First Person Singular

TL;DR

This paper explores the origins of mind and consciousness, arguing that feeling predates language and writing, and that literacy enabled the conceptualization of abstract entities like 'mind' and 'god' as disembodied 'I'.

Contribution

It challenges the view that language and writing are prerequisites for mind, proposing instead that feeling is fundamental to consciousness and predates linguistic development.

Findings

Minds likely originated before language and writing.

Literacy enabled the conceptualization of abstract entities like 'mind' and 'god'.

Feeling is a fundamental aspect of consciousness that predates linguistic expression.

Abstract

Brian Rotman argues that (one) "mind" and (one) "god" are only conceivable, literally, because of (alphabetic) literacy, which allowed us to designate each of these ghosts as an incorporeal, speaker-independent "I" (or, in the case of infinity, a notional agent that goes on counting forever). I argue that to have a mind is to have the capacity to feel. No one can be sure which organisms feel, hence have minds, but it seems likely that one-celled organisms and plants do not, whereas animals do. So minds originated before humans and before language --hence, a fortiori, before writing, whether alphabetic or ideographic.