--- abstract: "Brian Rotman argues that (one) 'mind' and (one) 'god' are only conceivable, literally, because of (alphabetic) literacy, which allowed us to designate each of these ghosts as an incorporeal, speaker-independent 'I' (or, in the case of infinity, a notional agent that goes on counting forever). I argue that to have a mind is to have the capacity to feel. No one can be sure which organisms feel, hence have minds, but it seems likely that one-celled organisms and plants do not, whereas animals do. So minds originated before humans and before language --hence, a fortiori, before writing, whether alphabetic or ideographic." altloc: [] chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: - harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk creators_name: - family: Harnad given: Stevan honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 2009-04-12 date_type: completed datestamp: 2009-04-12 22:41:22 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/64/18 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: [] eprint_status: archive eprintid: 6418 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/text_html.png;/6418/1/tls%2Drotman%2Dpost4.htm|/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/6418/2/tls%2Drotman%2Dpost4.pdf|/style/images/fileicons/other.png;/6418/3/tls%2Drotman%2Dpost4.rtf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: ~ issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'language, evolution, consciousness, writing, mind, multimedia' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:57:21 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: 'Review of: Brian Rotman: Becoming Beside Ourselves: Alphabet, ghosts, distributed human beings' number: ~ pagerange: ~ pubdom: FALSE publication: ~ publisher: ~ refereed: FALSE referencetext: 'Rotman, Brian (2008) Becoming Beside Ourselves: Alphabet, ghosts, distributed human beings. Duke University Press' relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 29 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2009-04-12 22:41:22 subjects: - cog-psy succeeds: ~ suggestions: ~ sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: First Person Singular type: preprint userid: 63 volume: ~