Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!geb
From: geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Thought/Emotion/Feeling
Message-ID: <1863@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU>
Date: 10 Dec 88 16:15:44 GMT
References: <569@epicb.UUCP> <1146@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <1857@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> <1152@arctic.nprdc.arpa>
Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks)
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA.
Lines: 29

In article <1152@arctic.nprdc.arpa> bickel@nprdc.arpa (Steven Bickel) writes:
>
>  Good point.  I later realized that the concept of farming that I was
>  referring to was one where cognitive processing with significant
>  association to "long term" memory is required.  This is opposed to 
>  gathering which is to interract with what you see. These concepts are 
>  normally considered to be agricultural in nature, but I was referring 
>  to them in the broader sense.  Also I am referring to intelligence to
>  be the very same processes that allow references to past events.  
>  This I believe is a relatively recent ( in the last 10 thousand years) 
>  evolutionary development.
>
>  Disclaimer: I do not know what long term memory is, only when it is needed.
>
ong term memory to neurologists refers to the ability to recall events and
experiences which happened to the person (animal) in the remote past.
Certainly animals have long term memory.  If a person is feared by a cat,
for example, the cat will recognize td person even years later.
I would supposone would be very poor at learning to hunt if one had
no long term memory.  It would be difficult to recall the habits of the
game animals as well as strategies for trapping them and methods of
group hunting.  Also, how would you explain the evolution of stone
tools, given no long term memory.  Every time a person wanted to make
a tool, he would have to "reinvent the wheel" not havin any recall
of past attempts.  Also, paintings made deep inside of cave depict
animals which were presumably painted from memory, rather than from
dead animals dragged into the cave to serv modemodels.
Long term memory is the last type to go in Alzheimer's patients.
I kind of doubt that it originated as recently as 10000years ago.