Paper short abstract:

This paper critically reexamines current claims about the diversity of ontological orientations among human societies, while resisting work work on linguistic relativity— the social construction of such lived-realities by means of the symbolism of everyday language: in particular poetry and music.

Paper long abstract:

Throughout the Pacific Northwest animals and plants think, as portrayed in popular songs and folktales; their thoughts shape the world in which we live, bestowing many spiritual and medicinal gifts upon humanity. No sharp line is drawn between animals and humans, and humans owe a huge debt to their spiritual progenitors among other life-forms. Though out of step with the naturalism of recent Western thought, this ontological orientaiton is deeply in step with current evolutionary biology (Deacon 2012), while resonating with the deepest religious convictions and ecological insights of most of the communities where this author has worked: from Northern California to Oklahoma, Brazil, and North Africa. Thus, in his groundbreaking book, How Forests Think, Eduardo Kohn (2013) makes some remarkable claims about language and life, going so far as to insist that all life is inherently semiotic; by extension, he says, thought is alive. At stake here are current claims about the diversity of ontological orientations among human societies, along with classic claims about linguistic relativity, or the social construction of such lived-realities by means of the symbolism of everyday language: in particular poetry and music, as pan-human ways of "painting" mental imagery with ordinary sound. Yet, do all cultures adhere to just four ontologies, as Descola (2013) has suggested? Echoing Levi-Strauss's work on totemism (1960), this paper reveals something similar about ontology. Rather than carving humanity into types, the paper reveals that all of the ontologies are at work in all human society, with different degrees of emphasis.