Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id AAA07808 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 19 Feb 2001 00:50:26 GMT From: <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 18:53:18 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: Darwinian evolution vs memetic evolution CC: Zylogy@aol.com Message-ID: <3A901A1E.30052.1BFF4C9@localhost> In-reply-to: <6.124cfc3b.27c1c1ba@aol.com> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12c) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
On 18 Feb 2001, at 19:24, Zylogy@aol.com wrote:
> Have any of you folks discussed the historical shifts recognized to
> take place as regards concepts? There is a cognititivist-oriented
> literature on the subject, but as far as I know not too many people
> are actually doing real studies. So for example, concrete terms
> evolving into abstract ones in the history of a language seems the
> standard direction. I don't know of many (actually any) the other way.
> Also primary concepts being strung together to make more complex ones.
> This takes place it seems in the ontogeny of conceptualization in
> humans, and also in the history and structure of language.
>
> Over time, the transparency of such combinatoric structure becomes
> opacified, and after a while I guess enough reification occurs
> (perhaps driven by enough numbers of examples in the mind) that the
> subcomponentiality just isn't there even conceptually.
>
> Even so, it is clear that the primes out of which all complex concepts
> are derived are few in number, and are the kinds of things young
> children (and higher animals) can handle. They are also the kinds of
> things computational semanticians use when they try to build NLP
> lexicons which can interact with their syntactic engines.
>
> The universality of the system of primes is evident from studies on
> language acquisition, as well as known processes of grammaticalization
> and lexicalization historically in language. If even apes can handle
> this kind of thing, might it be that animals already possess the
> primes in some communicative fashion? Given the apparently greater
> complexity of call systems than we had known, I think this is a strong
> possibility. If the communicative system already has a handle on
> primes, then what about the mind? Are these terms used consciously or
> not, or does that even matter. Could consciousness about the use of
> prime communicative terms have evolved gradually, so that the
> creatures only slowly became aware of the signals they were giving
> off? Heck, even humans are only vaguely aware of all the signals they
> give off!
>
> In any case, I think its likely that all animals that live in groups,
> who have a need to coordinate the movements, distribution, and actions
> (even specialization as in ape monkey hunting) of their members will
> come up with a system of communicative primes. The various modalities
> so utilized don't have to be all of a piece- and mixtures are well
> known. If it works, it works.
>
> We know that many animal communicative behavioral routines are
> ritualized, often truncated, sequences of actions they would otherwise
> do to the real world, reduced so as to minimize actual danger to self
> or others. So the ability to string forms isn't limited to humans. The
> optimization of such strings, involving streamlining, etc., takes
> time. I wonder whether the big advantage humans had was that we could
> achieve consciously in a lifetime what animals must do unconsciously
> over generations. That happens with us too, especially in language.
> But actionally (such as learning a complex skill), we can do this with
> our eyes open. It is interesting that it is the unconscious processes
> that take intergenerational time.
>
> Perhaps it is the very loss of perception of semantic motivation
> through code shift, reduction or other form-internal change, etc.,
> that pushes much of the conceptual support for any particular sign
> into the unconscious realm. All that pops into consciousness is the
> final kluge, but we have a hard time defining it without resort to all
> sorts of beating about the bush, though we can pull particular
> applications out by the armload. The primaries, on the other hand,
> find most of their support within consciousness- you know exactly how
> to envision it, but particulars are hard to come by. Interesting
> mirror image situation. And one that has very deep consequences for a
> theory of mind and language.
>
Children learn the macrodistinguishable concrete particular classes
first, and they traditionally inhabit the middle, such as "cat" and
"dog", before they subsume them under a more abstract class
such as "animal" or Mammal", or divide them along finer grains into
"Poodle", "Terier", "Persian", "Siamese", and so on. It is quite
reasonable to assume that before the pharynx dropped and allowed
evolving humans to enunciate deep vowels such as "oh" and "ue",
increasing our number of possible distinguishable phonemes
beyond the number required for the phonemic principle of language
to factorialize combinations into an open-ended polysyllabic
language system (as part of the metamutation that hijacked the
evolutionarily elaborated - through tool use - hand-eye coordination
system for use byn the mouth-ear nexus), yet subsequent to our
evolving the prerequisite self-consciousness to conceive of and
execute ideal tool shapes such as the Acheulian hand axe, that
our truncated sound system consisted largely verbal signs for the
most common concrete particular classes, and that elaboration
from that middle point in the dual directions of particularization and
generalization happened subsequently.
>
> Jess Tauber
> zylogy@aol.com
>
>
>
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