Colwyn Trevarthen

We review evidence that, from birth, infants have purposeful consciousness of rhythmic whole‐body movement, with multi‐modal perception of objects outside their body, and self‐related emotional appraisal of experiences. Newborns also exhibit a special human awareness of the vitality of company in actions and feelings, and a capacity to use imitation of action signs for dialogic exchange of intentions. These abilities are prepared by specific systems of body and brain that develop before birth. Through the first two years, a baby shows age‐related advances with growth of motor powers in use of intersubjective play and object awareness. These developments are adapted for life‐time learning how to identify and share meaningful conventions of a culture, and the description of experiences in words of a living language. Teaching is stimulated and assimilated by the affections, playful humor, and imaginative curiosity of the child in the company of people they know well.

Consciousness directs the actions of the agent for its own purposive gains. It re-organises a stimulus-response linear causality to deliver generative, creative agent action that evaluates the subsequent experience prospectively. This inversion of causality affords special properties of control that are not accounted for in integrated information theory, which is predicated on a linear, deterministic cause-effect model. IIT remains an incomplete, abstract, and disembodied theory without explanation of the psychobiology of consciousness that serves the vital agency the organism.

A newborn infant displays self-other-awareness, searching in its own imaginative space-time of body movement for exciting sights and sounds, and ready to engage impulses and emotions in intimacy with other persons. Soon rhythmic proto- conversations and games invent propositional narratives of aliveness with joyful 'communicative musicality'. By monitoring the life of this inborn per-sonality, and its distress when betrayed, we learn how a self-confident human mind develops an other-aware 'Me', appreciating aesthetic and moral rules and practical skills in a fictional culture of meanings -- the customs, rituals, arts, techniques, and formulated beliefs of ancestors, and mentors. The spiritual or affective inspiration of human reason and language is in an innocent interpersonal self who lives before, and beyond, acquired identity in a particular community and its artificial world. This has important implications for the philosophy and practice of spiritual teaching for self- awareness, agency, and feelings of relationship, from childhood to old age.

Music is at the centre of what it means to be human – it is the sounds of human bodies and minds moving in creative, story-making ways. We argue that music comes from the way in which knowing bodies (Merleau-Ponty) prospectively explore the environment using habitual 'patterns of action' which we have identified as our innate ‘communicative musicality’. To support our argument, we present short case studies of infant interactions using micro analyses of video and audio recordings to show the timings and shapes of intersubjective vocalisations and body movements of adult and child while they improvise shared narratives of meaning. Following a survey of the history of discoveries of infant abilities, we propose that the gestural narrative structures of voice and body seen as infants communicate with loving caregivers are the building blocks of what become particular cultural instances of the art of music, and of dance, theatre and other temporal arts. Children enter into a musical culture where their innate communicative musicality can be encouraged and strengthened through sensitive, respectful, playful, culturally informed teaching in companionship. The central importance of our abilities for music as part of what sustains our well-being is supported by evidence that communicative musicality strengthens emotions of social resilience to aid recovery from mental stress and illness. Drawing on the experience of the first author as a counsellor, we argue that the strength of one person’s communicative musicality can support the vitality of another’s through the application of skilful techniques that encourage an intimate, supportive, therapeutic, spirited companionship. Turning to brain science, we focus on hemispheric differences and the affective neuroscience of Jaak Panksepp. We emphasise that the psychobiological purpose of our innate musicality grows from the integrated rhythms of energy in the brain for prospective, sensation-seeking affective guidance of vitality of movement. We conclude with a Coda that recalls the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, which built on the work of Heraclitus and Spinoza. This view places the shared experience of sensations of living – our communicative musicality – as inspiration for rules of logic formulated in symbols of language.

Narrative, the creation of imaginative projects and experiences displayed in expressions of movement and voice, is how human cooperative understanding grows. Human understanding places the character and qualities of objects and events of interest within stories that portray intentions, feelings, and ambitions, and how one cares about them. Understanding the development of narrative is therefore essential for understanding the development of human intelligence, but its early origins are obscure. We identify the origins of narrative in the innate sensorimotor intelligence of a hypermobile human body and trace the ontogenesis of narrative form from its earliest expression in movement. Intelligent planning, with self-awareness, is evident in the gestures and motor expressions of the mid-gestation foetus. After birth, single intentions become serially organised into projects with increasingly ambitious distal goals and social meaning. The infant imitates others’ actions in shared tasks, learns conventional cultural practices, and adapts his own inventions, then names topics of interest. Through every stage, in simple intentions of foetal movement, in social imitations of the neonate, in early proto-conversations and collaborative play of infants and talk of children and adults, the narrative form of creative agency with it four-part structure of ‘introduction’, ‘development’, ‘climax’ and ‘resolution’ is present. We conclude that shared rituals of culture and practical techniques develop from a fundamental psycho-motor structure with its basic, vital impulses for action and generative process of thought-in-action that express an integrated, imaginative and sociable Self. This basic structure is evident before birth and invariant in form throughout life. Serial organisation of single, non-verbal actions into complex projects of expressive and explorative sense-making become conventional meanings and explanations with propositional narrative power.