Interesting point, Pedro. Robin Dunbar's work is closer to a pure social bonding role. He argues, and has some evidence for, oral communication playing a similar role in our cultures as grooming does in chimpanzees and other species. He uses this to explain how we can have larger group sizes. To my knowledge neither he nor others have applied idea to the implications of writing, though I have read some speculation about internet communication on group sizes, but none of it seemed very scientific to me.
I have some further things I can say about roles of communication with respect to bonding, content and meaning prescriptions, but I will keep them for now as I am way behind in a number of things I must do. Basically, though, verbal communication plays multiple roles the same time. John At 01:50 PM 2013/11/21, Pedro C. Marijuan wrote: >Dear FIS colleagues, > >Just a wandering thought, in part motivated by the highly formal >contents of the other discussion track. What are the major contents, >topics, and styles in our social, spontaneous exchanges? Seemingly the >response is that most of those exchanges are just casual, irrelevant, >performed for their own sake. There are scholarly references about >that---though our own perusal of social life may quite agree. The >information flow, the circulation of social information, becomes the >message itself (echoing McLuhan), amorphously gluing the different >networks of the social structure... Flowing naturally in spontaneous >exchanges and also fabricated and recirculated by the media. Our >talkative species needs the daily dose --otherwise mental health resents >quite easily. >I am these days reading Robert Trivers (2011) on self-deception and how >the info flow we are conscious of becomes a highly self-centered >concoction for for our own social self-promotion. I think it partially >dovetails with the above: "we are the content." > >best ---Pedro > >-- >------------------------------------------------- >Pedro C. Marijuán >Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group >Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud >Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) >Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X >50009 Zaragoza, Spain >Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) >pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es >http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ >------------------------------------------------- > >_______________________________________________ >fis mailing list >fis@listas.unizar.es >https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis ---------- Professor John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za Philosophy and Ethics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 4041 South Africa T: +27 (31) 260 3248 / 260 2292 F: +27 (31) 260 3031 Http://web.ncf.ca/collier _______________________________________________ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
