Walentin W. Wasielewski

Aim of work: the research of the determination and destination of human for nature and cognition. The basis of the research is Karl Raimund Popper's article «Evolutionary epistemology». A critical analysis of Popper's proposed theses and the scheme of theory evolution is conducted. The signifi-cance of the occurrence of the system of tenses of the language as an implication of the descriptive function of the language is noted. The issue with which the cycle of evolution of life and cognition begins is revealed. The language is included in the scheme proposed by Popper. As a result of the reasoning the pivotal feature of the human essence is identified: awareness the problem of death. This awareness makes it possible to relate oneself to the problem, which is the reason for the presence of the most aggregate evaluation categories: «good» and «evil». This is how a person may determine the purpose of evolution: overcoming the problem. In contrast to nature, the evolution of which is aimed at avoiding the problem. Having reached the goal, a person will go beyond himself as a phe-nomenon defined by the awareness of the problem. In this case, self-transcendence is a person's tran-sition to a new quality. The role of philosophy in the procedures of self-transcendence occurring in contemporary society is discussed.

My hypothesis is that the cognitive challenge posed by death might have had a co-evolutionary role in the development of linguistic faculties. First, I claim that mirror neurons, which enable us to understand others’ actions and emotions, not only activate when we directly observe someone, but can also be triggered by language: words make us feel bodily sensations. Second, I argue that the death of another individual cannot be understood by virtue of the mirror neuron mechanism, since the dead provide no neural pattern for mirroring: this cognitive task requires symbolic thought, which in turn involves emotions. Third, I describe the symbolic leap of the human species as a cognitive detachment from the here and now, allowing displaced reference: through symbols the human mind can refer to what is absent, possible, or even impossible (like the presence of a dead person). Such a detachment has had a huge adaptive impact: adopting a coevolutionary standpoint can help explain why language is as effective as environmental inputs in order to stimulate our bodily experience. In the end I suggest a further coevolutionary reversal : if language is necessary to understand the death of the other, it might also be true that the peculiar cognitive problem posed by the death of the other (the corpse is present, but the other is absent) has contributed to the crucial transition from an indexical sign system to the symbolic level, i.e., the cognitive detachment . Death and language, as Heidegger claimed, have an essential relation for humans, both from an evolutionary and a phenomenological perspective: they have shaped the symbolic consciousness that make us conceive of them