Here's the thing about a "feral" human, Arlo. A human raised by wolves would be feral, socialized by wolves but that's not the same thing at all as raised in isolation.
In fact, "raised in isolation" is an impossibility. Food and protection would have to be provided to an infant and this ruins the "isolation". But without some nurture, the organism wouldn't last long enough to even "be". The closest we could get is if we could do some kind of automatic skinnerian box and "socialize" via machine. Fortunately, nobody will ever perform this experiment, so its hard to say what kind of "humanity" such an organism would display. Arlo: Would this feral human experience "fear" (or demonstrate it, since we can't > really ask him)? I'd say you could make the argument that he does, since he > responds in the same way to a fear-inducing stimuli as a socialized person. > > John: I'd guess that even if this "human" experienced fear, he'd be incapable of demonstrating fear because it is precisely the "demonstrations" which are the learned patterns. Facial expressions and such are learned through mimicry. Which is easily demonstrable because there are demonstrably differing cultural expressions for the (assumedly) similar emotional states. Arlo: > Would this feral human experience "love"? I am not so sure, in fact I'd go > with > no, not at all. What evidence would those who disagree count as evidence of > "love" in this feral man? Would we count things like animals going into > heat (a > biological event) as evidence of "love"? > > > John: Further complicated by the fact that human reproduction follows a different pattern than all other mammals with their "coming into heat". Humans get a lot more sex than any other animals. Yay! This brings up another point I'd like to make. Humans are not "the only social animals", but they are by far the *most* social of animals and to such an extremity that it does make a certain sense to focus upon human social patterns as unique. Love, John Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
