Re: Altruism: hardwired

[Doyle Saylor <doylesaylor@xxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
On Jun 4, 2007, at 8:23 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:

> There can be no proof, so anyone is free to speculate as he/she
> pleases.

Doyle;
I think one could derive proof by knowing what is language like use of
information and what is not.  For example self decoration to unite the
group is not language, but very useful information about who is who
visually.  Self decoration is not making a weapon sort of work, but
storing information external to speech acts.  Most of these early
storage acts we've found so far are about the group, therefore have non
language like ways of saying the group is united.  In the history of
religions, writing supports a world inhabited by a spirit/spirits apart
from language knowing.  Making stone tools shaped sharing knowledge by
language - I am speaking to the enormous time span of hand weapon
making.  Language gave us the means to see minds at work in the world
symbolically, then storing non language information arose.  Language
itself may have inhibited storing information externally.  In practical
terms why waste energy on nebulous ideas of the spirit when you can
directly tell people what to do?  That rigidity might be reflected in
the rigidity we see in people now who use language to hold things
together as in dogmatism
Doyle