Emotions and the Origin of the Human

WORKSHOP HELD BY
HUMBERTO MATURANA
AT THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
"AT THE FRONTIERS OF FAMILY THERAPY"
BRUSSELS, 1989

The name that is here about this workshop is "Emotions and the origin of the human". Let me first explain what I want to do and why I want to do it. I think that we cannot and is not desirable to escape the biological condition of the human being. We are animals. At the same time we cannot and is not desirable to escape the special way of living, that we, human beings, have, which makes us the particular kind of animals, that we are. And all of us realise in one way or another, that these two domains, the domain of the properly human and the domain of the properly biological do not intersect, are different domains, but they are interrelated. Furthermore I would say that they are interrelated in a generative manner, in a sense that one is the fundament for the other, even though as phenomenal domains, as operational domains, they do not intersect. By saying that they do not intersect, I mean that the phenomena of one domain are not to be found in the other domain. But there is a generative relation. Let me give you an example. We all know that books are made of pages. Yet, pages are not books. If you have the class of pages, and you look there for books, you do not find books, you find pages. If you look for pages in the class of books, you find books, you do not find pages, but you find that books are made of pages bounded in some particular manner. It is this bounding of pages in some particular manner, which constitutes books. That makes the relations between books and pages (in which bounding of pages in a particular manner constitutes books) a generative relation, although books and pages pertain to not intersecting classes, or to not intersecting domains. In the same manner biological phenomena have to do with the origin of the properly human phenomena. And I consider that, to understand the properly human, since there is this generative relation, one has to pay a look on the biological domain and see which is the generative relation between what is biological and what is human. This is why I wish to deal in this workshop on the question of the origin of the Human. Now, what about emotions'? I want to talk about emotions, because I consider emotions fundamental phenomena in the biological domain, first and, second, I consider that one particular emotion is fundamental in the origin of the Human. And I think that many phenomena of the properly human domain cannot become understood, if one does not look at the emotions. And one cannot properly look at the emotions, if one does not look at the generative relation between the biological and the human domain. It is about this, that I am going to talk. In order to talk about the origin of the human beings, I am looking at the biological history. Indeed, I am going to talk about primate history. It is worthwhile to reflect on some of the fundamental conceptual and operational notions that will be involved in this analysis. One domain of fundamental notions has to do with what would constitute an explanation. Sometimes we want some phenomenon to be explained and somebody proposes an explanation and we don't believe it. The fact, that we do not believe it, means either that we have another explanation, or that we do not have a criterion to know when the explanation has been provided. For one reason or another we have not reflected on what is the criterion that one has for accepting one particular formulation as an explanation, in preference to others. So I like to say first some words about explanations. If I say "this is the phenomenon, that I wish to explain", whatever it is. Life, this is it. The Living, this is the phenomenon to be explained. You ask me "what is Life?" and I say "well, I should not explain Life, but I shall explain the Living". And you say "o.k. what is the Living?" And then I say, "the living system is a system, which is constituted in such and such and such a manner". And you say "ah, yes! Thank you!" What has taken place there? First of all I have proposed a reformulation, I have presented the same thing in a different manner. And it is you, the listener, who accepts a particular proposition as a reformulation of the phenomenon to be explained. So, what makes a proposition explanation is the listening of the listener. It is the criterion, explicit or implicit, that the listener has for accepting a reformulation as another' shape of a formulation. Sometimes we have an explicit criterion for that, sometimes we do not. Thus, this is the first point. Every explanation is a reformulation of an experience of a phenomenon to be explained, accepted by the listener. That I accept it makes it an explanation in the domain, in which I handle it, but the fact that the other person does not accept it, does not make it an explanation, it makes it a non-explanation in the domain, in which this person moves. So, explanations are not explanations in themselves. And because explanations are not explanations in themselves, I consider of interest making explicit the criterion that I use for accepting certain reformulations as explanations of certain Phenomena. The other point is that these reformulations may have several forms. Or at least we listen to them in two manners. Sometimes we listen to them as descriptions in a different way of the same thing. And sometimes we listen to them as propositions of mechanisms, that, if we let them operate, they produce as a result the phenomenon to be explained. For example, what is a living system? And I say "a living system is a system constituted as a network of molecular interactions, which result in productions of molecules, 'which, interacting among themselves, produce the same network that produces them and defines its limits". This is a technical explanation of what a living system is, but what I am saying is "if a system has these characteristics and you let it operate, what you will see is biological phenomena". Scientific explanations are reformulations of this king. Scientific explanations are propositions of mechanisms, that, if one let them operate, the result of the operation is the phenomenon to be explained. So, if I want to explain the origin of humanity, what I have to propose to you is a system, that, if I let it operate, as a result of its operation, humanity will appear. And that will be in terms of actual entities or in terms of conceptual entities, that, if they were to operate, one could expect this result. I speak about phenomena that, I claim, must have taken place three million years ago. I cannot produce these phenomena here. But what I am saying is "if these and these and these have taken place three and a half million years ago, then these and these and these would be a consequence of that". And that would be a mechanism through which the consequence would be Humanity. So, this is what you have to expect from me. The proposition of a mechanism, which will be a historical mechanism, such that, through its operation. Humanity could arise. Or could have arisen. Now, for making a scientific explanation it is not enough to have this generative relation, this mechanism. You have to satisfy two other conditions for the scientific explanation. I am not going to get into them, but they have to do with the domain, with the space, the realm of other phenomenona, which would result the repetition of the same mechanism, or of other features of the domain, in which that mechanism is taking place. For example, if I say "if such 'and such things happened three and a half million years ago, then these and these are consequences, which are proper to human beings", then one could say "ah, but other consequences, such as that and that, should have taken place". And one could look, if one could find those other consequences, and, if one could find those other consequences, then the mechanism proposes a scientific explanation. So, this is what I am going to tell you. A story, which is a proposition of a mechanism, such that, in its spontaneous operation, could have given as a result Humanity. This kind of animals that we are. But, to do this, I have to enter into some biological phenomena. I have to enter in particular into the domain of biological evolutionary phenomena. And here I am going to make a shift from tradition. If you read traditional evolutionary research, you will find that, what is proposed as the mechanism generative of a new species, is natural selection. I shall turn away from that. I shall attempt to show that natural selection is a consequence, not a generative mechanism. But, if it is so, I have to propose the generative mechanism, through which evolution flows. And, for that, I wish to make some systemic considerations. These considerations apply to any system. So, what I am going to say applies also to family systems. Now, what is a system? Systems are collections of entities interconnected in some particular manner. A single atomic unity is not a system and, if you want to speak about it, as if it were a system, then you have to fracture it in components and connect them in some manner. It could be a dynamic interconnection or a static interconnection. The system could exist like a crystal or like an entity in continuous change. And what is interesting is that, whenever you speak about the system, you make a distinction of an entity in some domain spatial, temporal, spatial-temporal, cultural, whatever it is. In a cultural domain Institutions are systems. The armed forces, for example, are an interesting king of system. And this is very apparent in the defence the militarists make of their institution. They are willing to do many things, but nothing to destroy the military institution. That reveals an aware, that the army constitutes an entity. In what space? In the space of community declaration, in the space of human relationships. A crystal is a system in a space of molecules, a molecular space. The family is a system in a space of civil declarations of some kind. Certainly in the space of human relationship. Well, every system is constituted as such by a particular manner of interconnection between its components and that particular manner is what I call its organisation. But there is something more to say about that. Organisation is necessarily an invariant. It is necessarily a constant. To say that it is an invariant or a constant does not mean that it is static. It only means, that, if you change those relations, than the system disintegrates. So, every system is defined by a particular configuration of relations, that must be present, otherwise the system is not that. If its organisation is not conserved anymore, the system disintegrates. So systems are always conservative. This is a systematic statement. It is not that some are conservative and some are not. Systems, by constitution, are conservative. Now, sometimes that statement finds some difficulty, because we are not fully accustomed to let systems flow and we want permanence. And we want permanence, because we are worried about the ending of the system, though systems do not last longer, than what they last. If the conditions for conservation of the organisation are not satisfied, the system disintegrates. Then, sometimes the system disintegrates and sometimes the system appears again. A very dramatic example of this is animals that you can freeze. All of you know, that you can freeze cells, for transplantation or for study, at -I8O degrees and keep them for many months or years. Then you can thaw them and you can have the cells kicking again, or moving, if they are dynamic cells. Now, in the moment, you freeze the cells, you don't have cells anymore, because the cell is defined as a dynamic system, as a dynamic network of molecular interactions. If you freeze the cell you stop all its dynamism. True, at -180 degrees you have molecular agitation, but you do not have process of reactions between the molecules. Or you have a very low pace of molecular reactions, so that you do not have this concatenation, which makes this cell a cell. So you freeze a cell, you do not have a cell anymore. You wait ten years and you thaw it. You warm it up and you have the cell again. Where does this cell come from? In a strict sense appears, because what was there before was not a cell. Of course, one can claim that, since he has lived more than ten years, he saw when it was frozen and he kept looking at it every day for ten years and then thawed it up and found that the cell is the same cell, that he froze ten years ago. But that sameness is something that you could say as an observer, because you claim certain continuity. But this continuity is of structure, of components, not of organisation. So, every system has an organization, which defines it, and must be conserved, and a structure, that can change. You can have structure changes, in which organisation disappears and structure changes, in which organisation is conserved. Again this is general for every system. And as soon as one takes seriously the systemic notion, that systems are conservative in their organisation, one also knows, that they have the domain of possible variability in terms of structure. And one also knows, that they can disintegrate. But one can know, that a dynamic system, a system with structure under continuous change, will remain the same only as long as its organisation is conserved. And one also knows because of this, that a system is distinguished in a medium, in a circumstance, of which the observer is a part in the moment of distinction. There is a peculiar relation between the system and its circumstances, a relation of congruence. Because, in the moment, in which congruence stops, the interactions with the medium unleash, trigger structural changes that result in disintegration of the system. So, a system is always congruent with the circumstance, while its organization is being conserved. In the moment, in which the organization is not being conserved anymore, the system is not congruent with its circumstance anymore, even, if the loss of the organization is the result of its internal dynamics. So the loss of organization could be the result of the internal dynamics of the system, such that the structural changes, that take place, result in not-conservation of the organisation, or it could be the result of the interaction with the medium, which stops being congruent with it. We do not usually realise that, because we can easily imagine a system out of place. But whenever we imagine a system out of place, we do one of two things. One, we may be cheating claiming that if is out of place, while it is not out of place, because it is in congruence with its medium. For example, if you send an astronaut in outer space in its beautiful dress, you can say "he is out of place". But this is not true, because you send this person with its place. With this dress, which keeps temperature, humidity, oxygen and everything is the medium, in which the person lives. So the astronaut is not out of place. And in the moment, in which you open his dress, you make a hole in it, air escapes, temperature changes, the astronaut is out of place and dies. So, system and medium go together. They change together. The system and the medium have different dynamics. So, if the dynamics of the medium change in such a way, that they cannot realise anymore their congruence with the system, it disintegrates. In Biology, this medium, which is in congruence with the system, is called "the niche". As a system moves in its existence, it moves with its niche. If the structure of the system is changing, its niche is changing and organisation is conserved. If the niche does not change congruently, it means that it stops being a niche and the system disintegrates. This is valid for any system, in any domain of existence. Now, if we want to speak about evolution of living systems, so that we may speak about the origin of Humanity, we must ask ourselves what defines the different kinds of living systems. First of all we must remember that living systems are dynamic systems, which means that they are in continuous structural change. Strictly speaking, we do not have to explain changing living systems. Living systems are changing anyhow. We are changing now. So, we do not have to ask how a living system changes, it is not change that has to be explained. One of the difficulties in the history of evolutionary thinking has been to think that change has to be explained. But change does not require explanation, because it is a constitutive condition of living systems. What has to be explained is the course, the path that change follows in living systems. Not how come that a system changed, but how come that it changed following this direction or that direction. This is valid for every dynamic system. In the long run every system is dynamic, even a crystal. But crystals are defined as such, not in terms of dynamism of the molecular or ionic agitation, but in terms of the relative relations. So, in that sense a crystal is not a dynamic system. So, in the history of living systems, it is not change what has to be explained, but the course, the path that change follows. But we know certain things. From what I have just said, we know that any course followed by a changing system will be one under conditions of conservation of organisation in congruence with the medium. It has to follow that path, because, if not, it disintegrates. In the process its structure may be changing continuously. But the organisation is conserved. That means you will call it with the same name. When we use a name, we are connoting. And what we are connoting is the organisation of the system. The sameness in a system is related with the conservation of organisation. So, if I were to say, "this animal and this animal are animals of the same species", I would be saying, that the organisations of these animals are the same. Not the structure. We are accustomed to listen, when other biologists refer to species of a reference to a particular body configuration and, some times in our days, of a particular genetic constitution. I want to say, that the body configuration is an instant, in what defines the species of the kind of organism, we are talking about. Because, if look at the tadpole ... Frogs, in this sense, are very adequate, because they begin as eggs, transform into embryos, the embryos grow to tadpoles, which are like little fishes, and the tadpoles grow legs and become frogs. All these entities are moments in the historical development of an organism, of an animal, of the species Rana pipians. Yet the shape of the tadpole and the shape of the frog are very different. So, we are not referring to the shape of any particular instance of observation. Frequently, in modern biology, they speak as if the species are defined by the genetic constitution. I disagree with this statement. The species is not defined by the genetic constitution. It is not genetics that make us human beings. Yet, genetic constitution is a fundamental condition, but what makes us human beings is not the genetic constitution and I shall clarify this. When you say, "this tadpole belongs to the species Rana pipians" or "this frog is an adult of the species Rana pipians", in fact what you are connoting is a whole manner of transformation from the egg to the adult animal, until it dies. And not only a whole manner of transformation of the body, but a whole manner of living in a medium. The medium, that means the "niche, has been changing along the life of the animal. In the moment, in which congruence between the animal and the niche stops, the animal dies. Now, what I am going to say, and please think about it, is that what defines a species is a manner of living. That is being conserved reproductively generation after generation in the constitution of a lineage. Imagine a family, an ordinary family. They have a visitor at home and they offer him breakfast, which contains several items. And this visitor looks at this breakfast and they say "well in our family we always have this breakfast". What they are saying is "we define us a family, among other things, by the conservation of a manner of having breakfast. Since our grand-grand-father this is the kind of breakfast, that has been taken everyday in the family". So, it is the conservation of the manner of having breakfast, what is part of the characterization of this family. A manner of having breakfast is a manner of living. Living systems are of different kinds, according to the manner of living that is being conserved in the lineage to which they belong. If you have a frog - a Rana pipian - and you study Rana pipians, you notice that they have a manner of living. If you look to a toad, which is a different species of this kind of animals, you will find a different manner of living. Rana pipians put their eggs in not standing water, near the plants in flowing water, but there are toads, for example, of which the female puts its eggs on the back of the male and the whole embryonic development takes place there. And these will not live in water. It is an entirely different manner of living. And it is being conserved generation after generation. But that manner of living is not determined by the genetics. The genetics makes it possible, but it is not determined by it. The genetics specify a domain of possibilities, but which is realized depends on how the organism begins its life and the circumstances, in which it finds itself in march, so that it follows a particular manner of living, which is conserved, because of the whole congruence of circumstances between its constitution and the medium, in which it arises. And what I am saying is that species, living organisms, are lineages, or systems of lineages, characterized by the conservation of a particular manner of living. If this is so, then, if one wants to understand a living system, one has to ask oneself what is the manner of living that defines it as this particular kind of system. But at the same time, as the organism lives, there is a space of variability around it. The structure can change, but as long as the manner of living is conserved, the system remains the same. So specialization. The origin of a new species, takes place in the moment, in which a new manner of living begins to be conserved. And a new lineage is formed. From what domain of variations would arise the new manner of living that begins to be conserved? From the domain of variations around the conservation of the previous manner of living, that was conserved. So, if we want to know how did humanity arise, we have to ask two questions: One, what was the manner of living, which defined a lineage, such that variations around its conservation constituted the possibility of new manners of livings, that began to be conserved afterwards and a new lineage was constituted. That new lineage was the human lineage. What manner of living was there in our ancestors? Which were not human. And the other question is what constitutes human beings as the peculiar kind of animals that we are. So that we can see under what conditions this peculiarity arose as variations on the conservation of another manner of living. Can we answer those questions? Yes, it is possible to answer those questions, if we ask those questions in those terms and if we look to what we know about the history of primates, to which we belong and what characterises our manner of living now. Is it possible to characterise the manner of living "human being"? This is not a simple matter, although, I think, it is less complex than it seems, particularly because there is a history of discriminations and in different moments in history we, human beings, have claimed that certain beings, that resemble us, were not human. One of the great discussions in the occupation and the domination of the New World by hispanians was, whether the Indians were human or not human. Whether they have a soul or not. If you find some very primitive people, that live in a forest in a very different circumstance than we live now, under what conditions are you going to say that they are human? Will it only be through genetic conditions, because we can cross-fertilize? According what operations may one distinguish between "human beings" and "not human beings"? Notice that, to say "he is a human being" and accepting it, it is comparable to accepting or rejecting a particular reformulation of an experience as an explanation. The story of the soul for the Indians had to do with that. To have a soul was central for being human. And the question was how one knows, if these beings have a soul or not, and it had to do with religion. Whether they could be converted to Christianity or not and so forth. So, it was a complex situation. But this is something that the observer does. The observer is the person, which accepts or rejects something. So, we have to reflect upon what do we look for, when we want to distinguish a human being. What do we expect to happen in his history, so that we could say "ah, a human being is here!". Two and a half million years ago. Now, what we know from fossil evidence (found in North Africa and other parts of Africa three and a half million years ago) is that there were primates, animals of the same family, which had the same body like us, about this size, and were bipedal like us. They walked erect, like we do, they were complete walkers, so that they had feet and hands like us. They had different proportions in the hips and the shape of their hand was different, the brain was smaller, the shape of the face was different. But these beings had the teeth like we have now, which are teeth of animals that eat nuts, seeds that are grounded. We have teeth with relatively flat surfaces, which are used to crash food. So by looking at the teeth, we know that they, like us, were animals that ate seeds and nuts. Surely they may have eaten insects, larvae of various kinds, roots perhaps, but the shape of their teeth was the shape of teeth of animals, that collect food. They were not hunters. We also know by looking at these fossil records, that they lived in small groups, like a ban or a family of about twelve people. Adults, young people and babies. We know this, because by some circumstance, the whole group, like this I have described, died together in a cave and they were found together. We, modern human beings, live in small groups of this kind. Families are small groups. Now much smaller than a hundred years ago perhaps, but even if we live in tribes or in bigger things, we gather ourselves in small groups of a few adults and children. Biology, the biological constitution of the living systems, does not specify, when something will happen in individual history. But nothing can happen, which its biology does not permit. So, there are certain things, that, if they happened, they reveal that we have the biology for them to happen. And, if we had not the biology, they would not happen. There are certain things that never happened, because we did not have the biology, and others that did not happen, just because our history of life was such that they did not occur. One of our modern human characteristics is that we share food. To share food is not to let the other eat besides you. It is to take it from the mouth and handle it to the other. Children do this. They eat something that they take to the mouth and put it in the mouth of the mother or the brother or the adults around there. Or the adults take the food from their mouth and put it in the mouth of the children. And in many places the adults take the food of the mouth and put the food in the mouth of the elder, who do not have teeth. They chew the food and give it to the elders, who do not have teeth to chew anymore. We have objections nowadays to share food directly from the mouth, because we consider this to be dirty with viruses of some kind or bacteria, whatever it is, but in those days, in which humanity arose, this was not a concern. We are now animals. We have the biology of food sharing. This is also apparent to what happens to us when somebody becks for food from us. If somebody becks for food from you and you don't share, you have a problem. We nowadays have the biology of gatherers and sharers of food. Now, that we are gatherers ourselves is apparent in several things. First of all agriculture is a manner of remaining a gatherer. True, you put the seed, but then you gather what you are going to eat. The success of supermarkets is an expression of our gathering biology. You go there, collect things and leave other things there. You move around like in a forest, picking up what you want, leaving what you do not want and having a great time. The fantastic success of supermarkets has to do with our biology of gatherers. So we know that three and a half million years ago ancestors of us were gatherers. By living in small groups we can assume that they shared food. They were erect like us. And we can also assume that their sexual habits were different from other primates. The frontal approach encounter in sex was possibly taking place. Almost surely was taking place. Now, in addition to that, those people had some other characteristics, which is proper to primates. Mot exclusively proper, but present in other primates. Which is touching each - other and taking things touching. The grooming activity. Grooming is an activity that opens a space for encounter and intimacy. It is a sensual activity. Frontal approach sexuality and grooming open a space for sensual intimacy and also open a space for looking at each other. The importance of face expression in sexuality has to do with this biology of frontal encounter, which has to do with our bipedal condition. So our ancestors three and a half million years ago must have lived in small groups around twelve people. Mostly gatherers. Hunting must have been present perhaps circumstantially. Even hunter societies are not exclusively hunters. Sexuality and sensuality was an important manner of coexistence. Like in us now. Yet there is something else. Human child is born almost helpless. So helpless that, if it is not taken care, it dies. The chimpanzee baby is not born so helpless. It can stick and hold on the mother's hair. And a few hours after it has been born it can climb on top. So we belong to a lineage, in which cooperation in the childcare has been central. Furthermore in human male the concern and attention for child care, I claim, is not a cultural characteristic. It is a biological characteristic. We culturally deny it and say that this is a woman's activity or we enhance it. But the ability of human males to take care of the babies, in terms of the actions and the emotions involved in it, is a biological characteristic. So cooperation in child rearing between adult males and females must have been present. Now let us think about something else, which constitutes a peculiarity, as we can see now, of modern human beings. This is language. We are languaging animals. And what is language as a biological phenomenon? If we listen to the most frequent descriptions of language, we shall find that language is described as a system of symbolic communication. I claim that, if we attend to the distinction that we make in order to say that language is taking place, we must look to something else. For example, imagine that you work in a secret service, which wants to know, whether two people are in some sort of agreement, which you want to know, because may be they are passing secrets. You are detectives. And you look at them from this window. And you see them down there. They walk, they come close for a while and then they separate. You would like to know, whether there has been talk, between them. But how would you know that? What would you look for? You cannot hear. You would look for the consequences of this interaction. And if you can claim that, as a result of this interaction, these consequences are coordinations of coordinations of actions, you can say that here there is language. For example, you can claim that, as a result of this, they met in a particular place later on and did a particular interchange. Then you can say that there was language. So, what I say is that language is a system of consensual coordinations of consensual coordinations of actions. Consensual, because it has to do not with the manner of coordinated actions, which has to do with a ritual transmitted in the phylogeny, but with the manner of coordinated actions, which has to do with leading an individual life, which is what happens to the child and the child grows. If the child does not grow in a domain of languaging humans, it does not develop languaging. The child has the capacity to participate in languaging, but, if it does not participate in it, it does not appear. So, the biology makes it possible, but it does not specify it. So, if to be in languaging is to be in coordinations of coordinations of actions, then the origin of language requires the conditions in which coordinations of coordinations of actions may take place. And that requires close interactions and also the possibility of having a space of coordinations of actions. And what I have described as the conditions of living of these ancestors of us three and a half million years ago in small groups, sharing food, having close sensuality, participating of male in the child care, is the constitution of a space of interactions in which coordinations of actions would necessarily take place and coordinations of coordinations of actions should arise. So, those conditions are necessary for the origin of language. Yet, by themselves, they do not make it sure that language would arise. Now, we are the present of that history, so language arose. The human is constituted in the moment in which language arises and, in fact, is established when this becomes part of the manner of living that is been conserved. Now let me say a few things about emotions, the other thing that I attend to, since I accept that I cannot distinguish between perception and illusion. That, in my experience, that which I call an illusion is a commentary on an experience, which I live exactly the same as that which I call a perception. Since I cannot do that, I must look at my operations of distinction, when I want to refer to what I distinguish. If I want to refer to what I distinguish as a piano, I want to look to what operation do I perform to distinguish a piano. The distinction is always secondary through another experience. Sometimes I ask my students to do the following little game, to cross two fingers and touch the nose. If you do this, then you touch two noses. Then you look at the mirror and you see one. Which do you believe? This one, touching the nose with the crossed fingers or this one with the mirror? If you believe the mirror, you say this other one was an illusion, if you believe your crossed fingers, you say the mirror was an illusion. Whenever you say "I committed a mistake", when you say that "I had no element in my experience to consider that what I was saying was not the case", you accept that as legitimate, a justification for whatever happened. But the lie, when you say to somebody "you are lying", you are saying, "in the moment, in which you said that, you had all the arguments to know that, it was not the case", because whenever we commit a mistake, we do not commit a mistake. Mistakes are always a posteriori. So I ask myself, what operation of distinction I do in ordinary day-to-day life, not professional life, to distinguish a piano. Or to distinguish an emotion. If I want to come to the office and tell a friend "I am going to ask the chief for an increase of salary" and the chief is angry and my friend knows it, he will probably tell me "don't speak to the chief now. The chief is angry and he will not give you an increase of salary". To give salary increases is not an action that pertains to an angry chief. It is not one of the actions that an angry chief can perform. If somebody is depressed and you are a physician, you can tell to his wife "look, your husband is depressed. He can commit suicide". You make reference to the actions. We distinguish the domain of actions, in which the person or the animal is, and, according to the domain of actions, that we distinguish, we speak of a particular emotion. I say that emotions are domains of actions specified or constituted by dynamic body dispositions that bring them forth. I am not saying that an emotion is behaviour, but that it is a domain of behaviours or a domain of actions, which is constituted through our particular body dynamics, such that we behave in that domain and not in another. If I touch you, this is a caress or an offense, pending on the domain of actions in which this takes place. In other words I am saying that actions are specified by emotions. It is not the operation, which constitutes the action, but the emotion under which it is done. This means that we do nothing, which is not sustained by an emotion. There is no human action outside a domain of actions and, hence, there is no motionless action. Now I want to say that this is universal to animals. If you come to your home in the night, turn on the light in the kitchen and you see a cockroach crossing the kitchen floor, you can say "oh, there is a cockroach tranquilly crossing the kitchen floor" and somebody can say "you are projecting, you are anthropomorphising something human into the cockroach", I say no, because you are distinguishing in the domain of actions, in which the cockroach is. If you say "A COCKROACH!" and it begins to run frantically from one side to the other, you say, "The cockroach is frightened". Again you are not projecting, you are distinguishing the domain of actions, in which the cockroach is. A cockroach crossing the kitchen slowly and tranquilly can eat, meet another cockroach, they can touch their tinae, they coordinate with each other, may be that they can even mate. But a cockroach that is running from one side to the other cannot eat, if it encounters another cockroach it steps upon it or touches it a bit in a corner, or something of this sort, but it is an entirely different domain of actions. All animals, from bacteria to human beings, have emotions as domains of actions. Bacteria have flagella. One flange turn, which they can move in two ways, undulating like a tornado. And these are the two domains of actions, in which the bacteria move. At least these two. In that sense those domains of actions are not different from ours. But we, human beings, have many more domains of actions than a bacterium ...I am not saying that the cockroach is running, because it is afraid. What I am saying is that the domain of actions, in which it runs, escaping from one side to another, is that which I distinguish with the word "fear". What I am saying is that it is not a projection, it is a distinction of a domain of actions. What happens that, when we speak about emotions, we speak usually as if we have something inside, like fear or love? And we are blind that this is constituted in our body hood as a domain of actions. We speak about feelings as properties that we have, not as expressions of our dynamics. A feeling is a commentary about the distinction of an emotion. And a judgment is a commentary on the distinction of a distinction. For that commentary on a commentary you need language. So, once language arises, that is possible. But now, what I want to call your attention is that in this history we, mammals, have the emotionality of mammals. These ancestors of us three and a half million years ago were mammals and primates. So all this was taking place in animals that lived in an emotional flow and in emotional coordinations. That is in the flow of domains of actions and coordinations of domains of actions. For being in recurrent interactions you need a particular domain of actions. You need an emotion. You do not enter in recurrent interactions if you are not in a particular domain of actions, you would not be here if you were not in a particular domain of actions, in which being here is a legitimate activity. So, three and a half million years ago these fellows that lived together and interacted recurrently to each-other and shared food with each-other and caressed and touched and groomed and were in intimate sensuality, lived under a particular fundamental emotion, which makes or constitutes the domain of actions, in which those behaviours took place. Which is that fundamental emotion? I claim that this fundamental emotion is love. This is a very important point. We, in modern times frequently restrict the word "love" to a peculiar situation of falling in love, romantic love, a very special situation. As if love was something very strange and occasional and peculiar. I claim that love is the disposition for accepting the other as a legitimate other in close coexistence. It is a fundamental emotion in the history of constitution of humanity. Furthermore this is not an emotion constituted in the constitution of humanity. It is a mammalian emotion. And this why you can enter with dogs, cats, mice in this peculiar relation of mutual acceptance. So, what I am saying is that love is a basic, common, fundamental emotion. Is the emotion which constitutes the domain of actions, in which the other is accepted as a legitimate other in coexistence. So, love is the emotion that constitutes the social. Not that love arises in social coexistence. Love is the emotion that makes social coexistence possible. So, what I am saying is two things: First of all that these ancestors of us as mammals and primates were animals, that existed already in emotioning. In a flow of emotions prior to language. Furthermore that the fundamental emotion, that makes possible the origin of language is love. Because it is the emotion that makes possible the conservation of a manner of living of recurrent sensual interaction, of sharing food and participation of the male in the child care. Which is the space of sufficiently intimate recurrent interactions, in which language can arise. Mow, for us, language is essentially a talking language. But when I speak about language, I do not speak about talking. I speak about coordinations of coordinations of actions. Languaging takes place through sound, through body interactions, through gestures, through movements of any kind. But it arises in the history of humanity, it arises in these animals that exist already under love in consensuality of emotioning. Other emotions of course take place, I am not saying that love is the only emotion that existed three and a half million years ago. But I am saying, that it is the fundamental emotion, which constitutes the space for close coexistence, in which language can arise. But language has to do with this close coexistence, and sensuality in this close coexistence, I claim is a parent in the fact that language alters our physiology. We can kill with words, we can heal with words, and we can change our hormonal flow with words. When we refer to the voice in languaging, we say, "his speech is soft, caressing". When we refer to the contents, we use visual images, transparent, obscure, lucid. So language is like touching. I do not know what happens now, but in old days a mother would say to her daughter "be careful with the sweet and caressing words of the boys, because your hormones change". I do not mean, that she would say "your hormones change", but we all know that our muscular tone, our heart beat, our hormonal flow changes with sweet, caressing, tender words. So, what I am saying is that in the moment, in which language arises, when it begins to be conserved, there is indeed a bathing of languaging and emotioning. Our coordinations of actions and our coordinations of emotions bathe together. And I call this bathing of languaging and emotioning "conversation". So, the human arose with language, but it is in fact constituted in the moment, in which conversation begins to be conserved as part of the manner of living. And it is still present in us now. And I claim, that this must have taken place not later than three million years ago, due to the magnitude of involvement of other aspects of our body, like brain, larynx, face and so on, to language. There is a transformation of the brain, according which the brain grows from 450 cm to 1450 cm. That transformation cannot have taken place in 50,000 years or in 100,000 years. It requires much more time. So my contention is that the origin of humanity and the origin of language must have taken place around three million years ago. It is not a slow process. What is a slow process is the whole transformation around the conservation of conversation. And it is not that it took three million years for language to arise. It took three million years for the transformation of the body to become how it is now, through the conservation of a manner of living that included languaging. The conservation of languaging must have taken place just in a couple of generations, when a lineage began to be conserved in one of the small groups living in incest.

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