Upright Posture and the Human Syndrome

Abstract

Homo sapiens encapsulates peculiarities otherwise unseen in the biosphere: self-consciousness, language, reason, altruism, and extensive cultural inheritance ‐ traits sometimes labelled “the human syndrome”. The topic has mainly been studied along two separate pathways: along cognitive or along bodily features. However, the upcoming concept of embodied cognition offers a suitable pathway to explore how mind and matter interact. By means of phenomenology, this conceptual paper explores the human syndrome as a systemic mind-body interaction over evolutionary time. The essential crossroad of hominin evolution is verticalization of the spinal cord and bodily uprightness. This habit poses a challenge to the traditional adaptationist program, as it comprises substantial anatomical drawbacks. Uprightness, moreover, is not solely maintained by neuromuscular reflexes but by conscious involvement, too. Human locomotion is a psychophysical dance, culturally induced and actively maintained by the balancing self. From supporting the trunk in quadrupeds, forelimbs became hands and arms, as tools serving the mind. Verticalization also favored enhanced awareness of three-dimensionality of the environment and deliberate use of forelimbs to manipulate it. Release of forelimbs was in turn decisive for uncoupling respiration from locomotive functions, as a conditioner for language, which emerged from gestural expressions during the homo erectus period. Finally, language became the prelude for the upper Palaeolithic cognitive transition to reason and representation, as recognizable in cave art. Upright posture, language, and reason accordingly summarize the nested evolutionary history of hominins, where each competence became precursor for the next: Uprightness gave birth to language, which in turn became the pathway for reason. Finally, verticalization emerges as the ultimate reason for ethical conceptions, accomplished as beauty, truth and goodness.