Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!sun!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Thought/Emotion/Feeling
Message-ID: <862@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 14 Dec 88 05:56:47 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> <1159@arctic.nprdc.arpa> <854@quintus.UUCP> <1169@arctic.nprdc.arpa>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
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In article <1169@arctic.nprdc.arpa> bickel@nprdc.arpa (Steven Bickel) writes:
> ... The evidence is entirely anthropological speculation ...
> ... We can only speculate 
> from anthropological bits and pieces ...

Just so.

>  Within the chronology of the artifacts there appear to
>  be determinable (I can hear you laughing now :-)) cognitive functional 
>  capacities within specific periods, localized to specific cultures and 
>  generalized across many.

Did someone give this feller a BuzzPhrase generator?

I think you will find very few professional archaeologists claiming that
they can distinguish any changes in human cognitive capacities since the
first appearance of Homo sapiens sapiens.  Which is not to say that
there _were_ no such changes, only that archaeology provides us with
radically incomplete information about what people _did_ and _made_,
and essentially no information about what they were _capable_ of.  If I
had lived 100 years ago, I would never have used a computer, never have
sung in a choir performing with a couple of other choirs by satellite
linkup, never have driven a car.  I would almost certainly have been an
uneducated servant.  The kind of traces such a person leaves in the
archaeological record would give no shadow of a clue that I _am_ able
to do these things given the right context.