of conversing. This is important to the understanding of the human and of the rational because, even
if it may seem to goes against the grain, by accounting for the participation of our emotions as the
foundation of any rational system in the flow of conversing, we obtain the true value of reason in
the understanding of the human. And this is so because now we know that we should acknowledge
our emotions and know them in their flow, when we want our behavior to be, in effect, rational
from the understanding of what is rational.
Finally, to acknowledge the interbraiding between emotioning and languaging that is all conversing
and therefore all human activity gives the foundation to the comprehension of two additional
dimensions of human beings, that is, responsibility and freedom:
a)
we become responsible in the moment in which, in our reflection, we recognize
whether we do or do not want the consequences of our actions and
b)
we become free in the moment in which, in our reflections about our activities, we
recognize whether we do want or do not want our wanting the consequences of
our actions.
In being responsible and free, the course of our actions spontaneously begins to depend on our
desires and on our recognizing these desires and this interdependence. In these circumstances, it is
possible that the most enlightening aspect of these reflections about reality and reason is in
recognizing that the rational understanding of the most fundamental aspects of the ongoing human
existence, which resides in responsibility and freedom, emerges from the reflection about
emotioning, which shows us the non-rational foundation of what is rational.
References
Maturana, H. R. (1978). Biology of Language: Epistemology of Reality. In: Miller, G. and
Lenneberg, E. (eds.). Psychology and Biology of Language and Thought. New
York, Academic Press. p. 27-64.
Maturana, H. R. (1991) Reality: The Search for Objectivity, or the Quest for a Compelling
Argument. In: Leser, N.; Seifert, J. und Plitzner, K. (eds.) Die Gedankenwelt Sir
Karl Poppers. Kritischer Rationalismus im Dialog. Heidelberg, Carl Winter.
Universitätsverlag. p. 282-357. See also in this volume.
Maturana, H. R. & Mpodozis, J. M. (1992). Origen de las Especies por medio de la Deriva
Natural o La diversificación de los linajes a través de la conservación y cambio de
los fenotipos ontogénicos. Publicación ocasional del Museo Nacional de Historia
Natural. Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos, Santiago do Chile. See also in
this volume (N.T.: This work was still in preparation when the present paper was
published.)