Re: Human brain on an evolutionary sprint!

From: Jim McGinn (jimmcginn_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 01/23/05 

Date: 22 Jan 2005 21:05:12 -0800

Paul Crowley wrote:

> > Nope. A negative is possible to prove
> > only by exclusion
>
> The whole point of my post was to
> show you that it was not a negative --
> even if Jim posed it in that unfortunate
> manner. To say that a situation is either
> A or Not-A, is not to pose a negative.

I think John realizes, as does everybody else, that any discussion he
gets into with me will quickly evolve into an argument and I will win
the argument.

> That is not hard to understand, and
> I did my best to set it out in brutally
> simple terms. I guess I was not brutal
> enough.

John's just another of the many that don't know what they think or why
they think it but they just so sure they are right.

> > > Language DID evolve. (Do I have your
> > > agreement so far?)
> >
> > Why the oh-so-smug posturing?
>
> I was being a bit flippant, BUT I could
> see that you were laying down a line
> of bull***, while pretending to
> identify one.

Yeah, John, it has to do with heading off your evasiveness.

>
> > If
> > you've bothered to read anything I've
> > said, you know perfectly well what the
> > answer to that is. For the edification of
> > anyone who hasn't, however, of course
> > it evolved. My position has been,
> > as expressed in several posts over a
> > number of years, that it evolved in
> > stages over quite a few million years.
>
> I've not been following your posts, nor
> this topic before.
>
> > > It did so in large
> > > groups, in small groups or in medium-
> > > sized ones. (Still with me?) Jim prefers
> > > large groups (and I agree with him).
> > > You, and standard PA, prefer small ones.
> > > (We can forget the medium ones for the
> > > moment, as no one is arguing for them.)
> >
> > I don't believe I said anything about
> > group size.
>
> You claimed to detect bull*** in Jim's
> statement:

I think he doesn't quite remember what he said or why he said it but
he's sure it's right.

>
> > >> > Language could not
> > >> > have emerged in the context of the small groups that
> > >> > PA currently finds fashionable to assume.
>
> > > So we don't have much of a choice.
> > > Language evolved. It did so in large
> > > groups or in small ones (forgetting the
> > > middle for the moment). To deny one
> > > is to favour the other.
> >
> > Really? How quaint.
>
> It may be quaint, but it is also a simple
> statement of the logical truth. You say
> that you detect bull*** in it. I'm fairly
> sure that your bull*** detectors suffer
> from a serious if well-known fault -- they
> give a false positive when they encounter
> ANY statement on your favourite topic
> by anyone other than yourself. In this
> field there is so much BS around that
> this fault can readily pass unnoticed.
> But, from time to time, such an automatic
> response will trip you up.
>
> > > There is no great problem about seeing
> > > why, and (to a fair extent) how, language
> > > would evolve in large groups -- or, at least,
> > > be highly beneficial in them.
> >
> > Well, let's see. We have various communal
> > insects, we have a large selection of mammalian
> > herbivors, we have quite a few species of fish,
> > and other examples of large groups sizes where
> > language as we think we know it has failed
> > to evolve. Somehow the proposition that large
> > group size is somehow critically important
> > seems to have missed me.
>
> Wow! I knew things were bad.
> I had no idea that they were THAT bad.
>
> So if we each had our own language, we'd
> get along fine? Or if each family did, that
> would be almost as good? A society of say
> 10,000, consisting of groups of, say, 10 adults
> (each with its own, entirely separate language),
> would be just as effective (in terms of fighting
> off predators, of making war, or of doing almost
> anything) as one consisting of groups of 100
> or 1,000 or 10,000 ?

Excellent argument. Very well stated.

>
> [..]
> > The question isn't what happens to current
> > societies when they are below a critical mass.
> > The question has to do with the conditions
> > that fostered the first extensions of primate
> > signaling mechanisms into a more flexible
> > and information rich configuration.
>
> True, and it's about the stage after that,
> and the one after that, and so on. It's
> also about the benefits that each group
> obtained from its use of those 'extensions'
> enabling it to do better than its
> neighbours and out-compete them.

It's about all of this.

The main thing is that if it's true--and I have a lot of confidence
that it is--then it basically refutes 95% of what comes from standard
PA on the earliest years of hominid evolution.

> > > Secondly, the costs of evolving and
> > > maintaining a language are huge. (I don't
> > > think this statement needs defending -- but
> > > complain if you want.) The benefits it yields
> > > must correspond. It's very hard to see what
> > > they could be in a society made up from
> > > small groups.
> >
> > As you are at pains to point out above,
> > language evolved, it did not suddenly appear
> > fully fledged.
>
> Yes, but you miss the point that each
> stage (no matter how small you want
> to make it) involves a cost, and has
> to be selected for. Without a model of
> human evolution (which you clearly lack)
> that provides a mechanism enabling the
> selection of improvements in language
> at each stage, and which indicates how
> it might have worked, then you are
> thrashing about in the dark.

I think he's not quite sure what his model/hypothesis is or how he
arrived at it but he's sure it's right.

>
> > > Thirdly, it's very hard to see how a language
> > > COULD evolve in a society made up from
> > > small groups. But here we run into a vast
> > > swamp of standard-PA-turgidity. Are these
> > > small groups territorial? Are they mutually
> > > hostile? On what basis did they work?
> >
> > Well, that at least is a legitimate question for
> > once. Just to enlighten you, there are a huge
> > number of situations where a relatively small
> > improvement in the efficiency of information
> > transfer would lead to a very large improvement
> > in effectiveness. The ability to give directions
> > to a food source is one very obvious one.
>
> Hardly. Other species get along fine
> in this respect with next-to-nothing in
> the way of anything resembling human
> language. Nor does such an ability
> feature prominently (nor even much at
> all) among H/G tribes.
>
> > I set up the direction giving hypothesis a few
> > months ago in a series of posts that you seem
> > to have missed. You might try looking them
> > up.
>
> What were the titles? On what should
> I search?
>
> > I have very specific reasons for chosing
> > that as a possible first step based on both
> > brain and linguistic structures.
>
>
> Paul.

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