Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!think!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ucsd!nprdc!bickel
From: bickel@nprdc.arpa (Steven Bickel)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Thought/Emotion/Feeling
Message-ID: <1159@arctic.nprdc.arpa>
Date: 12 Dec 88 18:53:25 GMT
References: <569@epicb.UUCP> <1146@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <1152@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <496@uceng.UC.EDU> <1154@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <4349@Portia.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@nprdc.arpa
Reply-To: bickel@nprdc.arpa (Steven Bickel)
Organization: Navy Personnel R&D Center, San Diego
Lines: 28

In article <4349@Portia.Stanford.EDU> kortge@Portia.stanford.edu (Chris Kortge) writes:
>
>>  ... These types
>>  of processes have evolved significantly only in the last 10,000
>>  years, and, have coincided with the development of language, which,
>>  almost all primitive tribes have, and, therefore fit into the
>>  farming period concept (last 10,000 years).  
>
>Careful in how you word that!  I think what you mean is that language
>evolved _by_ 10,000 years ago, not _after_.  If you really mean exactly
>what you wrote here, you're crazy! :-)  This may be the reason for the
>flack people have been giving you about your postings on this.

 Good observation. My error. Language has been evolving for a very long
 time. The physical brain structures that we seem to need for higher level
 language communication appear to have evolved as long as 200,000 years ago
 and this time period is widely debated.  The key to understanding my 
 concept is that the function and structure of communication,
 and congitive processing changed dramatically in a relatively short period.
 This evolutionary concept does not necessarily coincide with dramatic
 physical changes in the brain structure.  It is more likely that the
 evolution of human cognition (as we know it - define it however you like)
 is not a linearly increasing curve, rather it goes through periods of
 rapid increases followed by plateaus (my hypothesis extracted from the
 general rapid change and plateau theory of evolutionary change).
 We appear to be in the middle of a rapid change period.

 Steve Bickel