Dear Helmut,
Thank you for your comments Helmut. I have been trying to address some
of these issues in different writings. In a chapter published a few years
ago titled "From the Emergent Drama of Interpretation to Enscreenment" I
also made use of Peirce and pragmatist philosopher George Herbert Mead to
argue for a model of "dramatic evolution," as an aspect of the emergence of
human symboling capacities, an aspect which can involve both genetic and
cultural elements, and Peirce's idea of energetic projaculation. I can send
a copy of the chapter if you would like one. For example, in the context of
my previous post:
"Though communicative cooperation is the starting point for Mead’s
model of the interactive situation, it begins even earlier than Mead
imagined, stemming from the subcortical infant brain from within hours of
birth, as Meltzoff and Moore (1977; Meltzoff 2002) and Trevarthen (1980),
have shown. Such communicative cooperation is possible in newborn and
infant interaction with mothers, a dramatic dialogue without the presence
of a fully organized object that can be responded to, yet an object
sufficiently co-present that dialogical interaction can occur. This
situation stems from genetically transmitted, physiological needs of the
infant, called out through call and response gestural repartee with the
mother/caretaker (Hrdy 2009). This dialogue illustrates one of the ways in
which nature and culture play, and how homo sapiens sapiens needs to be
understood not simply as homo competitor, but as what Johannes Huizinga
originally introduced as homo ludens, man playing."
I also have been pursuing related ideas with others. I helped
co-organize a conference 2 years ago on issues of indigenous wisdom for
contemporary flourishing, that will be published in the next year as an
edited book.
Gene Halton
On Thu, Aug 9, 2018, 5:22 PM Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> wrote:
> Eugene, List,
>
> Thank you, Eugene! It is necessary to exactly distinguish, which parts of
> behaviour and intelligence are influenced by culture, and which not. One
> should not infer from differences regarding spatial orientation and
> awareness of specific environmental events (snakes, caimans) to social
> capabilities, predispositions, and behaviours.
>
> Regarding language: What about body language, especially facial
> expression? It is the same with all humans, the remotest and most isolated
> ones too. You go visit a stone age tribe in Papua-New Guinea, who never
> have met other people before, and you can communicate with them using
> hands, feet, and facial expressions. And they love their babies too, and
> bury their deceased ones (ok, they eat their brains, which we don´t do, and
> sometimes they shoot each other with arrows, unlike us who kill each other
> by social marginalisation with poverty, but that is details cherry picking).
>
> I wish, more experts such as you would intervene and put things right.
> Sociology and development psychology exists for centuries now. There is no
> justified space for ethnopluralism in a serious discussion I say.
>
> Best,
> Helmut
>
>
> 08. August 2018 um 23:00 Uhr
> "Eugene Halton" <[email protected]>
>
> John quoted the statement from an earlier article I believe:
> > “Early infancy is a critical time for establishing the biology of a
> healthy mind. You’re not born with a social brain, you grow one.”
>
> This statement seems to me to be patently false. Not only are there
> socialization processes between the developing fetus and the mother's voice
> in utero, but the human infant is born already with a social and
> communicative brain.
> Colwyn Trevathan and Steven Malloch's research on what they term
> communicative musicality shows that the newborn infant very quickly begins
> to engage in dialogical banter with the mother. The banter from the infant
> has the quality, phrasing, call and response timing, and narrative of
> music. It is all coming from the subcortical brain of the newborn, because
> the upper brain connections have not yet been made.
> That bantering interaction provides a basis for the later dialogical
> interaction out of which language will develop.
> Gene H
>
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2018, 1:45 PM John F Sowa <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On 8/8/2018 8:41 AM, Edwina Taborsky wrote:
>> > if you see our species [homo sapiens] as a kind of 'black slate'
>>
>> Both of the articles cited are contributions to the nature/nurture
>> debates that have been going on for centuries. Neither one said
>> that the infant's mind or brain is a "blank slate" at birth.
>>
>> > our species is not born with innate knowledge and requires a long
>> > nurturance period. And our type of socialization requires language.
>> > So- how do you get away from the notion that the requirement for
>> > language is innate?
>>
>> You need large numbers of researchers exploring the issues from
>> many points of view. And as Peirce said, do not block the way
>> of inquiry. Chomsky, for example, has spent the past 40 years in
>> blocking attempts to disprove his hypotheses from 60 years ago.
>>
>> For example, consider "our type of socialization requires language."
>> That's true. But what kind of language? What kind of socialization?
>> And what aspects of each are required or optional?
>>
>> Dan E. shows how a language and culture that developed in centuries
>> of isolation from "our type of socialization" can be radically
>> different from "our kind of language".
>>
>> It's unethical to deprive infants of various stimuli to see what
>> happens, but there are naturally occurring situations that create
>> variations. For an example from the other article:
>>
>> > So a child’s brain will develop differently depending on how
>> > attentive her parents are, whether she lives in poverty, and
>> > which culture she grows up in.
>> >
>> > “Early infancy is a critical time for establishing the biology
>> > of a healthy mind. You’re not born with a social brain, you
>> > grow one.”
>>
>> Another kind of study addresses the issues of infants raised
>> by parents with two different native languages, spoken and
>> signed. (Not surprisingly, the study was done in Canada.)
>> See below.
>>
>> John
>> _______________________________________________________________
>>
>> From slide 14 of http://jfsowa.com/talks/vrmind.pdf
>>
>> A study of bilingual infants whose parents speak or sign different
>> languages: *
>>
>> ● All six combinations of four languages: English, French, American
>> Sign Language (ASL), and Langue des Signes Québécoise (LSQ).
>>
>> ● Monolingual and bilingual babies go through the same stages and
>> at the same ages for both spoken and signed languages.
>>
>> ● Hearing babies born to profoundly deaf parents babble with their
>> hands, but not vocally.
>>
>> ● Babies bilingual in a spoken and a signed language babble in both
>> modalities – vocally and with their hands.
>>
>> ● And they express themselves with equal fluency in their spoken and
>> signed language at every stage of development.
>>
>> The same brain areas that support spoken languages support
>> signed languages, but other areas are also involved. **
>>
>> * Laura-Ann Petitto (2005) http://petitto.net/pubs/published
>>
>> ** R. Campbell, M. MacSweeney, & D. Waters (2007) Sign language
>> and the brain: A review.
>> https://academic.oup.com/jdsde/article/13/1/3/500594
>
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