Roman Madzia presents a paper on 'The Humble Genius: On the Hand-made Mind and Material Culture'

The main goal of the paper will be to present and critically examine the functional importance of the human hand in the process of the development of characteristically human forms of intelligence and interactions with the world (giving rise to the phenomenon of material culture). This critical examination will be carried out mainly (but not exclusively) from the perspective of the philosophy of George H. Mead. This thinker was the first philosopher to have underlined the crucial importance of the physiological structure of the human hand for specifically human forms of i) perception of physical objects, ii) of intelligence, which in the end result enable iii) specifically human forms of reflective thinking which occurs by means of what Mead called ‘significant symbols’. In Mead’s opinion, tactual or haptic perception is essential to our notion of physical objects. He presents a developmental argument, according to which the visual or distance experience, is evolutionarily derivative of the so-called contact experience. The sense of touch gives us, therefore, at the same time a specific sense of the objective existence of the external reality. Subsequently, the paper will elucidate, how our ‘handed’ form of embodiment gives rise to the phenomenon of material culture, and in turn, how the material culture changes the human neuronal as well as social profile.