Asking ourselves about what constitutes the human being can lead us to see which traits make up and at the same time distinguish our species. Well, if one studies in depth what essentially differentiates us from other species inhabiting the planet, one might conclude, following the path of Cartesian thought, that it is reasoning: “I think, therefore I am”. But if we analyze what underlies reasoning, we will also conclude that it, like other human behaviors, is attributable to language.

In previous reflections (See May article: “Ontological Coaching: Foundations for a new epistemology”) I spoke about the role language plays in human life. Following the ideas of the Biologist Humberto Maturana, I believe that the human is constituted in language. That is, everything we do as human beings occurs in conversations, understood as an intertwining of language and emotion. Someone might disagree with this premise, arguing that they see themselves doing many things outside of language in their daily life. Well, that is true. But we must consider that human beings inhabit multiple domains of reality depending on our operation at any given moment. Besides being human, we are also mammalian animals, therefore, we can realize that our behaviors outside of language are carried out as the animals we are. The human only occurs in conversations.

For example, digestion is a biological process of which, normally, we are not aware, since it occurs in the operation of our biology without our consciousness of it. Therefore, it is a biological phenomenon, not a human one. Digestion becomes a human phenomenon the moment your stomach hurts, and there, when one asks “What’s happening to me?”, and talks about it with others, with oneself, or with the doctor, it is precisely at that moment when digestion becomes part of a conversation and begins to exist, thus, in the domain of the human. In other words: digestion does not exist for the human until they have indigestion.

In the previous article, I spoke about language. What differentiates us from other species, I said, is not the use of language, but our existing in it. If the human only occurs in conversations, it is there where we create our reality as we distinguish, operating in the language, things from the world we live in. I tried to show in that article “Ontological Coaching: Foundations for a new epistemology” how human beings construct our reality by explaining it

Let’s leave this topic here to resume it later.

A second premise that I want to consider in this article has to do with the role, with the function that language has. In the new conception of language, it acquires a new dimension, already pointed out by some philosophers of language, which is its generative role.

These philosophers, and in particular J.L. Austin, discovered a use of language that had not been considered in its old conception. Before them, language was merely a descriptive tool of reality, it served us to describe what we see, what we think, what we feel, but language does much more than that, language also generates realities. As Rafael Echeverría asserts, it does so by generating identities, generating relationships, generating possibilities, generating commitments, and generating different futures.

• Language generates identities. Every identity is a narrative. Our SELF, that of each one of you readers, is constituted in narratives. That is, stories we tell ourselves about how we are. These narratives can be private or public. My identity in a certain area will be in the judgments that others have about me. That is, in my company, in my group of friends, in my family, narratives are generated about how I am and that shapes my identity in that particular area.
• Language generates relationships. The relationships we have in our life are constituted in the conversations we have with that other. The quality of the relationship is directly related to the quality of the conversations we have with that other person.
• Language generates possibilities. Possibilities, as well as problems, are not entities that circulate around the world, that some see and others do not. Every possibility or problem is constituted in a particular way of looking at and explaining a reality. We see this in our daily life when faced with the same situation one person sees possibilities and another, beside them, sees problems.
• Language generates commitments. Commitments are the basis of the coordination of actions among human beings. If we coordinate, together we can do things that are impossible for an individual alone.
• And based on those commitments, those possibilities, those relationships,