Chapter 2: The Scope of Skill

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Chapter 2

The Scope of Skill

This is to be a descriptive chapter: I will enumerate and describe the many kinds of skill there are, noting their similarities and dissimilarities. The emphasis will be on the enormous variety of skills, along with their clear affinities. It is remarkable that we bring such variety under a single concept; the concept is encyclopedic, not to say promiscuous.  Perhaps the clearest examples—paradigm cases—are sports skills, though these too are extremely various. The skills of footballers are focused on the feet, though the head sometimes gets involved—kicking, dribbling, passing, scoring. If this were the only skill known to man, we would still be mightily impressive. Football clearly stems from primitive motor skills, though it develops into high-level skills that take years to master and perfect. Football skills can make you extremely rich and much idolized. It’s amazing what the human foot can do. No other animal has skilled feet like ours. It is made possible by our bipedal gait; quadrupedal footballers are a rare breed (maybe they exist on another planet). The use of a ball is essential and many sports follow suit. We take football for granted, but it illustrates our skillful sporting nature as a species. I won’t list all the endless other sports that depend on skill for their existence. As an ex-pole vaulter, I can attest to the level of skill demanded in sports, especially in hoisting the body up to clear the bar feet first. This is all obvious. It is common for people to say that it looks easier than it is, which is quite true; no one is born with pole vaulting skill, say. Some sports require more skill than others, but they all involve advanced skill of some sort (even shot put). Running is perhaps the least skilled sport. Sport is skill.

But elsewhere it becomes less obvious that skill is involved, though actually it is. Art involves skill, with pencil and paintbrush, chisel and hammer. It used to require more skill and less conceptualization, to the dismay of traditionalists. But the painter doesn’t look much like a footballer in practicing his craft—the bodily movements are very different in the two cases. Yet there is the same finesse, expertise, beauty of execution. Only at an abstract level does the kinship reveal itself; at first sight the activities have nothing much in common. The artist is a skilled operator too. Then we have science, which is largely intellectual: the skilled observer through microscope and telescope, the skillful experimenter, the adroit calculator. The scientist is not usually put in the same category as the athlete, but the affinity is there in the form of acquired skills—scientists aim for knowledge by deploying their scientific skills. They even “kick ideas around” and win prizes. Architects and builders are clearly skilled workers—stonemasons, carpenters, glaziers. They must learn their craft and practice it diligently and expertly. Chefs and cooks are skilled food producers, wise to the ways of food. Some are celebrities, like top footballers. They need to go to specialized schools to acquire the necessary skills. Then too, there are surgeons and chiropractors, masseurs and physical therapists. These are not unskilled workers; they need to be masters of the tricks of their trade. They may work with their hands, but their sophisticated manual skills are highly prized. They are part of the skill brotherhood.

Now we come to occupations and activities even further removed from the initial sporting paradigms. What about sex, professional or amateur? Isn’t it more or less skillful? We need not go into the gory details here, but we intuitively count sexual acts as falling under the concept of skill, despite their remoteness from football (but note the use of “score” in both cases). We are reliably informed that there are highly skilled lovers, though it is hard to see what superior techniques they may be masters of that the rest of us struggle to execute. These must be arcane bedroom skills requiring years of practice to master. Are there skilled comedians? Again, the idea seems somewhat stretched, though we might mention the skills of comedic timing. Impersonation requires skill, as does so-called physical comedy. Then we have writing, politics, morality, acting, singing, socializing, living. Some of these seem more skill-infused than others—acting more than morality, say. We readily speak of political skills and social skills, but not moral skills or living skills. Yet a case can be made that these locutions are not oxymoronic: can’t someone be skilled at weighing up a moral dispute or assigning praise and blame, and aren’t some people thought to be adept at living life? These don’t seem like meaningless phrases. Skill is closely related to know-how and that is present in many activities—a person knows how to live well or form a sound moral judgment. We have the notion of expertise in these areas. The moralist and the footballer may not be that far apart. True, the concept of skill arguably has its original home in the context of athletic activity, but it does seem extendable to a wider domain. Singing and playing an instrument seem more obviously skill-involving, because of the period of concentrated learning that is typically required. Parts of the body are involved, as football recruits the feet and head; and you must learn to deploy them carefully and adroitly. Writing is an interesting case, because it is multi-layered—from punctuation to profundity (or at least readability). I have always regarded it as a learnable skill requiring much study and practice (almost as taxing as tennis). In any case, skills vary in many ways, and it is surprising that we group them together as we do; yet it feels entirely natural to do so. Add to this the fact that people differ tremendously in what skills they take to—the concept is remarkably broad and somewhat puzzling. It is unitary yet multifarious.

Is it possible to devise a useful taxonomy of skill, hierarchically arranged? Some theorists like to distinguish “hard skills” from “soft skills”: the former include ordinary physical skills, while the latter include communication skills, leadership skills, and teamwork. I would call these physical skills and social skills, respectively. The distinction is real enough, though it would be a mistake to press it too hard, since the body is involved in both, as is the mind. We might also describe these as object skills and people skills. I think we should also distinguish constructive skills from competitive skills: skills of making and skills of winning. These can overlap, as when two people compete over who can bake the best cake. They are correlated with personality types. Third, we can distinguish work skills from leisure skills—what you do for money and what you do for fun. Some people do for a living what others do to amuse themselves—there are professional bowlers and darts players. The skill is essentially the same in both cases. It is tempting to distinguish “physical skills” from “mental skills”, but this is problematic for two reasons. One is that all skills are partly mental, even when very physical, because of the part played by perception, will, and thought; table tennis, say, is very mental. The other is that the category of purely mental skills is questionable, because such alleged skill is arguably not a genuine literal case of skill; it is only analogous to skill in the proper sense. For example, you can be a skillful debater in philosophy, but can you be a skillful thinker in philosophy? The body is not involved in this activity and hence bodily coordination and finesse. Can you be a skillful historian? Knowledge is not the same as skill; knowing-how is not the same as knowing-that. At the least, the basic cases of skill are bodily skill not intellectual skill (whatever that is exactly): to be intelligent or clever or smart or erudite is not have a bunch of skills in your head. Memory capacity isn’t a skill. A skill in the strict sense is an ability of the body—the embodied agent. To be a profound or creative thinker is not to have a bodily homunculus in your head behaving in a skillful manner. To have a lot of knowledge is not to have a lot of skills. Skill is about fine-tuned movements not deep thoughts, or even sensible ones. Common sense knowledge is not having shared skills. Hands and feet are not involved; nor is the head qua moving object. Thinking isn’t mental football.[1]

[1] People talk about the language of thought, but not the skill of thought. Skill has techniques, but thought doesn’t. You don’t need to practice having the same thought in order to get it right. You don’t sign up for thought lessons because you can’t execute your thoughts properly. No one tells you not to move your head while thinking. Etc.

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Chapter 1: What is Skill?

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Chapter 1

What is Skill?

The concept of skill is not simple. We use the word, but how well do we understand its denotation? The OED gives us “the ability to do something well; expertise or dexterity”, deriving from Old English scele meaning “knowledge”. AI gives us something fuller: “A skill is a learned ability to do an activity, job, or task well through practice, training, and experience”. I would offer: a skill is an ability to achieve a certain goal (telos) by means of a refined and effective technique, typically acquired by concentrated practice and instruction. It is a type of action instilled by prolonged learning, deemed valuable, and not easy to accomplish. The action typically involves the body, though the mind is also implicated; it is psychophysical in nature. Skills are often described as sensorimotor, i.e., involving both the senses and the muscles, but we must also include the will: intention, desire, choice, planning. For example, when hitting a ball in tennis the agent is aiming for a certain result and adopting a specific means of achieving it—say, to keep the ball deep but not go beyond the opponent’s baseline. He[1] swings his arm and moves his body so as to achieve this goal. The skill has a teleological structure—ends and means—and the body is moved in such a way that a desirable result is achieved. The senses play a crucial role in ensuring that the willed act is successful (keeping your eye on the ball). Skilled action is really “sensory-volitional-motor”. Perception, will, and bodily movement must be smoothly coordinated so as to achieve a given goal. Notice that this configuration is normatively described—that is, it is deemed desirable to act in this way. Skilled action is good—better than unskilled action. It isn’t value-neutral, like simply sitting down or spitting. To that extent skill is found admirable. To possess a skill is to have something worth possessing.

Not all actions are skilled; nor are all abilities skills. Raising your arm isn’t a skill; nor is the ability to digest a skill. Feeling and believing aren’t skills. Seeing isn’t generally a skill (you don’t have to take seeing lessons to see). Dreaming and imagining are not skills. Sweating isn’t, or blushing, or breathing. Clapping isn’t. Running and jumping are not skills either—because they require no special training. Walking is no more skillful than sitting down or twiddling your thumbs. To be a skill an action or ability must involve difficulty and efforts to overcome it; it is an achievement. It can’t be a given. There must be obstacles to be surmounted. In this sense it is a battle with reality—overcoming natural resistance. You can’t be skilled and lazy. Skills require work. There are no skilled blinkers or salivators. Many skills take years to develop, whole lifetimes even. That is why we speak of mastering a skill: mastery requires effort, determination, talent, practice, dedication. These are all good qualities, so skill is deeply intertwined with matters of esteem, admiration, praise. This is part of the definition of skill. You might object that the skilled torturer or assassin is not admirable, and you would be right—because his aim is bad, wrong, evil. But the skill in question is good for those wicked ends without being good tout court. The skill exhibited might well be admirable if transposed to another context—say, surgery or wood chopping. Boxing skill is not bad, though hitting old ladies is. The skill itself is always estimable, though the end it serves is sometimes dastardly. This is why we are so ambivalent about skilled thugs: they are good at something, but that something isn’t itself good.

Let’s be a touch technical: is the concept of skill a family resemblance concept, and is it subject to skeptical paradox? Wittgenstein famously claimed that the concept of a game is a family resemblance concept: games are so multiple and various that nothing unites them except family resemblance; they have no unitary definition. You might wonder whether the same is true of the concept of a skill: skills are also so various that nothing unites them except loose family resemblance—say, the skill of welding and the skill of dancing the polka. It is certainly true that skills come in many stripes, but it doesn’t follow that they have no common-factor definition; and we have already seen that they do. For a skill can be defined as mastery of a technique learned by assiduous practice. True, there can be borderline cases (is jumping over a fence a skill?), but there is an abstract schema that captures the essence of a skill. Actually, there is such a schema in the case of games too, as Bernard Suits convincingly demonstrated (Wittgenstein was wrong).[2] By all means let’s recognize the huge variety of skills (see the next chapter), but it is consistent with that to maintain that skills have an essence common and peculiar to them. There is a natural kind called “skill”, and we can inquire into its general form.

On the question of skeptical paradox, we can begin by observing that our knowledge of skill is not a kind of direct perceptual knowledge—you can’t see someone’s skill, your own or another’s. You can see the behavior that manifests a skill, but not the underlying skill itself. In this respect a skill is like a disposition: you can see the sugar dissolving in water but not the disposition so to dissolve. You can’t observe potentialities. What is this strange thing we call a potentiality? It isn’t the skilled behavior, because the skill goes beyond the behavior: the skill of being able to hit a topspin forehand in tennis applies to future and counterfactual situations as well as actual hits of the ball. This is a variant of the problem of induction: we infer future behavior from attributions of a general skill, but there is no logical entailment from past to future—maybe the player can’t execute the shot in places other than those he was brought up in. How do we knowthat he will hit the shot on the next occasion we observe him? Nor will his inner state of mind help to establish this, because it is compatible with all sorts of future behavior; no feeling he has will logically imply that he has the skill in question.[3] Nor is the skill a disposition to execute the shot correctly, because the player may not be disposed to hit the shot when asked to on account of feeling ill or lazy or tired. On reflection, the skill seems like an elusive I-know-not-what, rather than a solid known reality; it may even be doubted that it really exists (this is skepticism about skills). We will come back to this when we consider skills and philosophy in chapter 7. For now, I will be assuming realism about skills: they really exist as constituents of objective reality—they aren’t “logical fictions”.

Where do skills exist—in the brain, in behavior, or in the mind? Where are they located? A neuroscientist might say the brain, pointing to the motor cortex; a behavioral psychologist will reduce skills to skilled behavior; a cognitive scientist will locate them in an unconscious computational system. Maybe they are in all three! I would say they belong principally in the unconscious mind: once the skill is acquired it departs consciousness and exists at an unconscious level, ready to be drawn upon when needed. This unconscious mind has links to the brain and behavior; the skill is really a bundle of all three, tightly joined together. We see the skilled behavior, but there is an unseen machinery behind it, controlling it, constituting it. We sometimes sense the inner skill in ourselves as we hit the perfect shot. It is not exactly repressed like the Freudian unconscious, just tucked safely away, leaving the conscious mind free for other duties. If we ask whether skills are in the head, the answer is that they are also in the mind and body. Indeed, they can be said to exist outside the body too, as when an instrument is employed: the instrument becomes a functional part of the body, an extension of it. These divisions are alien to the concept of skill, and hence the ontology of skill. The tennis racket becomes an organ of the body, in effect. Skills are internal and external at the same time, from the depths of the brain to the tip of the instrument (compare the fingernails).

I would like to end this preparatory chapter with an instructive contrast that goes to the heart of the nature of skill: skill is not the same as strength. A bodybuilder or powerlifter is not really a skilled athlete: lifting weights hardly qualifies as a skill at all. I used to lift a lot of weights in the gyms of New York, but I was always aware that skill is minimal to non-existent in that activity. You are not working to acquire a skill—just big muscles. It’s not like learning to play tennis or billiards. Contrariwise, you can be skilled but not strong: billiards players are not usually terribly strong. Skill and strength are opposed categories: you can win a fight either way. Speed is part of skill, but not strength. A giant can be strong but clumsy. Elephants are not particularly skilled (excluding the trunk). The Cyclops was strong, but Odysseus was skilled. I am really a skills person not a strength person, despite all the weightlifting and pushups. I can perform a horizontal balance using only my arms (I learned it as a gymnast at age fifteen); it requires a fair amount of upper-body strength, but it is mainly a skill. That is what makes it impressive not powerful bulging muscles. Doing a lot of pushups is impressive, but not because of the skill involved. I think physical culture today has become too strength-oriented (Arnold, I’m talking to you); physical skill is more important (Simone, I have you in mind). In any case, we now have a workable idea of what a skill is; we can proceed to investigating the phenomenon from a number of different angles.[4]

[1] In this book when I say “he” I mean “he or she” (or “she or he”).

[2] See Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper (1978), and my Truth by Analysis (2012). The basic idea is that a game is an activity in which unnecessary obstacles are constructed or stipulated.

[3] See Saul Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982).

[4] It is interesting to compare the volume of philosophical literature on knowledge with that on skill: massive to tiny. And yet skill is a type of knowledge—knowledge-how. In both cases we should not be too finicky about strict necessary and sufficient conditions.

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Skill: A Philosophy of Practice

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Skill: A Philosophy of Practice

Introduction

You might be wondering how a philosopher could write knowledgeably about skill, especially physical skill. Aren’t philosophers clumsy, ill-coordinated, awkward brainiacs with their head in the clouds? They may be skilled in their brains, but not in their bodies. And there is a good deal of truth in this stereotype. But in my case the stereotype falls flat, because I happen to have a wide range of skills: tennis, table tennis, squash, badminton, gymnastics, trampoline, pole vault, discus, kayak surfing, windsurfing, kiteboarding, skimboarding, skiing, ice skating, football, cricket, basketball, knife throwing, archery, Frisby, mountain biking, swimming, diving, skateboarding, rollerblading, motorcycling, bowling, pinball, darts, billiards, drumming, guitar, harmonica, and singing. Granted, I am by no means an expert in all these areas, but I have put in the time and effort necessary to learn them, distributed over many years (I am 76). As a child, I was heavily into competitive card flicking, marbles, and conkers, as well as the usual tree climbing and fighting (“Judo”). I have led an active physical life in addition to a scholarly one. I have acquired a good many bodily skills. I also teach these skills. So yes, don’t worry, I am amply qualified to write on the subject of skill.

Friends sometimes say I am like James Bond in this respect—multi-skilled. As a matter of fact, I am a keen student of agent 007, making a study of his character and lifestyle. He certainly has a great many skills, but our skills don’t overlap much (though we both knife throw). Perhaps he has a slight edge over me, but then he is a fictional character and I am not. I doubt he is much of a pole vaulter (I held the school record). He is probably better at shaking martinis than I am (smoking too). I have never seen him play tennis (though I have seen him play golf, quite well), but I suspect he would be no match for me–it takes a lot of time and practice, and the smoking and drinking don’t help. Other historical figures suggest themselves: Odysseus and Achilles leap to mind. The former was known as a highly skilled archer and expert problem-solver; the latter was the most accomplished warrior in the ancient world. I wouldn’t be surprised if James Bond was modeled on this illustrious pair, consciously or unconsciously. Then we have Jesus the skilled miracle-working carpenter and nimble David of David and Goliath fame. Not to mention assorted famous footballers, boxers, and ten-pin bowlers. I might also mention the popularity of skill-centered TV shows, particularly dancing and singing competitions. Evidently, the general public has a thirst for skilled performance of various kinds (I myself quite enjoy these shows). In this short book, I will explore the subject of skill in some depth from a philosophical as well as a practical point of view. We do well to understand and appreciate skill better and bring it into our daily lives. You have heard about the joy of sex (not much about its sorrow); this will be a book about the joy of skill, its meaning and value. The Karma Sutra of skill, so to speak.[1]

[1] I discuss the subject from a number of angles, from the abstract and profound to the practical and particular. There is fair amount of autobiographical detail combined with analytical philosophy. Dedicated readers may wish to study it alongside my The Making of a Philosopher and Sport. Skill has long been a preoccupation of mine, now turned into a condensed-soup monograph.

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In My Life

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In My Life

There are places I’ll remember all my life. I’m talking about departments I’ve been a member of, though some have changed. First, the psychology department at Manchester University, in which I was a student for four years. Then, Jesus College Oxford for two years, along with 10 Merton Street, as a philosophy graduate student. Next, University College London in Bedford Square for eleven years, teaching philosophy. After that, the psychology department at Oxford and Corpus Christi College for several years. During this time, I was a visiting professor at UCLA and USC for a total of ten months, and CUNY Graduate Center for a semester. Following that, I was in the philosophy department at Rutgers University for sixteen years. Latterly, I had six years at the University of Miami, ending badly (don’t ask me why). With people and things, lovers and friends. They each stick in my mind, making their mark, not forgotten. Now I am in no department at all, except my own in-home department of one. It’s nice, friendly, quiet, conducive to work. No problems. I think I love you more.

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Mysticism, Miracle, and Mystery

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Mysticism, Miracles, and Mystery

How are these three categories related? Are they connected in any way? I shall say not. Mysticism is the idea centrally that there is a way of knowing about the world that transcends ordinary human knowing with the senses and intellect—a way that only some people possess and which may require special training to achieve. The guru is such a person, often holy and bearded (generally male). Reality exists behind ordinary appearance and can only be apprehended by the gifted mystic to whom this hidden reality appears. It is a kind of localized epistemic optimism. It is not supposed that any other animal species possesses such privileged knowledge (the especially insightful guru pig, say). Miracles are supposed to be occurrences that defy the laws of nature and generally require a divine source; they are part of many orthodox religions. It is not supposed that any human being can know and understand the source of miracles—a kind of miracle mystic. The mystic may not believe in miracles at all; apparent miracles are regarded as intimations from beyond badly grasped by less insightful mortals. Mystics don’t perform miracles and alleged miracles don’t baffle mystics (they may well be rejected outright).

Mystery is another thing entirely: the mysterian rejects both miracles and mysticism. He denies the existence of miracles and postulates that their appearance is merely a result of human ignorance (or invention or fraud). Nature brooks no miracles. Nor does he welcome the idea of a superior special epistemic faculty such as mystics claim to possess. The limits of human knowledge are not surpassed by the gifted few. It isn’t that what is a mystery for you and me is an open book for the superior mystical mind. We are like other animals in this regard. The mysterian rejects special epistemic faculties and miraculous happenings (either unique or repeated). He regards the world as a (partially) closed book not legible to anyone of our species. He is a mystic-skeptic and a miracle-skeptic. He is also a minimalist-skeptic: he is skeptical about claims to have resolved especially recalcitrant problems or declare pseudo-problems. He is not sympathetic to attempts to minimize the difficulty of certain problems or to replace these problems with other more easily handled ones. The mysterian believes that we don’t know what we don’t know. The mystic might claim that he has special insight into the mind-body problem that resolves the mystery; the believer in miracles might announce that the mind-brain connection is a type of miracle; the mysterian thinks no one has the answer and that no miracle is involved. Nothing religious is going on here.

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A Tennis Story

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A Tennis Story

I have been making a study of James Bond, reading the novels and watching the movies. I think I now know the Bond mind: principled, decisive, realistic, ingenious, effective, sometimes violent. I recently faced a Bond challenge over at the tennis courts, involving a shrub. I don’t think SMERSH was behind it, but still—it had to be dealt with. You see, when hitting against the wall the ball would sometimes go into the shrub and linger there so that you had to reach in to retrieve it. The trouble being that the shrub has pointy leaves and spiny stems, which menace the eyes and scratch the hands; more than once blood has been drawn. I mentioned this to the local bigwigs, but nothing was done. The ideal solution would be to remove the shrub, which would not be difficult. Do we have to wait till someone gets poked in the eye? Then I hit on my own solution: I took a pair of garden clippers over there and stealthily cut off the offending leaves, one by one. No longer do you have to reach inside the bush, shielding your eyes and risking the scratches—you just bend down and pick up the ball, no problem. Of course, the high-ups might disapprove, but the job got done. I stuffed the spiky leaves into the trashcan to be taken away in due course; I wonder what the organization will think of it. It will be a mystery to them. 007 has paid a visit (with a license to trim). A wrong has been righted, lives saved. Corners have been cut. Protocol has been set aside. Cue the James Bond theme.

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The View from Iran

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So, the thieves claim to be acting out of moral concern! One of your books or papers would be enough for someone to feel that they had made their entire contribution to philosophy!

Though, recording your ideas on your blog makes it extremely difficult for the thieves to steal them. Perhaps you could also number them or use a system of categorisation, such as ‘Idea No. 20 (e.g., Mysterianism) of Category 5 (Consciousness), Date’.  That would also make them easier to cite.

During the preparation of the Wittgenstein volumes, we received no complaints or similar emails from any of the contributors about your contribution. Of course, had there been any, I would have preferred them to withdraw, whoever they were. At the same time, though, your standing in Wittgenstein studies is beyond any doubt!

Ali

—

Dr. Ali Hossein Khani

Assistant Professor, Science Studies Department, Iranian Institute of Philosophy (IRIP).  (Academia)

Researcher, School of Analytic Philosophy, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM). (Google Scholar)

Just published:

  1. Kripke’s Wittgenstein: Meaning, Rules, and Scepticism(Anthem Press, 2026).
  2. The Routledge Handbook of Wittgenstein and Other Philosophers: Part One(with Gary Kemp) (Routledge, 2026).
  3. The Routledge Handbook of Wittgenstein and Other Philosophers: Part Two (with Gary Kemp) (Routledge, 2026)

I had been telling him about a volume on Shakespeare I had contributed to: some of the other contributors had threatened to withdraw their papers because I was in the volume, a threat which proved hollow. He replied:

It’s really annoying to hear these things, Colin. It’s great that you run your own blog and share your thoughts there. I’m sure that many of those who behave like that read your posts one by one and get ideas from them.

As a little scholar of philosophy, I’m proud to live in a time when philosophers as brilliant as you are alive.

Ali

—

Dr. Ali Hossein Khani

Assistant Professor, Science Studies Department, Iranian Institute of Philosophy (IRIP).  (Academia)

Researcher, School of Analytic Philosophy, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM). (Google Scholar)

Just published:

  1. Kripke’s Wittgenstein: Meaning, Rules, and Scepticism(Anthem Press, 2026).
  2. The Routledge Handbook of Wittgenstein and Other Philosophers: Part One(with Gary Kemp) (Routledge, 2026).
  3. The Routledge Handbook of Wittgenstein and Other Philosophers: Part Two (with Gary Kemp) (Routledge, 2026)
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A Causal Theory of Everything

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A Causal Theory of Everything

Is language caused by reality? Is meaning caused by facts? Does the environment give rise to our talk about it? I want to say yes. Language is caused by what it is about, in conjunction with other causal factors. The explanation of the characteristic features of language is the world in which we live—our planet basically. We have the language we do because of the planet we live on. Language may be largely innate, but its ultimate cause is environmental. This is because everything about us is caused by our planetary environment. All animal life on Earth is caused by Earth; all aspects of life on Earth are causally explained by the physics (dynamics) of Earth. Life on other planets is caused by those planets, and any life created by some form of intelligence (divine or alien) is caused by that intelligence; but life as we know it on Earth is the causal upshot of our planet, including language. Its nature derives from the place from which it originated; it emerges from this particular celestial object with that object’s specific characteristics. We are what we are because it is what it is.

To see this, it helps to go back to the beginning. In some way we don’t yet fully understand, the first primitive life was caused by the conditions obtaining on Earth (perhaps thermal vents). The nature of this life was predictable from its earthly antecedents; you could infer the effect from the cause. The effect wasn’t some radically new entity or process. The elementary life form was like a book recording its causal history.[1] With the passage of time new life forms developed, also caused by earthly conditions—physical, chemical, geological, climatic. One thing led causally to another. Eventually bacteria evolved as a causal consequence of what existed before; we don’t know how or why exactly, but it happened. There was no infusion of help from outside. Whether to call this process “physical” is a moot point, depending on what that word is taken to mean; what is undeniable is that the process was insulated, internal to the planet on which it occurred. No miracles from on high, no extraterrestrial injections (save the odd meteor). In the fullness of time, plants and animals came along—life as we know it. Mutation and natural selection were the driving mechanisms, building on what went before. Bodies began, various and distinctive. Thus, living bodies were caused by planet Earth—by the terrestrial environment. This included other living bodies: each body existed in a world partly composed of other bodies. This fact shaped the production of new bodies: one body is as it is because other bodies are what they are. For example, the body of a predator is shaped by the bodies of its prey; the tiger’s body is as it is because the antelope’s body is as it is. That is what it chases, hunts, kills, and eats. Prey cause predators (and predators cause later prey by reciprocal interaction). The body of one animal comes to be like a book about another animal; you can infer predator from prey and prey from predator, down to fine detail (with some input from the bodies of other animals that prey on the predator or compete with them). The point is that it’s all causality working its magic (or non-magic): everything is ultimately an effect of antecedent planetary conditions. Everything is a reflection of something else. Nothing happens by chance or intentional design. Causality rules. Trees are caused by earth and light. Fish are caused by water and oxygen. Birds are caused by air and gravity. All animals are caused by space and time. The universe is one big causal machine lumbering along. Nothing exists but that it was caused by something. This is not a reductionist thesis but an historical thesis: history, including pre-history, is a causal process, obeying the laws of causality. Not chance, not divine intervention, but blind deterministic causation. Causality truly is the cement of the universe and its modus operandi (despite what some quantum theorists and mystics say). Surely, this is by now a truism.

The same goes for the organs of animal bodies: they too are caused and shaped by prior planetary conditions, slowly evolving over time. Hearts and kidneys are caused by the earth, rearranging planetary matter. Hydrodynamics and gravity play a role, as well as available biochemical components. They are literally parts of planet Earth. The brain is no exception: the earth caused the brain; the brain contains elements of the earth. The brain emerged from the earth, taking on its characteristics—shape, size, weight, chemical composition, water, electricity. It lies at one end of a long causal chain tracing back to rocks and H2O. The earth gave birth to the brain (its wrinkled baby) after a long gestation period. The brain is as much an effect of the earth as a volcanic rock formation, and it reflects its causal origins; its properties are derivable from earthly properties, though often mysteriously. Its study is part of earth science (“the extended earth”). The thinking organ might be physically different on other planets, being differently caused; but earthly brains have earthly causes. They have the earth written into them. They even look like the earth (round, hilly)!

What about the mind—is it too caused by the earth? Of course it is. It bears the marks of the earth, though this is less obvious. If panpsychism were true, it would be infused with earthly micro-minds. We don’t understand the causation involved (the mind-body problem), but it must have such a causal history. The earth caused our emotions, our thoughts, our knowledge—what else could cause these things? Not God, and they didn’t happen by chance. Geo-genesis is the correct doctrine. Somehow the laws of nature allowed the mind to emerge from the earth. Among the causal powers of the earth is the power to become mind. Other planets in our solar system lack this power and remain psychologically sterile, barren. Then what of language? One might well say that language is trivially caused by the earth, because it arose from it like bodies, brains, and minds—it had to. But we can ask a more interesting question: is there anything about language that resembles its cause? Specifically, does language resemble the part of the earth that constitutes its subject-matter? Does the external environment both cause language to exist and intricately shape its nature? If it does cause language, we might expect that it shapes its nature, though perhaps in transmuted form. Does the environment configure the brain and hence the brain’s linguistic contents? Is language in any way a record of the long causal history that led up to it? Is it a kind of fossil of the earth that produced it? Take sound: spoken language, as we have it, consists of sounds, but that is only possible because planet Earth permits the production of transmissible sounds in virtue of its atmosphere. Sound waves need a material medium through which they can propagate—such as air. No air, no sound. There also must be physical mechanisms that can cause sound waves—falling water, explosions, collisions. It’s a sound world. Thus, Earth contains the resources with which to create sounds; in a world without atmospheric disturbance there cannot be spoken language (though there could be a sign language made possible by light). Spoken language owes its existence to a naturally noisy environment (as sign language owes its existence to the sun’s light). We thus know that pre-linguistic earth was a sound earth, because we make sounds now. Phonology is a result of terrestrial sounds—the pushing around of air molecules.

But the influence of the earth goes deeper into the make-up of language; it forms language’s very structure and content. The world consists of objects and properties, the instantiation relation, events, processes, pluralities, facts, space, and time—all these are reflected in the architecture of language. To put it baldly, objects and properties cause (causally explain) subjects and predicates (nouns and adjectives), instantiation causes predication (“is”), events and processes cause verbs, facts cause propositions, space and time form the very framework of meaningful sounds and marks. The sentence “snow is white” means that snow is white (expresses that proposition) because it is a fact that snow is white (these things really exist on Earth). Ontology causes and forms semantics. Where else could meaning come from? You say the brain or the genes; true enough, but where do they come from? They come from the earth (and earlier from the cosmos more generally). The whole machinery of language is caused by antecedent states of the universe, going back to the Big Bang. But language on Earth (“Earth-Speak”) owes its existence to the planet itself—that unique celestial object in all its singularity. We will not find examples of spoken language like ours on planets in which life develops differently—a soundless planet made of pure light, say. Even a purely liquid or gaseous planet will not produce our kind of language; for that you need solid objects with persistent properties. Our linguistic scheme is constrained by our geological and biological environment, our world of rocks and plants and animals. Our language is partly shaped by the existence of living bodies; they cause it to mean what it does. Proper names exist because there are things to be named—persisting substantial things. Spatial terms exist because space exists. Mental vocabulary exists because minds exist. The environment must be thus and so in order that talk about it should exist. That environment incorporates the reality of planet Earth, which is both an instance of something more general and a unique planetary formation. Language is one of Earth’s many effects, along with mountains, plants, animal bodies, and minds. Earth is a potent cause; not every chunk of matter floating through space has its protean power. A world of formless gas lacks such powers; it creates no languages, no bodies, no minds. As far as we know, only planet Earth has the power to produce these (to us) familiar things, including the ability to talk about itself. Earth is the cause of its own story. We are the vehicles of this story. We are the book in which Earth tells its tall tale. It took a long time, but eventually it learned to speak, with us as its vocal apparatus. We are Earth’s mouthpiece. Evolution is the earth working out its causal potential. Life on Earth is Earth’s causal history.[2]

[1] See Richard Dawkins, The Genetic Book of the Dead (2024).

[2] It is worth reminding ourselves that what I say here would have been considered the height of blasphemy only a couple of centuries ago. The idea that the earth could be the cause of all things human and animal, and not a divine being, would seem preposterous—isn’t the earth mainly mud? But Darwin’s causal theory of species creation put paid to that point of view; yet it lingers on in our ordinary thinking. A “Humean” theory of causation as constant conjunction (not the actual Hume’s position) also makes it hard to see how the earth could be so causally fecund, since it denies the productivity of causation. We need to appreciate how creative (yet conservative) causation can be; the earth has remarkable constructive powers. We should treat it with the awe and respect it deserves. Earth, we salute you!

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