Hi Arlo, need to re-read the Keller stuff (and re-imagine the "feral kids" stuff) to do you justice ... maybe at the weekend ... (I just don't see Keller referenced much in the many brain development / mental development texts I have read in recent years.)
My suspicion is that "social" is being used differently - and summarised too neatly from a position of subjective hindsight. Too "pat" (* see PS). Clearly we wouldn't expect to see social patterns such as those normalised in "civilised" society - but as soon as there is any linguistic / symbolic communication involving "other" separate from "self" - I'd expect there to be social level patterns emerging. (Clearly intellectual patterns would be minimal without long opportunity for evolution - timescale is important - but even then I'd doubt literally nil.) And "No" - I don't subscribe to Chomsky much at all. In a sentence - the social (and even intellectual) aspects of the biological that I'm hinting at - are undoubtedly second order / meta effects - patterns of patterns. I hope you noticed - I'm only really disagreeing about how neatly delineated the bio to social boundary might (not) be - I'm not seriously disagreeing with the basic / essential properties of the two levels. Back soon. (* PS) Hold a final thought - this may be an "anthropic" problem. Projecting our sophisticated human perspective back onto less evolved situation when we interpret what we see. Ian On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 3:51 PM, Arlo Bensinger <[email protected]> wrote: > [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? > > > > > 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 > 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
