on 3/29/00 6:02 PM, Bill Bartlett at [log in to unmask] wrote:

>> But I don't get a sense here of WHY language would develop in even the right
>> lobe. What evolutionary purpose did it serve?
>
> The why of it seems obvious. Language is clearly a great advantage for
> passing knowledge not only between contemporaries, but from generation to
> generation. Passing knowledge to the next generation is what we think of as
> "culture". The better humans are able to do this, the better the survival
> chances of their next generation.

Well, if the answer is obvious, then Calvin and Bickerton really wasted
their time, didn't they? I will wait until I have read what they have to say
first, before responding at any length, but my expectation is that I will
find something on the order of: it's a bootstrap problem. You assume the
knowledge to be passed on, but that knowledge is only possible as a result
of the language that it serves. Apparently no one has a problem explaining
"proto-language", which is what you are alluding to in your reference to
other animals, but there's a discontinuity in cortical complexity between
"mammoth, kill" and "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain." And it's
that second-order rise in complexity that has stumped everyone (except you,
apparently) from Chomsky on.

> If the tribe survived, then the genetic heritage of every individual member
> of the tribe would survive.

But if the individual can gain an extra advantage by taking advantage of the
society that shelters him, while refraining from contributing to it, he will
get the best of both worlds. Evolution is blind; it doesn't care about the
genetic consequences of any but the genes of the person procreating--and to
a lesser extent those of kith and kin--but that's a consequence of the
former imperative, not an exception to it. (And I know "care" is an
anthropomorphism, or the intentional fallacy, but I don't mean it literally.
I hope that is obvious.) To start invoking the "greater good of the tribe"
is to misunderstand Darwinian first principles.

> So

non sequitur, Bill, for the reasons intervening above.

> it was *not* in the interests of an
> individual to "freeload", in fact this rather peculiar north American
> obsession ignores the fact that very many of the great social, cultural and
> scientific advancements of human history have been a result of what the
> yanks would call "freeloaders".

Oh let's not generate ethnic strife over this, OK? There's enough of that
already. Derek Bickerton is a Brit, and I am quite confident the freeloader
problem is a concern widely shared by cultural anthropologists and
evolutionary biologists of all backgrounds.


But why speculate? Check out Pinker's synopsis of the research in this area.
You will find that cooperative cultures share some disappointing
similarities from a libertarian socialist point of view.

First, they are all cultures of scarcity. That is, the environment is such
that the individual cannot be assured of a regular source of food and
shelter on his or her own. It's feast or (more often famine). Consequently
these cultures rely on a Three Musketeers value system as a way of bridging
the gap between rainy days. You feed me today, I feed you tomrrow, and he
feeds both of us the day after.

The reason this is disappointing is that it suggests that a culture of
plenty undermines values of solidarity. You can go ahead and beat up on the
US as a case in point; I would agree.

Second, the more "cooperative" the society, the more elaborate the cultural
precautions against freeloading. There are extremely subtle, but nonetheless
strictly enforced rules built into these systems to allow the "cooperation"
to maintain the tribe without allowing the system to collapse into
freeloaderism. I would go pick up my copy of "The Way the Mind Works" and
give you a flavor of the way what I would call The Wimpy Syndrome ("For a
burger today, I will glady pay you Tuesday") lurks just outside the potlatch
door, but then you'd be freeloading. :)

The combined impression one gets (or, at least I get) from reading Pinker's
accounts of these cultures is actually quite depressing. These are not
cultures that freely choose the way of life they live, but who have it
thrust upon them, and who make the best of it they can.


--
Tresy Kilbourne
Seattle WA