Assumptions about Communication

[Sherman Wilcox]

On 2/20/01 10:20 PM, Gerald van Koeverden said:

> It's the same in everyday life.  We are constantly trying to get a sense for
> the other's intentions.  When you cut "intention" out of communication, you
> aren't left with much more than a corpse to consider...


Maybe that's true if you're facing forward and looking only at human
communication. But when you turn and face the other way and gaze into our
evolutionary past, I think we must at some point cut intention out of
communication. Because if we don't, if we limit communication to that which
is intentional, I don't see how we will ever understand how communication
evolved.

How can we understand how intentionality got bound up with perceptible
behaviors (basically, doing something with our body in a way that produces
some perceptible signal -- moving our body for audible and visible signals)
to produce intentional communication, if we don't consider unintentional
communication?

-- Sherman Wilcox