I think one way to see what Comrade Carlos may be getting at is to see the importance of practice , practical critical activity, in Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach “ ( especially theses 1, 2 and 11) ;and Lenin’s _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_, where he criticizes Mach and the Empirio-Critics in a way analogous to Hegel and Engels’s criticism of Kant’s claim that the thing-in-itself is unknowable. It’s not unknowable. The test of the truth of theory is practice , as Marx says in the Second Thesis; the thing-in-itself , objective reality , is knowable through _material_ practice. That is dialectical materialist epistemology.
By the way, practice is not only in production/labor .It is in reproductive or caring labor ( see my “For Women’s Liberation: A Comradely Critique of The Manifesto of the Communist Party”); and all human activity, behavior , doing things , including leisure.
My interpretation of the passage below is the Hegel’s The Idea is the anthropological concept of Culture -Language or the system of ideas that are in the brains ( plural) of all who act and behave and speak according to the same Culture -Language. This “Idea” does “alienate “ itself as practice ( productive, reproductive and all human activity , bodily motion ) .
Cultures change ; but they are not self-changing . Cultures are formal logical systems where the rule is identity ( not contradiction as in dialectical logic). Plus ca change , plus la meme chose , as the structuralists say .
The law of cultures changing Marx articulated in The Preface to a Critique of Political Economy. Being determines Consciousness. To determine something is to make it. Being makes the changes in a culture , a system of Ideas , Hegel’s The Idea — makes or determines the NEW Idea. It does this in periodic and rare revolutions.
“My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm
Here’s a reiteration of what I say above:
Hegel critiqued Kant's extreme skepticism : practice is how we know objective reality. Lenin cites Engels who credits Hegel's critique of Kant's "Critical Philosophy", Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and Practical Reason.
Marx's Second Thesis on Feuerbach is this principle. Lenin cites the Second Thesis in his critique of the Empirio-Critics. Actually the central idea of the Theses on Feuerbach is practice as the test of theory , proof of theory ; the epistemological test, key to Marx's theory of knowledge. The First Thesis criticizes all previous materialist philosophies , including Feuerbach's , for being passive contemplative , not active , like idealism, for not being involved in practical critical activity (praxis). The famous 11th says philosophers have interpreted the world; the thing is to change it. Don't just contemplate it ; act and practice in it .
In support of Comrade Carlos defense of Hegel as not so much of an idealist philosopher, not a theist, my hypothesis is that he learned from Spinoza’s oppression by the Belgium (?) state for his atheism. Hegel wore a Christian/ idealist mask to protect himself from oppression by the Prussian state . Recall that in his famous essay on materialist and idealist philosophy in _Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy _, Engels substantially equates Idealism with Theism : “darwin The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being. From the very early times when men, still completely ignorant of the structure of their own bodies, under the stimulus of dream apparitions (1)came to believe that their thinking and sensation were not activities of their bodies, but of a distinct soul which inhabits the body and leaves it at death — from this time men have been driven to reflect about the relation between this soul and the outside world. If, upon death, it took leave of the body and lived on, there was no occassion to invent yet another distinct death for it. Thus arose the idea of immortality, which at that stage of development appeared not at all as a consolation but as a fate against which it was no use fighting, and often enough, as among the Greeks, as a positive misfortune. The quandry arising from the common universal ignorance of what to do with this soul, once its existence had been accepted, after the death of the body, and not religious desire for consolation, led in a general way to the tedious notion of personal immortality. In an exactly similar manner, the first gods arose through the personification of natural forces. And these gods in the further development of religions assumed more and more extramundane form, until finally by a process of abstraction, I might almost say of distillation, occurring naturally in the course of man’s intellectual development, out of the many more or less limited and mutually limiting gods there arose in the minds of men the idea of the one exclusive God of the monotheistic religions. Thus the question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation of the spirit to nature — the paramount question of the whole of philosophy — has, no less than all religion, its roots in the narrow-minded and ignorant notions of savagery. But this question could for the first time be put forward in its whole acuteness, could achieve its full significance, only after humanity in Europe had awakened from the long hibernation of the Christian Middle Ages. The question of the position of thinking in relation to being, a question which, by the way, had played a great part also in the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, the question: which is primary, spirit or nature — that question, in relation to the church, was sharpened into this: Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally?” (CB: Actually, Stone Age people didn’t have religion . They had ancestor veneration; and they were not ignorant of their bodies or about nature . Religion and Gods , or immortal beings , originate with so-called Civilization or Class divided society as the “opiate” of the masses , in Marx’s terms. This error doesn’t harm Engels argument that idealism is derived from religion, as religion has existed for 6,000 years by Engels day; Europeans shed ancestor veneration with the origin of the male supremacist family , private property , the state in Greece.) So, the rational kernel of Hegel is not only dialectic, but materialism behind a mask of Christianity-idealist philosophy. Hegel’s dialectical unity of theory(ideal) and practice is explained , the mask is removed, by Marx in The Theses on Feuerbach. These theses are a sort of negation of a negation . Feuerbach negated Hegel’s idealism-religion with species being atheism ( celebrated by Engels and Marx ). Marx negates Feuerbach’s contemplative or inactive materialism with practice-activism ( which only idealism-religion had had) in the Theses.
Add a comment... In support of Comrade Carlos defense of Hegel as not so much of an idealist philosopher, not a theist, my hypothesis is that he learned from Spinoza’s oppression by the Belgium (?) state for his atheism. Hegel wore a Christian/ idealist mask to protect himself from oppression by the Prussian state . Recall that in his famous essay on materialist and idealist philosophy in _Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy _, Engels substantially equates Idealism with Theism : “darwin The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being. From the very early times when men, still completely ignorant of the structure of their own bodies, under the stimulus of dream apparitions (1)came to believe that their thinking and sensation were not activities of their bodies, but of a distinct soul which inhabits the body and leaves it at death — from this time men have been driven to reflect about the relation between this soul and the outside world. If, upon death, it took leave of the body and lived on, there was no occassion to invent yet another distinct death for it. Thus arose the idea of immortality, which at that stage of development appeared not at all as a consolation but as a fate against which it was no use fighting, and often enough, as among the Greeks, as a positive misfortune. The quandry arising from the common universal ignorance of what to do with this soul, once its existence had been accepted, after the death of the body, and not religious desire for consolation, led in a general way to the tedious notion of personal immortality. In an exactly similar manner, the first gods arose through the personification of natural forces. And these gods in the further development of religions assumed more and more extramundane form, until finally by a process of abstraction, I might almost say of distillation, occurring naturally in the course of man’s intellectual development, out of the many more or less limited and mutually limiting gods there arose in the minds of men the idea of the one exclusive God of the monotheistic religions. Thus the question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation of the spirit to nature — the paramount question of the whole of philosophy — has, no less than all religion, its roots in the narrow-minded and ignorant notions of savagery. But this question could for the first time be put forward in its whole acuteness, could achieve its full significance, only after humanity in Europe had awakened from the long hibernation of the Christian Middle Ages. The question of the position of thinking in relation to being, a question which, by the way, had played a great part also in the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, the question: which is primary, spirit or nature — that question, in relation to the church, was sharpened into this: Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally?” (CB: Actually, Stone Age people didn’t have religion . They had ancestor veneration; and they were not ignorant of their bodies or about nature . Religion and Gods , or immortal beings , originate with so-called Civilization or Class divided society as the “opiate” of the masses , in Marx’s terms. This error doesn’t harm Engels argument that idealism is derived from religion, as religion has existed for 6,000 years by Engels day; Europeans shed ancestor veneration with the origin of the male supremacist family , private property , the state in Greece.) So, the rational kernel of Hegel is not only dialectic, but materialism behind a mask of Christianity-idealist philosophy. Hegel’s dialectical unity of theory(ideal) and practice is explained , the mask is removed, by Marx in The Theses on Feuerbach. These theses are a sort of negation of a negation . Feuerbach negated Hegel’s idealism-religion with species being atheism ( celebrated by Engels and Marx ). Marx negates Feuerbach’s contemplative or inactive materialism with practice-activism ( which only idealism-religion had had) in the Theses.
Add a comment... Charles Brown 8 minutes ago In support of Comrade Carlos defense of Hegel as not so much of an idealist philosopher, not a theist, my hypothesis is that he learned from Spinoza’s oppression by the Belgium (?) state for his atheism. Hegel wore a Christian/ idealist mask to protect himself from oppression by the Prussian state . Recall that in his famous essay on materialist and idealist philosophy in _Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy _, Engels substantially equates Idealism with Theism : “darwin The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being. From the very early times when men, still completely ignorant of the structure of their own bodies, under the stimulus of dream apparitions (1)came to believe that their thinking and sensation were not activities of their bodies, but of a distinct soul which inhabits the body and leaves it at death — from this time men have been driven to reflect about the relation between this soul and the outside world. If, upon death, it took leave of the body and lived on, there was no occassion to invent yet another distinct death for it. Thus arose the idea of immortality, which at that stage of development appeared not at all as a consolation but as a fate against which it was no use fighting, and often enough, as among the Greeks, as a positive misfortune. The quandry arising from the common universal ignorance of what to do with this soul, once its existence had been accepted, after the death of the body, and not religious desire for consolation, led in a general way to the tedious notion of personal immortality. In an exactly similar manner, the first gods arose through the personification of natural forces. And these gods in the further development of religions assumed more and more extramundane form, until finally by a process of abstraction, I might almost say of distillation, occurring naturally in the course of man’s intellectual development, out of the many more or less limited and mutually limiting gods there arose in the minds of men the idea of the one exclusive God of the monotheistic religions. Thus the question of the relation of thinking to being, the relation of the spirit to nature — the paramount question of the whole of philosophy — has, no less than all religion, its roots in the narrow-minded and ignorant notions of savagery. But this question could for the first time be put forward in its whole acuteness, could achieve its full significance, only after humanity in Europe had awakened from the long hibernation of the Christian Middle Ages. The question of the position of thinking in relation to being, a question which, by the way, had played a great part also in the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, the question: which is primary, spirit or nature — that question, in relation to the church, was sharpened into this: Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally?” (CB: Actually, Stone Age people didn’t have religion . They had ancestor veneration; and they were not ignorant of their bodies or about nature . Religion and Gods , or immortal beings , originate with so-called Civilization or Class divided society as the “opiate” of the masses , in Marx’s terms. This error doesn’t harm Engels argument that idealism is derived from religion, as religion has existed for 6,000 years by Engels day; Europeans shed ancestor veneration with the origin of the male supremacist family , private property , the state in Greece.) So, the rational kernel of Hegel is not only dialectic, but materialism behind a mask of Christianity-idealist philosophy. Hegel’s dialectical unity of theory(ideal) and practice is explained , the mask is removed, by Marx in The Theses on Feuerbach. These theses are a sort of negation of a negation . Feuerbach negated Hegel’s idealism-religion with species being atheism ( celebrated by Engels and Marx ). Marx negates Feuerbach’s contemplative or inactive materialism with practice-activism ( which only idealism-religion had had) in the Theses. Charles Brown 3 days ago ; Essential characteristics of culture and language in the anthropological sense are: 1) CULTURE human acts following rules and instructions ; acts pursuing symbolic purposes. Rules and purposes can be expressed IN WORDS, SENTENCES, PARAGRAPHS, etc. (symbolic signs). A specific Culture is learned; it is not genetic, not instinctive; it is learned from other people, especially previous generations (shared). (A specific culture or language is learned. The capacity of a brain to learn them is genetically based and unique to human’s genes). 2) All culture can be represented in language. Language is critical in teaching culture. 3) All language is culture; but not all culture is language; that is , language is a form of culture. 4) ACTS are bodily action, activity, motion, behavior. ___ Today I add, culture and language are rules and guides on how to act; are rules and guides in the form of language, symbolic communications from biologically dead generations, ancestors_; culture is custom, tradition, history – passed on from the past. This is an essential dimension and capacity of language and culture. It includes an accumulation of knowledge about nature, human society, objective reality. This dimension of language and culture raised human relative Darwinian fitness through human evolution and history. It became the main way that humans adapt. Symbolic communication Anthropology's special contribution to scientific understanding of humanity is the concept of _culture_, or the symbolic nature of human behavior, communication and social organization. Culture is behavior ruled by a mental system of shared customs, traditions, values, ideas and material products of a particular group of people. Culture and language , or symbolic communication , are unique and exclusive characteristics of human beings, the species Homo sapiens . No other animal species has them, despite the exaggerated claims of some primatologists for chimps and gorillas. What is symbolic communication ? What is a symbol or symbolic sign in the technical linguistic and anthropological sense ? It using something to represent something it is not. Almost all words are symbolic signs. Here is my name : CHARLES BROWN. Those marks on the paper are not me; But they are used to represent me. This is using something to represent something that it is not. The technical term is that there is an arbitrary relation between the sign and the thing signified. The opposite of a symbolic sign is an indexical sign . The relationship between an indexical sign and what it signifies is not arbitrary (conventional, traditional) but necessary. The classical example is smoke and fire. Smoke is an indexical sign of fire. The fact that a symbolic sign is not what it signifies , gives humans the power to talk , communicate with each other about things and the experiences of people that are not immediately present but DISPLACED IN TIME OR SPACE from them ! And cultural/linguistic learning is learning from the experience of other people, including learning from people who are now dead, learning about experiences that are not ours ; are _displaced from our immediate senses. So, signing or symboling , in the forms of both language and culture, is our species’ unique activity. And, importantly , also, most of human learning is through symbols, culture, not so much by imitating, like other species. Not by "monkey-see, monkey do" imitation. Most of our learning ( as opposed to inborn or genetically based knowledge) is through culture, not from experience. . Just to further explain the concept of arbitrariness, it refers to the relationship between the signifier and the signified. So, if the sounds d-o-g are used to refer to things that are dogs, we see that those sounds do not "imitate" or are not naturally related to dogs. The arbitrariness of a sign refers to the fact that in a sign something is used to represent something that it is not. Two different things are arbitrarily identified, treated as the same_. I have theorized that the reason culture became our unique characteristic is that once some hominin discovered them way, way back when, they were highly adaptive because they allowed past generations to pass on their experience to future generations across the "death barrier" . Why ? Because a symbol represents something by something it is not ( the arbitrary relation between signifier and signified) so that living generation can learn from a symbol about the experience of dead generations, when it could not learn from directly observing and imitating the dead, since the dead aren't able to demonstrate things to be learned, obviously, because they are dead. But since a symbol uses something, a signifier, to represent something that it is not, the signified, because of this _arbitrary ( non-imitative) relation, the dead ancestor's "demonstration" can be learned by the living descendent through the signifier, through the thing (word or cultural object) that is not the dead ancestor. Cultural learning allows us to learn from the experience of many, many...many of our ancestors. This was its main adaptive advantage when our species originated in founding culture. Culture also allowed learning more from other living members of the species. Human children could learn a lot more from their parents than other species, who were restricted to teaching their young by demonstration and imitation. Other species have to "give a picture" or demonstration of what they are teaching. They can show, but not tell. That a signifier is not what it signifies means it communicates by a non-picture or non-imitation of what it represents. Culturally inherited adaptations give human species high Darwinian fitness, because cultural adaptations are caused by the adaptive problem that they solve . 1) Symbolic thinking allows imagination and invention of tools and organized activities that adapt to survival problems. 2) Symbolic communication also allows inheritance of inventions. These 2 capacities of Culture and language, symbolic communication, provided the human species with an enormous adaptive and Darwinian selective advantage compared to other animal species in the hundreds of thousands of years that the human species came to be and inhabit the whole globe, again to a greater extent than other animal species. This is because it made humans extremely interconnected both with living other humans, so that human labor and methods of physical survival are very social_, not individualistic; and perhaps more importantly, connected to dead generations of the species through , again, language and culture, as in ancestor veneration : myths, legends, stories, customs, historical accounts of past generations' experiences. Two (or a thousand ) heads are better than one in the struggles for survival and snuggles for reproduction . By sharing the experiences , discoveries, knowledge of many generations past and those of fellow living people, humans had and have a big Darwinian or natural selective advantage especially in the stone age in prehistoric times over the course of 100's of thousands of years and, starting going back about 2.5 million of years with the species Homo habilis . Again , this enormous social networking within living generations and between living and dead generations is encapsulated in the concepts of culture and language and symbolic communication , the _differentia specifica of the human species. 1 Show more replies Charles Brown 3 days ago I address the same issues here : On Materialism ( speaking of Mao), there are two levels of the relationship between thought and being: "economics" and "physics". While society remains in the Realm (or kingdom) of Necessity , society during its class divided history, ruling classes control masses by conditioning fulfillment of the material needs of the exploited classes on the exploited classes ' producing surpluses for the ruling , exploiting classes. The materialism (determinism by the material) at this level derives from the coercive use of conditional provision of material needs. In all societies, including those in the Realm (kingdom of Freedom ( socialist, communist future and ancient) , all people must , of course, "obey" the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, objective reality etc. "physics", in the general sense. The "higher" (cultural, semiotic. super-structrual, social conditioning traditions, "super-natural, aesthetic, artistic etc.) human activities are limited or negatively determined ( See Marshall Sahlins' Culture and Practical Reason on biological limits of culture) by the productive and destructive activities, the activities that produce biological necessities or deprive human biological necessities (Althougn, in human IDEAS, SYMBOLS, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE, because of the arbitrary central definition of the symbol ("sign" in French) there is non-necessary connection. Arbitrary connection is the opposite of necessary connection. This is the sense in which superstructure is not subject to scientific analysis the way that infrastructure is. Idea systems do simulate necessity as rules, such as rules of grammar or cultural rules, including state enforced laws Also in formal logic, "necessary" arises in > _modus ponens_, modus tolens or "if-then", if p, then q, q is a necessary > condition of p, i.e. not q,not p. This is arbitrary and abstract necessity. In the Realm of Necessity, ( Marx and Engels used the > term "necessity" here precisely to make the point I am making here) > there is a science of human conduct based on the things that human must > do, i.e. necessity. As Marx and Engels had to explain to "the Germans" in _The German > Ideology_, humans have physiological necessities. In meeting these, > there arise scientifically discernable necessary patterns in their behavior To continue, This means that historical materialism starts with human nature, our human natural species qualities, Feuerbach's "species-being " This is Marx's point in the famous passage in the Intro to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy concerning social being determining social consciousness "At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic - in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. " Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs The economic conditions may be articulated "with the precision of a natural science" because in that sector of society biological necessities or needs are met, and as discussed above, thereby necessary connections reside. Necessary connections are the business of science. Being determines consciousness, but intermitently However, being determines consciousness discontinuously. ("primarily and ultimately"). Meanwhile, in between time, being and consciousness are reciprocally determiining. Being , in the form of class struggle, determines consciousness in history. However, the revolutions which are the points of determination or change by class struggle are intermittent and rare. Most of the time consciousness or ideology is not changing, is not in a revolutionary state of transformation. Most of the time society is in a status quo, a relative equilibrium , is not changing fundamentally. This is somewhat analogous to the punctuated equilibrium of Stephen Jay Gould in natural history, with the punctuations being the revolutions when being determines, asserts itself, like the roof falling in periodically asserts the law of gravity, when contradictions reach a crisis. It is the long equilibria that cause the confusion and make people think that consciousness has determined being in history's revolutionary changes, or the idealist error. Also, there is a sense in which consciousness as a system of ideas does determine people's conduct. When an idea grips the masses , it becomes a material force; and lots of ideas grip the masses. In fact , the masses only act based on ideas that grip them. What revolutions do is change the system of ideas that determines peoples' conduct. And only class struggles change systems of ideas or ideologies. This is the fundamental sense of being determines consciousness or part of the theory of historical materialism. As Marx says "...so can we not judge such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. " " In big historical changes, Necessity is the mother of invention. , the mother of revolution. The necessary connections in economy and class structure periodically, though rarely , break through to "invent" a new superstructure revolutionary ideas. Necessity is the mother of invention, new ideas. Ideology is the stabilizer of convention. Ideologies are formal logics, based on the principle of identity as their first principle. Formal logics are not "self-changing", they abdure contradictions ( non-identity) tend to sustain convention, avoid invention of new principles. This is why we don't think our way to revolution. This is why dialectical logic , with contradiction as its first principle, is rooted in class struggle , reflecting real or material contradictions. The Second Thesis on Feuerbach - the test of theory is practice Thus, the most practically reasonable and rational course is for the working class of our era to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. This would be the optimum for the class self-interest of the working class , collectively and individually in its billions of people. Yet, we are in a lag time, the long lag time of the "equilibrium" before the punctuation of revolution. Irrational ideas, from the standpoint of the working class,ideas of many types compete with the rational idea of revolutionary class struggle for gripping the working masses. False consciousness, capitalist ideology is determining being, keeping it stuck in capitalist relations of production. Do any of the fancy Marxist theories which interrogate the principle of being determines consciousness have solutions to the riddles of the irrational, anti-class self-interest ideologies, systems of ideas and images which are gripping the masses and blinding them to their historic revolutionary mission ? That is a question on c onsciousness for today's challengers to materialism who also claim to be Marxist in some sense.
Charles Brown's defintion of language and culture ; Essential characteristics of culture and language in the anthropological sense are: 1) CULTURE human acts following rules and instructions ; acts pursuing symbolic purposes. Rules and purposes can be expressed IN WORDS, SENTENCES, PARAGRAPHS, etc. (symbolic signs). A specific Culture is learned; it is not genetic, not instinctive; it is learned from other people, especially previous generations (shared). (A specific culture or language is learned. The capacity of a brain to learn them is genetically based and unique to human’s genes). 2) All culture can be represented in language. Language is critical in teaching culture. 3) All language is culture; but not all culture is language; that is , language is a form of culture. 4) ACTS are bodily action, activity, motion, behavior. ___ Today I add, culture and language are rules and guides on how to act; are rules and guides in the form of language, symbolic communications from biologically dead generations, ancestors_; culture is custom, tradition, history – passed on from the past. This is an essential dimension and capacity of language and culture. It includes an accumulation of knowledge about nature, human society, objective reality. This dimension of language and culture raised human relative Darwinian fitness through human evolution and history. It became the main way that humans adapt. Symbolic communication Anthropology's special contribution to scientific understanding of humanity is the concept of _culture_, or the symbolic nature of human behavior, communication and social organization. Culture is behavior ruled by a mental system of shared customs, traditions, values, ideas and material products of a particular group of people. Culture and language , or symbolic communication , are unique and exclusive characteristics of human beings, the species Homo sapiens . No other animal species has them, despite the exaggerated claims of some primatologists for chimps and gorillas. What is symbolic communication ? What is a symbol or symbolic sign in the technical linguistic and anthropological sense ? It using something to represent something it is not. Almost all words are symbolic signs. Here is my name : CHARLES BROWN. Those marks on the paper are not me; But they are used to represent me. This is using something to represent something that it is not. The technical term is that there is an arbitrary relation between the sign and the thing signified. The opposite of a symbolic sign is an indexical sign . The relationship between an indexical sign and what it signifies is not arbitrary (conventional, traditional) but necessary. The classical example is smoke and fire. Smoke is an indexical sign of fire. The fact that a symbolic sign is not what it signifies , gives humans the power to talk , communicate with each other about things and the experiences of people that are not immediately present but DISPLACED IN TIME OR SPACE from them ! And cultural/linguistic learning is learning from the experience of other people, including learning from people who are now dead, learning about experiences that are not ours ; are _displaced from our immediate senses. So, signing or symboling , in the forms of both language and culture, is our species’ unique activity. And, importantly , also, most of human learning is through symbols, culture, not so much by imitating, like other species. Not by "monkey-see, monkey do" imitation. Most of our learning ( as opposed to inborn or genetically based knowledge) is through culture, not from experience. . Just to further explain the concept of arbitrariness, it refers to the relationship between the signifier and the signified. So, if the sounds d-o-g are used to refer to things that are dogs, we see that those sounds do not "imitate" or are not naturally related to dogs. The arbitrariness of a sign refers to the fact that in a sign something is used to represent something that it is not. Two different things are arbitrarily identified, treated as the same_. I have theorized that the reason culture became our unique characteristic is that once some hominin discovered them way, way back when, they were highly adaptive because they allowed past generations to pass on their experience to future generations across the "death barrier" . Why ? Because a symbol represents something by something it is not ( the arbitrary relation between signifier and signified) so that living generation can learn from a symbol about the experience of dead generations, when it could not learn from directly observing and imitating the dead, since the dead aren't able to demonstrate things to be learned, obviously, because they are dead. But since a symbol uses something, a signifier, to represent something that it is not, the signified, because of this _arbitrary ( non-imitative) relation, the dead ancestor's "demonstration" can be learned by the living descendent through the signifier, through the thing (word or cultural object) that is not the dead ancestor. Cultural learning allows us to learn from the experience of many, many...many of our ancestors. This was its main adaptive advantage when our species originated in founding culture. Culture also allowed learning more from other living members of the species. Human children could learn a lot more from their parents than other species, who were restricted to teaching their young by demonstration and imitation. Other species have to "give a picture" or demonstration of what they are teaching. They can show, but not tell. That a signifier is not what it signifies means it communicates by a non-picture or non-imitation of what it represents. Culturally inherited adaptations give human species high Darwinian fitness, because cultural adaptations are caused by the adaptive problem that they solve . 1) Symbolic thinking allows imagination and invention of tools and organized activities that adapt to survival problems. 2) Symbolic communication also allows inheritance of inventions. These 2 capacities of Culture and language, symbolic communication, provided the human species with an enormous adaptive and Darwinian selective advantage compared to other animal species in the hundreds of thousands of years that the human species came to be and inhabit the whole globe, again to a greater extent than other animal species. This is because it made humans extremely interconnected both with living other humans, so that human labor and methods of physical survival are very social_, not individualistic; and perhaps more importantly, connected to dead generations of the species through , again, language and culture, as in ancestor veneration : myths, legends, stories, customs, historical accounts of past generations' experiences. Two (or a thousand ) heads are better than one in the struggles for survival and snuggles for reproduction . By sharing the experiences , discoveries, knowledge of many generations past and those of fellow living people, humans had and have a big Darwinian or natural selective advantage especially in the stone age in prehistoric times over the course of 100's of thousands of years and, starting going back about 2.5 million of years with the species Homo habilis . Again , this enormous social networking within living generations and between living and dead generations is encapsulated in the concepts of culture and language and symbolic communication , the _differentia specifica of the human species.
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