[Ian]
But basically, I still don't agree with the rest ... the example
evidence is I believe being misinterpreted ... ironically, in too
reductionist a way
[Arlo]
Yes, there is some irony in that charge.
By "fossilizing", I assume you mean that social/intellectual structures
or patterns are somehow encoded into our genetic or neural structures,
correct? If you are talking about a newborn dropped off on a desert
island, and that newborn possessing the capacity for social and
intellectual activity, then that capacity must be attributable to some
genetic coding, no?
Also, I am curious as to what you see as the nature of this
fossilization. Is it species-general, something not specific to culture
or exposure but something that both a newborn to a North American couple
and a newborn to an Australian Aboriginal couple would hold identically?
Or would there be some way we could test the genetic structures of each
of these newborns and identify specific social-intellectual patterns
that have been fossilized there?
In other words, if something is fossilized, we should be able to
localize it and point to it, no? And we should be able to identify or
decode specific aspects of the fossil, since such a decoding is
precisely what you are saying occurs at the biological level.
Or, let's say we have a newborn ape and a newborn human infant sitting
side by side in our hypothetical non-IRB laboratory. Could we see the
fossilized social and intellectual capacity in the human, something we
would not see in the ape? Would you point to genetic structures? Neural
chemistry? And to what depth does this fossilization go? Are you talking
about Chomsky-type "universal grammar"?
Now lets say that we put on one side of the island a infant born to a
North American family, and on the other an infant born to Australian
Aboriginals (and lets say its a huge island and they never meet). Would
you expect the intellectual patterns you say emerge from fossilized
intellect to be different, based on the differences in these cultures?
Or would they be similar, even though the fossilization contains very
distinct and different social activity, and thus very distinct and
different and different intellectual activity?
As for misinterpreting the data, I don't know a better source for what
Helen Keller describes as her pre-social reality than Helen Keller, but
its clear she equates her pre-social reality with an animalistic and
thought-devoid existence. Nowhere does she describe any part of that
time as containing any thoughts that should be there if such a capacity
is fossilized.
And the feral children we have observed? Well they evidenced no greater
social behavior than animals, and nothing about their behavior evidenced
intellectual behavior (above what we observe in other animals with
equivalent neural capacity). What behavior of theirs would you point to
to say otherwise?
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