Hi Chuck,
Well, clearly, we cannot perceive frequencies beyond those that our hardware is capable of conveying to our brains. Other animals with different hardware perceive a different range of frequencies. Some animals (e.g., bats) even have auditory perceptual abilities we can only replicate with the aid of advanced technology.
I don't know if that's quite what you meant, though.
- Darcy ----- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY
On 05 Feb 2005, at 8:27 PM, Chuck Israels wrote:
Maybe an interesting hypothetical question: does our "hardware" (inner ear bones etc.) react to outside stimuli that bear some relationship to the physical laws that govern the resonant behavior of the bones themselves? Just an idle thought. I'm in no position to explore this.
Chuck
On Feb 5, 2005, at 5:15 PM, Darcy James Argue wrote:
On 05 Feb 2005, at 7:51 PM, Christopher Smith wrote:
But there is more and more evidence pointing to a combination of nature and nurture, rather than just one of those things, to explain more and more of human culture.
Not to split hairs, but the whole nature vs. nurture thing is a crappy metaphor. Hardware vs. software is actually much better.
If the language centers in a child's brain are damaged, it doesn't matter how much "nurture" they get, they will never develop normal human language. They simply don't have the hardware for it.
On the other hand, there are well-documented cases of children receiving nothing but ungrammatical input (pidgin) who nonetheless invent a fully grammatical language from this impoverished input -- this is called "creolization" -- the most-studied case involves deaf children in Nicaraugua, who invented their own fully grammatical sign language. So even when the software (culture) is defective, the hardware will still attempt to do what it was designed to do.
More info here:
http://www.edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/u-Ch.13.html
The point is that hardware supervenes on software. The software (culture) depends on the hardware (human brains). And human brains aren't blank slates.
- Darcy ----- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Brooklyn, NY
_______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham, WA 98225-5836 phone (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 www.chuckisraels.com _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
_______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
