This chapter clarifies the theoretical explanations of the main stages of linguistic and cognitive evolution in anthropogenesis obtained in the previous author's book The Origin of Language and Consciousness (Springer Nature, 2023). The author presents the most constructive interpretations of the psychophysical problem, the corresponding understanding f consciousness, and working definitions of language, speech, consciousness, self-awareness, structure of the self, unconsciousness, and subconsciousness. He outlines the position on the problem of the relationship between free will and causality. The basic theoretical apparatus constructed in the early chapters, along with the extended evolutionary synthesis, helps to analyze factors of the evolutionary emergence of language and consciousness. Challenge-threats and challenge-opportunities invariably connect with concerns about subsistence, safety, sexuality, parenthood, status, and emotional support. The consolidation of successful behavioral attempts (attempts of various kinds) in response to these challenges occurs through the formation of provisioning structures involving practices, skills, and attitudes. These structures, including communicative and cognitive ones, emerge through the mechanisms of interaction rituals and internalization. The emergence of new structures generates new challenges and problems, which in turn require new efforts. During several bottleneck periods, only the most advanced groups, populations, and species survived. Through the Baldwin effect and multilevel selection, the achieved potential of communicative and cognitive abilities became fixed as complexes of innate allocations in gene pools. Based on this logic, the chapter clarifies explanations of the main stages of language complexity and the emergence of the corresponding capacities of consciousness. In the early stages, processes of self-domestication, hominin acquisition of shared intentionality, normativity, and collective behavior associated with sign communication played the most important role. Mechanisms such as recruitment competition, normative rituals, internalization, paraphrasing and guessing rituals, confident mastery of fire with collective cooking, proceedings, intergroup negotiations, and alliance formation led to the formation of new linguistic structures and the development of cognitive abilities. The major shifts were the mastery of utterances, pidgin sentences, simple syntax, the emergence of appropriate supersituational capacities of consciousness, and the subsequent development of abstract thought. At the Upper Paleolithic level, the “new economy” and deferred obligations led to the development of “social calculus,” kinship systems, public rhetoric, and related cognitive and linguistic skills. The latter included complex syntax, rhetorical flourishes, and other features of full-fledged language, with easy context switching as the most important ability of consciousness. Ego structure and volitional control of behavior were products of the internalization of social interactions. The chapter concludes with a set of hypotheses for indirect testing of the proposed theoretical theses.

Causes of the Emergence of Speech, Consciousness, and the Self-Structure

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发表日期：

2026年

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Nikolai S. Rozov

摘要

This chapter clarifies the theoretical explanations of the main stages of linguistic and cognitive evolution in anthropogenesis obtained in the previous author's book The Origin of Language and Consciousness (Springer Nature, 2023). The author presents the most constructive interpretations of the psychophysical problem, the corresponding understanding f consciousness, and working definitions of language, speech, consciousness, self-awareness, structure of the self, unconsciousness, and subconsciousness. He outlines the position on the problem of the relationship between free will and causality. The basic theoretical apparatus constructed in the early chapters, along with the extended evolutionary synthesis, helps to analyze factors of the evolutionary emergence of language and consciousness. Challenge-threats and challenge-opportunities invariably connect with concerns about subsistence, safety, sexuality, parenthood, status, and emotional support. The consolidation of successful behavioral attempts (attempts of various kinds) in response to these challenges occurs through the formation of provisioning structures involving practices, skills, and attitudes. These structures, including communicative and cognitive ones, emerge through the mechanisms of interaction rituals and internalization. The emergence of new structures generates new challenges and problems, which in turn require new efforts. During several bottleneck periods, only the most advanced groups, populations, and species survived. Through the Baldwin effect and multilevel selection, the achieved potential of communicative and cognitive abilities became fixed as complexes of innate allocations in gene pools. Based on this logic, the chapter clarifies explanations of the main stages of language complexity and the emergence of the corresponding capacities of consciousness. In the early stages, processes of self-domestication, hominin acquisition of shared intentionality, normativity, and collective behavior associated with sign communication played the most important role. Mechanisms such as recruitment competition, normative rituals, internalization, paraphrasing and guessing rituals, confident mastery of fire with collective cooking, proceedings, intergroup negotiations, and alliance formation led to the formation of new linguistic structures and the development of cognitive abilities. The major shifts were the mastery of utterances, pidgin sentences, simple syntax, the emergence of appropriate supersituational capacities of consciousness, and the subsequent development of abstract thought. At the Upper Paleolithic level, the “new economy” and deferred obligations led to the development of “social calculus,” kinship systems, public rhetoric, and related cognitive and linguistic skills. The latter included complex syntax, rhetorical flourishes, and other features of full-fledged language, with easy context switching as the most important ability of consciousness. Ego structure and volitional control of behavior were products of the internalization of social interactions. The chapter concludes with a set of hypotheses for indirect testing of the proposed theoretical theses.