[Xmca-l] Iriki - Using tools: The moment when mind, language, and humanity emerged

[Annalisa Aguilar]

?Hi all,


Something here to add to the fire to keep us warm in January! :)


I wonder: If tools shape our mind (as this Iriki article suggests), then does this confound tools as being solely influential upon our environment? Or does it mean that tools are bi-directional?


If so, does that then suggest that signs are also bi-directional? (That is, if signs, as a kind of staging for language, are inward shaping but also environmentally influencing, like tools?) And this would mean that propaganda would be likened to a tool, but also a sign.


Does this mean that we are able abandon the tool and the sign as a dichotomous enterprise (one pointing "inward" the other "outward") and see it as a continuum dependent upon and determined by many different factors and circumstances?


And taking this a teeny step further, to stimulate further discussion (of course), might education also be a tool _and_ a sign?


So that's for the bonfire!


Kind regards,


Annalisa


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