Journal Assignment #5 Gerardo Lemus Human/Nature Dr.

Becky Boesch November 13, 2013 First journal entry: The brain is where everything happens, where we think and process our Ideas. Its the organ developed by millions of years of evolution and an end product of all of the choices our ancestors made. And when the brain got to a certain point it started to develop the mind which is where all of our thoughts get processed and decisions get made. Then there is consciousness which is when the brain is aware of its surroundings. The film The Secrets of the Mind made it clear that all of these three terms where all closely related but at the same time it raised the question of how dependent they where of each other. The brain is where everything happens so the mind and consciousness are fully dependent of it because they cant be produced without it, but the thing that was very interesting in the video that raised the question of how dependent these things are of one another are the cases of the guy who is blind sighted and the woman that can only focus her attention to one side or vision neglect. It made it seem as if consciousness is able to work even though the brain was damaged, they where still able to be conscious of an aspect of their surroundings, but then the video mentioned that the way the blind sighted man sees, only with motion, was the same way that lizards see their surroundings so thats when the question went from being how dependent are these things of one another to when did these three things become so dependent of each other and why because its really obvious that the mind and the consciousness are very dependent of the brain, if the brain gets damaged the way we see and process our surroundings can change dramatically. So why did we

choose to be so dependent on all of these if a lot of other species, just like the lizard, are still alive and blooming, in their own way, not dependent of the vision part of the brain but the motion sensor part of it. Second Journal entry: Im going to start with Ehrlichs theory of from grooming to gossip and what this theory is saying is that our ancestors developed language as an alternative to grooming to accomplish the goal of socializing in the group, because survival was easier in groups than in solidarity, and in order to keep those groups together and to know each other they socialized by grooming each other. But as groups grew in size grooming each other wasnt a good efficient socializing method because there where too many group members and not everyone was able to meet each other, so the solution was language and communication. So what Ehrlich is saying is that the brain developed is capability for language to meet the needs of the species, an adaption, and this makes sense because we humans are very social animal and want to get to know each other, especially with the group we spend most of our time with. But in contrast to Ehrlichs idea Tattersalls idea is that language came to be as a random byproduct of our gene structure. Instead of an adaption to survive it was an exaptations or features that at first served one purpose but are later used at other things. Tattersall gives the example of bird ancestors developing feathers that later on where crucial to the birds ability to fly. Another statement that he says that supports this idea that language came to be as a byproduct of another trait is the fact that homo sapiens evolved to have a small, retracted face and that this adaption had nothing to do with the development of language and speech, and this is because the face structure that homo sapiens developed comes with a lot of disadvantages such as the crowding of the teeth that leads to more problems, but the other issue that this structure came with was the crossing of the air ways and the food tract which leads to a higher danger of choking. Just like

many adaptations came with byproducts- either good or bad- the fact that we dont know everything on our past makes this theory that language was a byproduct very plausible and credible.