Re: Standard definition

From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Thu 31 Oct 2002 - 12:27:15 GMT

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    On Thursday, October 31, 2002, at 03:14 , joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:

    > But you cannot claim that all your typing is automatic

    Again, I don't. Never did. Only that what does actually happen is affected instantaneously by the performance itself. There is so much corroborating data about this that I deem it self-evident. 'The best laid plans of mice and men aft gae aglay'.

    > There are so many human-created languages,
    > but only one type of spider web per species

    Are we at the point of claiming that all languages are unrelated or unique in developmental and syntactical forms? I don't think so. We are prepared by our genetic development to make language, just as the spider is prepared to make webs. I am not _comparing_ webs and language, only claiming a similar genetic importance. I suppose I am being sociobiologic.

    > But spiders do not teach each other how to weave their webs

    Of course not. They do not have culture, or memes, and yet they produce similar but unique versions of webs just as we produce similar but unique versions of languages.

    > And yet
    > we teach our children our languages. That difference is cognition-
    > specific, for we can only teach them the languages we have not only
    > experientially learned but also cognitively stored.

    Totally agree with this. I just wonder why the 'and yet' needs to be said.

    Cognitive storing seems to be our dividing ground. You want this stored very specially and specifically in some 'meme-ory', and I don't particularly see any need to store it anywhere special or specific, and would call it a very usual and developmentally preset function of usual memory to deal with such experiential learned information.

    - Wade

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