foolsrushin.
Guest
|
 Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 2:32 am Post subject: Re: Why humans acquired speech. |
 |
|
On 12 Jul, 02:04, "tadc...@comcast.net" <tadc...@comcast.net> wrote:
[quote]On Jul 7, 11:16 am, Rushtown <Rusht...@aol.com> wrote:
When the jungles in Africa thinned out and more Savannah appeared, our
hominid ancestors had to hunt, and travel in open spaces. One useful
adaptation was bipedalism---so we could travel long distances and free
our hands for carrying meat back to camp and for throwing rocks at
prey.
But why did we start talking? Observe how a young child acquires
speech. And one stage a child will point at everything he sees and
name it.
I believe this replicates a stage in human development when it was
helpful for one member of a band of hunters to point out landmarks and
dangers in order to contributed to group success. Because the members
of the hunting group were genetically related this benefitted the
hominid who did the pointing out and his (and their) genes were passed
on.
Gradually there were improvements in speech, just as there are with
that of a young child. First adjectives are added, then verbs. Much
later a past tense (which the Cro Magnons had and the Neandertals did
not.)
Fantasy.
Homo habilis had sufficient communication skills to impart the basic
concepts of tool-making to other members in the group. They learned
from experience, from which it must be inferred that they had a
recognition of the distinction between past and present.
This was Early Pleistocene, 1.6 to 2.2 million years ago.
H. neanderthalensis came along MUCH later.
Tom Davidson
Richmond, VA
[/quote]
On 7 Jul, 17:50, "Alan White" <alannc44~nosp...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
[quote]"Rushtown" <Rusht...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:9634be60-2a8a-4b2f-bd67-b2baf1c2a492@25g2000hsx.googlegroups.com...
Gradually there were improvements in speech, just as there are with
that of a young child. First adjectives are added, then verbs. Much
later a past tense (which the Cro Magnons had and the Neandertals did
not.)
How can you be so sure about Neandertals?
Alan
[/quote]
He can>t! Speech exemplifies a brain emergent, dealing with entities
of complex properties. There is no sound way of deriving it from
grunts and groans, competitive behaviour, etc. And evolutionally it
is
useless: spiders don>t need it, bears don>t need it, etc. You can
only
make sense of the growth of knowledge if you assume that discovery is
no longer driven by evolution - if ever it were! Whether the pursuit
of knowledge and the capacity to pursue it was seeded externally is a
a good question, but there can be no doubt that the search for
knowledge makes us unique! Eccles and Popper combine to show that
this
is true, and Chomsky shows it, too, to some extent, arguing simply
that syntax is programmed into your brain, so that you arrive with
language potential.
Only a teleological interpretation can make sense of the rest!
--
'foolsrushin.'
Prof. Stephen Hawking:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO2l7ziEIuk
The main difficulty, though, for the random chance school is that they
cannot justify their own existence. Apart from the lack of a fossil
record, there is no exepirement that any of us knows about that will
produce purposeful life.
Clearly, language is a record of ideas: descriptive, intentional,
conjectures and refutations, etc. It is not, as this thread implies,
the source of such ideas. And there is nothing in our environment that
might cause us to discover and document, say, the table of elements
(anyone still got that Tom Leherer link?), compound interest,
spherical trignometry - for starters! Don>t send little Johnny to
school if you want to understand what I am saying!
--
'foolsrushin.' |
|
foolsrushin.
Guest
|
| Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 12:02 pm Post subject: Re: Why humans acquired speech. |
|
|
On 9 Jul, 16:29, Occidental <Occiden...@comcast.net> wrote:
[quote]On Jul 8, 3:27 pm, Osmium <Rusht...@aol.com> wrote:
[snips][/quote]
What sound do you make to imitate the quality "Black"?
'Watch out, guys, it>s a black bear!'
Accidental, you are a twit!
--
'foolsrushin.'
PS - A friend who has a cabin in Alaska had to shoot a bear to protect
his 11-year-old son. It took three shots from a .44 magnum handgun to
stop that bear! |
|
Geopelia
Guest
|
| Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 5:17 pm Post subject: Re: Why humans acquired speech. |
|
|
<tadchem@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:993efe81-f99d-4774-9c85-6deee3de8bb4@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
On Jul 7, 11:16 am, Rushtown <Rusht...@aol.com> wrote:
[quote]When the jungles in Africa thinned out and more Savannah appeared, our
hominid ancestors had to hunt, and travel in open spaces. One useful
adaptation was bipedalism---so we could travel long distances and free
our hands for carrying meat back to camp and for throwing rocks at
prey.
But why did we start talking? Observe how a young child acquires
speech. And one stage a child will point at everything he sees and
name it.
I believe this replicates a stage in human development when it was
helpful for one member of a band of hunters to point out landmarks and
dangers in order to contributed to group success. Because the members
of the hunting group were genetically related this benefitted the
hominid who did the pointing out and his (and their) genes were passed
on.
Gradually there were improvements in speech, just as there are with
that of a young child. First adjectives are added, then verbs. Much
later a past tense (which the Cro Magnons had and the Neandertals did
not.)
[/quote]
Fantasy.
Homo habilis had sufficient communication skills to impart the basic
concepts of tool-making to other members in the group. They learned
from experience, from which it must be inferred that they had a
recognition of the distinction between past and present.
This was Early Pleistocene, 1.6 to 2.2 million years ago.
H. neanderthalensis came along MUCH later.
Tom Davidson
Richmond, VA
As for toolmaking, certain finches can use tools. They choose suitable twigs
and adapt them to winkle out grubs from wood. Crows too can make simple
tools.
Birds would learn that by watching other birds. They couldn>t tell each
other what to do.
Homo habilis may have done the same. But Homo erectus may have had some
simple form of speech.
The Neanderthals had larger brains than our species! Who knows now what they
might have been able to do.
Geopelia |
|
