Development of mind

[EdEarl]

Overtone, you make very good points but they may be not quite tackling what I am thinking of. If we accept that ancient brains have the same form and function as ours, then presumably those brains have the potential to do the same feats of thinking as we do today. You note such things in your comment. However, I'm not trying to dismiss those peoples' abilities or achievements. What I am getting at is that modern knowledge is more comprehensive. It must be, otherwise why do people keep learning and coming up with new ideas?

 

Did any of the societies you mention have a collection of knowledge and capabilities as broad as today's? Aborigines had a boomerang. Spears, woomeras, canoes, bark huts and so on. By any modern standard, that is a rather rudimentary civilisation. That's not to be dismissive, it just means that they did not pursue the kinds of knowledge that Europeans seem to have.

 

The techniques by which knowledge is developed and communicated and shared today have been developed and refined over many thousands of years. My point is that a modern mind has access to much more knowledge, learning techniques and skills than an ancient mind. Surely, that makes a modern mind a more complex construction?

 

Let's step back further. At 100,000 years ago, while an anatomically modern brain had appeared, what kinds of language, society, and tools were in use? I don't actually know but I'll suggest quite simple. A person of that time simply could not have entertained the same kinds of ideas that an educated modern person could. I'm not arguing that they couldn't have if they'd been raised in today's world, but that they couldn't have at their time.

 

While knowledge has increased over time, so have the techniques for using it. A modern mind surely is able to entertain complex thoughts than an ancient mind. I am venturing that developing knowledge and its application has developed the mind itself.

Did farming and controlled use of fire arise in human populations at 100-200,000 years ago when it is suggested that modern brains appeared? It is argued here that an ancient brain is capable of modern thinking if it were here in our time. That means that the brain that could use fire and farm was already capable of that BEFORE they began to farm and use fire (assuming those things happened later than 100,000 years ago - I don't actually know).

 

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/09-archaeologists-find-earliest-evidence-of-humans-cooking-with-fire

 

Earliest fire from StringJunky's reference is that the cooking fires were about a million years old.

 

 

Wikipedia

Homo erectus (meaning "upright man," from the Latin ērigere, "to put up, set upright") is an extinct species of hominin that lived throughout most of the Pleistocene, with the earliest first fossil evidence dating to around 1.9 million years ago and the most recent to around 70,000 years ago (with extinction linked to the Toba catastrophe theory). It is assumed that the species originated in Africa and spread as far as Georgia, India, Sri Lanka, China and Java.

Thus, these fires were probably used by homo erectus, not homo sapiens. On the other hand, earliest evidence of farming is about 12,000 years ago, clearly homo sapiens. Was there a period of pre-farming, wherein people knew that seeds started plants, and wherein people carried seeds to locations and sew them for later use, yet continue a hunter-gatherer lifestyle? Is it possible homo-erectus knew about seeds and practiced pre-farming.

 

[Graeme M]

Perhaps not knowing much about human cognition I am mistaking something about thinking? Delta1212, I have assumed, perhaps erroneously, that our earliest ancestors would have 'thought' more like modern primates, say chimps. I assumed this would be a far simpler thing than our modern thought. Modern humans clearly have richer and more complex minds than say a chimp, although I confess to not knowing what evidence there is for me thinking that.

 

I have assumed that as the brain developed it gave us the capacity for more advanced thinking which has led us to today. It seems hardly credible to me that a brain should have appeared that has capacity beyond our current use of it, but if that is the case then OK.

 

We use our brain to think as well as running our body. I imagine therefore that over time, our thinking has become more complex. People agree that knowledge has accumulated and become more complex, but I cannot see how that can happen without a similarly more complex framework for thinking.

 

While an ancient human of 100,000 years ago may have had a largely modern brain I sincerely doubt any of them thought as you do. I am fascinated by the notion that mind has developed or evolved.

 

I am defining complex as meaning how a modern well educated person might think. I imagine that we have access to more facts, more extensive analytical and problem solving techniques, broader awareness of the nature of things and a more comprehensive ability to share that information arising from the development of language and mathematics. I think that the process of teaching a modern human using methods developed over time, plus our broad awareness of things far beyond those available to a person of the past, as well as access to things like television and the internet, create a mode of thinking - a 'mind' - that is more complkex than one of 100,000 years ago. Or 20,000 years ago. Or today in a remote Amazonian jungle.

 

That does not mean our brain is different or better, or even that we are 'better'. This is not a value judgement, it is more about the mechanics of thought and its relationship to the physical brain.

Edited May 15, 2015 by Graeme M

[Acme]

...

It seems hardly credible to me that a brain should have appeared that has capacity beyond our current use of it, but if that is the case then OK.

 

...

The case is that evolution does not happen in order to fulfill needs.

[StringJunky]

The case is that evolution does not happen in order to fulfill needs.

That's right. If it happens and it fits in the prevailing environment, it stays.

[Acme]

 

The case is that evolution does not happen in order to fulfill needs.

That's right. If it happens and it fits in the prevailing environment, it stays.

 

Of course it's right, else I would not have writ it. However, chance continues to play a roll in whether or not an evolved trait stays or not.

 

Even with our brains as they are today, were an impact the likes of the Chixculub event to hit tonight it would spell the end of civilization as we know it and humanity -should it survive- would have to revert to the scrap & scrabble existence of eras past.

The Dark Ages would look like a Sunday school picnic by comparison. Duck & cover!

[Graeme M]

The case is that evolution does not happen in order to fulfill needs.

 

No.. here I run into the problem of knowing little about the mechanics of evolution. I understand it at a macro level, although my understanding is probably a bit shaky. And I most certainly do not have any disagreement with the idea. But I suppose I imagined that evolution would result only in changes that confer a particular advantage being selected. So while a brain that can do clever things would be an advantage over a brain that is not so clever, how would one that provides vastly greater capacity beyond immediate application come into being? I mean, being able to out compete other animals in the natural environment hardly requires quantum physics.

 

Is it that the application of our minds to solving problems not connected with survival simply a serendipitous by-product? For example, writing plays, or piano concertos, or being able to design a jet engine or working out a Big Bang theory seem not to have an obvious application in terms of survival and successful breeding.

[Acme]

No.. here I run into the problem of knowing little about the mechanics of evolution. I understand it at a macro level, although my understanding is probably a bit shaky. And I most certainly do not have any disagreement with the idea. But I suppose I imagined that evolution would result only in changes that confer a particular advantage being selected.

Not all changes are advantageous; some are detrimental, e.g. genetic disease, and some are benign, e.g. baldness.

 

So while a brain that can do clever things would be an advantage over a brain that is not so clever, how would one that provides vastly greater capacity beyond immediate application come into being?

By the same means that all genetic changes occur. Edit: See Mutation

 

I mean, being able to out compete other animals in the natural environment hardly requires quantum physics.

As we have pointed out, things like quantum physics have only come along with the passage of time and the passing along of knowledge. I don't understand what you are arguing about here.

 

Is it that the application of our minds to solving problems not connected with survival simply a serendipitous by-product?

Yes.

For example, writing plays, or piano concertos, or being able to design a jet engine or working out a Big Bang theory seem not to have an obvious application in terms of survival and successful breeding.

Those are just specific examples of the general trait of humans to be social and/or cooperative creatures. While not all creatures are social, being social does convey advantages. (Disadvantages too, such as the spread of disease or war for examples.) Edited May 16, 2015 by Acme

[Delta1212]

I think the problem here is the assumption that modern knowledge is somehow qualitatively more sophisticated than ancient knowledge.

 

Modern scientific knowledge is a high-energy, nutritious fruit located in the highest branches of a tall tree. It is harder to obtain than the scant berries in the bush at the base of the tree, and is a richer source of food for the effort you put in, but once you have it, it doesn't take any special kind of mouth to eat. The one that works on the berries works just as well on the tree fruit. Nor does eating the fruit mean that you have a sharper or more sophisticated sense of taste than someone who has not. Yes, you will have experienced a taste that they will not have, but that doesn't mean they are incapable of experiencing it, just that nobody has given them a piece of the fruit that would lead them to experience that taste.

 

The same brain that can figure out migration patterns of prey animals can figure out quantum physics. The latter takes more work and has different applications, but knowledge is knowledge. The brain revolved to work out patterns and store information. What those patterns are and what the knowledge can be used for is somewhat irrelevant. Out whole advantage is that we evolved to be able to learn how to deal with diverse and changing environments, which means we needed to be able to learn whatever would prove useful in unpredictable situations, that's what got selected for, and what has allowed us to figure out a lot of things that wouldn't have been immediately relevant to our ancestors.

 

But by that same token, our ancestors were, past a certain point, just as mentally sophistacted as we are, they were just dealing with a different set of circumstances and working with a different set of base assumptions and accumulated knowledge than we are now.

 

We know how to do more complex things but that doesn't say anything about the complexity of the thoughts themselves.

[Graeme M]

Many comments stating that a modern mind is no different to an ancient mind are rather intriguing - I really would not have thought that! The notion I have about development of the mind simply does not seem to accord with anyone else's idea about this so clearly I have completely misunderstood how thinking works, or what a mind is.

 

My original question about brain form and function changes over time has been answered. I need to do some reading about the progress between earlier forms and the modern form to get a better picture of human evolution and then I think I need to read up on human cognition. Thanks for the various comments even if I am feeling a little nonplussed that I seem so far off the mark!

[Graeme M]

Delta1212, I had to come back to this! I think that the comments so far have offered some good background and I still want to follow up on the recommendations such as StringJunky's 'strange loops'. My actual interest (which is at a very general basic level in terms of how much I know) is in animal cognition. How is it that a brain gives rise to a mind that can think. I include humans in the term 'animals' as I think that to distinguish between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom smacks too much of a religious connotation of separateness or specialness.

I think there is something of a problem distinguishing between what I think of as the mind and what others think of variously as brain or knowledge. However, getting back to your last comment.

Caveat: When I say "I think" something, I don't mean I have a theory or I think my idea is right or better than something already known, it's just my way of saying here's my take. What I am after is evidence fo why I might be right or wrong or reference to literature/information that addresses these kinds of things. Or pointers to where I can find out more. I want to learn more about the subject.

Your analogy of the fruit at the top of the tree is a fair one. My point is this. While those who cannot eat of the upper fruit may never know its taste or benefits, they have the same mouth and digestive apparatus as those who do. Agreed. However, if they do not know of the upper fruit nor of its benefits, then they indeed have a less expansive experience. The skills and knoweldge that are needed to acquire the upper fruit constitute 'something' that gives the upper fruit eaters a qualitatively different experience. We could argue whether it is a better, worse or indifferent experience in value terms, but it is nonetheless qualitatively different. The upper fruit eater can eat the lower as she knows how, but she has also learned how to reach the upper fruit. The lower fruit eater lacks the knowledge needed to reach the upper fruit. Not only has he less knowledge, but he also has not experienced the reward.

I think that modern knowledge is indeed more sophisticated than old knowledge. If it is not, then what on earth are we doing pursuing more knowledge? The view of the universe shared by even the smartest thinkers of 100,000 years ago would be as nothing next to the view of the universe experienced by a well educated teenager today.

I would argue that the neural processing - the actual connections and arrangement of those connections - is far more complex for a mind doing quantum physics than it is for one tracking prey animals. Why would you think otherwise?

For us to do more complex things surely requires mental arrangements of significantly more complexity than for ancient man to make stone tools and hunt wildlife, wouldn't you think? Of course the brains are the same, their application differs. And I think today's application is, in physical terms of the internal arrangements of neuronal processing, more complex.

But not necessarily in an individual sense. I am thinking more about the overal capacity of today's greatest minds, in a sense the sum of human knowledge, compared to the sum of ancient knowledge. And its trickle down effect. I think that knowledge does not exist as something without, it is intrinsic to the internal mental condition. It is an emergent property of the brain which can be developed as the toolkit for doing so is developed.

The mind itself is evolving, but in a generic, perhaps information processing sense.

[overtone]

 

 

Aborigines had a boomerang. Spears, woomeras, canoes, bark huts and so on. By any modern standard, that is a rather rudimentary civilisation. That's not to be dismissive, it just means that they did not pursue the kinds of knowledge that Europeans seem to have.

I'm not persuaded that modern humans have greater or more complex mental capabilities than the typical stone age nomadic hunter/gatherer. I doubt it takes a whit more brain power to drive a car or work an Iphone than it does to make and set a fish trap. About the only thing modern people can do that those folks could not is read and write, and that is balanced by the stone age folks greater memory capabilities.

 

We know that the brain rewires itself and even grows more neurons in certain places in response to learning. If literacy causes physical changes in the brain that abet other mental functioning, that would hardly surprise anyone. But then so would learning how to track animals, and modern humans would be deficient in that aspect (unless reading and tracking are basically the same skill - which good trackers who could read, a small number of people, have in fact explicitly said is the case).

 

We do surround ourselves with lots ot accumulated technology, but no single human hold all that in their heads - as a stone age hunter held much of their tech. And all this technology is designed to fit the human brain we have, the stone age brain. We probably haven't evolved in brain power to handle our technology, but rather we have adapted our tech stuff to what our brains handle best.

[Delta1212]

I'm not persuaded that modern humans have greater or more complex mental capabilities than the typical stone age nomadic hunter/gatherer. I doubt it takes a whit more brain power to drive a car or work an Iphone than it does to make and set a fish trap. About the only thing modern people can do that those folks could not is read and write, and that is balanced by the stone age folks greater memory capabilities.

 

We know that the brain rewires itself and even grows more neurons in certain places in response to learning. If literacy causes physical changes in the brain that abet other mental functioning, that would hardly surprise anyone. But then so would learning how to track animals, and modern humans would be deficient in that aspect (unless reading and tracking are basically the same skill - which good trackers who could read, a small number of people, have in fact explicitly said is the case).

 

We do surround ourselves with lots ot accumulated technology, but no single human hold all that in their heads - as a stone age hunter held much of their tech. And all this technology is designed to fit the human brain we have, the stone age brain. We probably haven't evolved in brain power to handle our technology, but rather we have adapted our tech stuff to what our brains handle best.

Really, it takes more skill to be successful with the "primitive" technology than it does with the advanced stuff. That's why the advanced stuff was usually invented: To make things take less effort.

 

The fact that you can buy a gun and learn how to hunt with it fairly quickly doesn't make you smarter than someone who had to learn to hunt with a spear. Really, it might even make you stupider if those are the only skills either of you have and you both only had the motivation to learn to the minimum necessary level to be successful.

 

Having access to more tools that let you do more things does not by any means make you smarter than someone who doesn't have that access. After all, it's not like you invented those tools yourself, and most of them were created specifically to require less brain-power to operate than whatever came before.

[greese007]

Most scientists make a rough equivalence between brain size and intelligence, or at least the ratio of brain mass to body mass. It seems to have decent predictive power, with a few notable exceptions such as parrots and cetaceans. We don't really have a good handle on "intelligence" when it comes to animals without language. We seem biased toward animals who appear to communicate with each other, or who appear to understand our efforts to communicate with them, and that is not strictly correlated to the size of their brains.

 

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-brain-size-doesnt-correlate-with-intelligence-180947627/?no-ist

 

Brain size in humans topped out about 20,000 years ago, but we are arguably more sophisticated now than they were then. That may have less to do with the capabilities of their brains. than the vast amount of technical and social knowledge that has been accumulated and is available for us to learn through our highly developed skills of social learning and communication.We stand on the shoulders of the giants who preceded us. A clever Neadertal born into our society might fit right in, after being subjected to the same education.

 

What is clearly different about us vs. our 10,000 year old ancestors is our physical shape. The people who survived that environment would be elite athletes in our society. None others could survive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gees]

Graeme M;

 

You have started an interesting thread, and I have enjoyed reading it. First I should tell you that I am not a scientist; I am a philosopher, who studies consciousness, so I can not tell you anything about science, but I do have some thoughts to share that you may find interesting.

 

I read an article many years ago that was about the Europeans' impressions of the American Indian. One of the things mentioned was that the Indians never got lost -- even the children. It stated that the children had an uncanny sense of direction and seemed capable of memorizing every rock and tree that they passed, so they could always find their way back. It was theorized that the reason for this may be because the babies were carried as a papoose on the parent's back, which limited their movements and allowed only for observation -- increasing their powers of observation. I don't know if there is any truth to that idea, but the children were very good at finding a trail home.

 

This implies that the more primitive mind was more interactive with the environment than with social knowledge so most knowledge acquired would be subjective and would remain subjective. It would be difficult to share the path home with other people before there were road signs. As the environment became conquered, people would have more opportunity to share information that was able to be shared. So this, in itself, does not imply a different kind of mind, but rather a different kind of skill. To be honest, if you took a young man out of New York and set him in nature 200 years ago, and took a young Indian and put him in New York, it is quite likely that the Indian would soon be able to find his way around, but the New Yorker would get lost -- because they have different skills.

 

On the other hand, there is innate knowledge and there is learned knowledge. Does innate knowledge change? Some people think so, and evolution implies that it must. I am sorry to have to say that I don't remember the sources, but there have been a few different threads that I have run across in forums where this is being studied. In one thread a study of rats found that if you taught a rat something, it would not make other rats know it, but it did make the other rats learn it faster. This study considered that there is an unconscious connection within a specie that allows it to advance as a specie, rather than as individuals. This seems to be along the lines of Jung's Oneness ideas. Other philosophers have noted that humans seem to make great leaps in knowledge and awareness that is not always explainable by physical means. They also hypothesize that there is an unconscious connection within our specie. If this is so, then there is a possibility that innate or unconscious knowledge does indeed develop, which would mean that mind develops.

 

But if this is so, then what happened to the Piranha? I looked up the following quote from one of my threads in another forum. This tribe in South America is being studied because of their limitations in language. But since I study consciousness, it occurred to me that any group of people who have no spiritual understanding and no numbers in their language, may well not have the same type of rational aspect of mind that we have. I have not yet had the opportunity to do more than view the link and review the article, but I noted that they have an interesting concept of truth. I would like to study and learn more about them because we all know that the rational mind is the only aspect of mind that knows how to lie. If indeed, their rational mind is different from ours, then their concept of truth would also be different.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... 7Spzjh9QgA

You should probably watch this it is a discussion with people from the Pirahã tribe

Interview: Out on a limb over language

Linguist Daniel Everett went to Brazil as a young Christian missionary to work with the Pirahã indigenous people. Instead of converting them, he told Liz Else and Lucy Middleton, he lost his faith and his family, and provoked a major intellectual row.

We hear you've had some unusual visitors recently.

Two Hollywood producers flew out to see me - with a letter from Larry Turman, who produced The Graduate. They're interested in the story of my life. I'm also waiting to hear whether the Brazilian government will permit PBS Nova and the BBC to make a documentary about the Pirahã, who live in the Amazon basin. They want to go to the village where I've lived and worked for nearly 30 years.

How did you get involved with the Pirahã?

My wife Keren and I set out to become missionaries, but it didn't work out that way. We had to learn the language to work there but I became more and more fascinated by it, and eventually studied linguistics at "real" universities. After many years of living with the Pirahã I've learned a lot about their language and the problems it poses for linguistic theories. Their concept of truth also changed my entire religious persona. I went from being a Christian missionary to an atheist.

When did you stop believing?

In various stages. I arrived in Brazil in 1977, and by 1982 I was having serious doubts. Probably by 1985, after I had spent a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I had no more faith, but I didn't say anything about it for another 19 years.

Did you really not tell anyone - not even your wife?

No. When I did, we ended up getting divorced.

How did being with the Pirahã change your thinking?

They lived so well without religion and they were so happy. Also they didn't believe what I was saying because I didn't have evidence for it, and that made me think. They would try so hard to understand what I was saying, but it was obviously utterly irrelevant to them. I began to think: what am I doing here, giving them these 2000-year-old concepts when everything of value I can think of to communicate to them they already have?

Working with the Pirahã has landed you in hot water professionally as well.

Yeah. I'm in trouble for putting forward theories based on my studies with the Pirahã that challenge the established order. One of the most publicised is my claim that they don't really have fixed words for numbers or colours. Worse still, I cannot find recursion in their language - the way we embed sentences containing other statements or concepts within sentences.

This seems to conflict with the views of Noam Chomsky, one of the fathers of linguistics.

Yes. Chomsky and I have had long discussions, and somewhere in the conversation he's going to say: if you're right, there's no difference between my granddaughter and a rock; rocks don't learn language, so obviously the ability to acquire language is inbuilt. Chomsky's approach is that we have innate knowledge of a basic grammatical structure, or syntax, that is common to all human languages. Using a limited set of grammatical rules and a finite set of terms, we can produce an infinite number of sentences, including ones that have never been uttered before. For him, the killer argument is that without it, children could not acquire their native languages very quickly - hence the line about his granddaughter and the rock. Recursion is the reason that there are unlimited possible utterances in any language, so it must exist in all languages.

Why does it matter if Chomsky is wrong?

If he is wrong, it shows that the human ability to communicate is not reducible to the kind of "mathematical" system that Chomsky envisions. It means that language is something we gain by interacting with our fellow human beings, people who share our culture with us. I'm claiming that culture shapes grammar, that it can even affect the nature of what Chomsky called "core grammar" - the part of grammar that's supposed to be innate. If it's innate, it can't be affected by culture. I say it can.
Are you a lone voice?

No. Geoffrey Pullum and Barbara Scholz of the University of Edinburgh, UK, wrote a recent paper where they laid out what they consider to be severe confusion in the approach of Chomsky and his adherents. They argue that no one can, in principle, demonstrate that any human language is infinite - a core attribute of human language for Chomsky and his followers. All we can say is that for many languages, such as English, the most efficient grammar acts as though the language were infinite. That doesn't mean the language is in fact infinite.

 

Hope you found this interesting.

 

Gee

[Graeme M]

Thanks Gee, that was great. Spent an hour reading everything I could find, although there's some controversy I see. Last thing I found was from 2008 so need to find more recent info to see if Everett's claims have held up. I think there is some interesting parallels there with the nature of my question - how has mind developed over time.

 

I am not sure this thread has quite covered the idea I was trying to express and was more focussing on skillsets than 'mind'. But I can't think of a better way to describe what I was getting at...

[iNow]

Graeme - Consider searching for phrases like "executive function" and "educational neuroscience" and "neuroscience of learning." Those may steer you closer to the actual destination you seek.

.

I am not sure this thread has quite covered the idea I was trying to express and was more focussing on skillsets than 'mind'. But I can't think of a better way to describe what I was getting at...

[Graeme M]

Thanks for the tip iNow. I found it hard to concisely describe what I was getting at - I tried several times and gave up each time!

[Graeme M]

I came back to this thread today and did a Google search with a better idea of what I was looking for (and asking about originally). This Google Books extract is exactly what I had in mind. I have no idea how valid this proposition is nor the credentials of the author, and it may be that it is more philosophy than science, however it is getting at the idea of development or evolution of mind as a sort of public space beyond the limitations of any single person. What I was thinking is that as humans use language and symbolic representation to communicate ideas between members of our species, we are creating a corpus of knowledge and toolsets that permit more sophisticated conceptual models of aspects of the external world. Whether this be in terms of science, art, culture or politics. I absolutely disagree with anyone who suggests that modern man's ideas about such things are not more sophisticated or 'advanced' than ancient mans. That said, I am not arguing that a person of today has a better brain or a different brain to that of an ancient person. What I am suggesting is that this extended public mind is accessible to any modern person, but was not to an ancient. That is development or evolution of mind as I see it.

 

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=4Z49YSTrvAoC&pg=PA210&lpg=PA210&dq=human+brain+modern+form&source=bl&ots=vAxbcAR6iw&sig=zVIUHBs6E7ZWHIcLgXnZEpPsjcQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDEQ6AEwBGoVChMIlKag7_-JxwIVBGOmCh2AQQOS#v=onepage&q=human%20brain%20modern%20form&f=false

[MonDie]

I think we can learn more efficiently because of writing and specialization. A baby mammal learns general skills from its mother, and the rest by trial and error. A reader can learn 30 different skills from 30 different specialists.

We use our synapses more efficiently than we did in the past.