``I've just started Language and Myth....[and] a little book on prehistory...''Dennis Claxton
``If by `culture' you mean non-biologically-determined behavior...I'm pretty sure...higher primates and cetaceans have it, probably other animals as well...'' Chris Doss
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For DC, I just ordered the VSI book. I am currently at page 67 in Hayek's Individualism and Economic Order. For others interested in the individual subject thread, Hayek is fascinating since he basis all the rest of his ideas on his concept of the autonomous and free agent called the Individual and then names his ideas Individualism... So thanks Doug. Hayek gives a great insight into most of our political and intellectual opposition...
For CD. I thought of that immediately when I read Dennis' post. The trouble is that cultural anthro has to define itself and so it draws the line between homo sapiens and other primates. But clearly many primate species have their own culture and use symbolic forms, mostly vocalizations and various mating behaviors, child rearing practices. But to the cultural anthro people these are true languages and symbolic system----I think it is still a hotly debated subject...
So then, getting back to Cassirer. Cassirer must have had some intuition that symbolic forms and culture pre-date human species. In his ontological discussions he tries to locate the source of language and myth within what could be called the libido, or what medicine calls the lymbic system. This materialization of an origin and seat for the development of language and myth then have an evolutionary characteristic since these physiological systems also exist in primates---and it seems entirely plausible to me, that most primate culture is devoted to social needs and reproduction.
CG