true peers, we will continue to disagree. I reject all of your basic axioms which are taken, as you yourself have said, from Giraud and Gans and their Generative Anthropology.
I’ve done a fair bit of research, publishing and teaching in communication and language and conclude that the origin of human language is outside of any empirical evidence. I reject that it evolved ‘out of the animal world’; our species is unique in its processing of information. But I certainly reject that language functions to deal with ‘human reciprocity under a sacred order of Being’. After all, to posit such a notion requires that you first have an idea of a ‘sacred order of Being’. And that image itself requires a modelling capacity that first requires…language. The Gen Anthro analysis is a catch 22 situation and is purely speculative and without any evidentiary proof.
Language in my view functions to define, store and communicate information about the self and the Other. The Other includes the immediate external world and also, both the atemporal and historical experiences. Nothing to do with any essentialist bond with a metaphysical force. The fact that our knowledge is defined and stored within language means that we, alone of all species, have the capacity to change our knowledge base and thus, change how we interact with the world.
With regard to judaic tribalism, I think you misunderstand the term ‘tribal’. It doesn’t mean premodern technology but a mode of societal organization that is focused on the collective self-sufficiency as a people. That doesn’t mean that the people in such a tribe cannot be, scientifically and intellectually, modern. So, I disagree with your outline.
I also disagree with your view that people in different cultures ‘reason’ differently. Our species, no matter the culture, have the same capacity for reason. However, our knowledge base is different in each culture. A knowledge base is not the same as the capacity for reason. Our capacity for reason means that we can change our knowledge base and so, can move from viewing an evil eye as the cause of disease to viewing germs as their cause.
