Skip to main content

sighs about size

Scientists say that the speech areas (those that kick in when we are hearing or expressing) are larger in humans than in other primates.  Yes, but why?  I know it's supposed to be in our genes, but I can't help but wonder about how much of the larger size of these areas is a function of practices rather than DNA. 

Consider the brain of a violinist: the area responsible for the control of his hand movement is larger than it is for non-violinists (who don't use hand skills with the same level of precision).  This largeness, however, is a function of practices.  It's large because he's a violinist rather than vice versa.

Why can't the same be true for humans vis-a-vis non-humans?  In other words, it may be the case that humans have larger areas for communication than non-humans have for the same because humans are such intensive communicators.  Perhaps the average Joe is, in comparison to the bonono, a maestro at gesturing.

I need to restudy about this: maybe the claim is that we have a unique area rather than have an area of a unique size.  Maybe this area is larger even in early infancy. And maybe someone who aspires to become a violinist needs to have talented hands and these are in turn a function of genes.

Assuming I am not totally off base, it would be interesting to find out the size of the language use area(s) in someone who never learned to communicate.  Feral children would make an ideal control group, but then again generating such a control group would be a wee bit controversial.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological
Post a Comment
Read more

continuing the discussion with Tim in a new post

Hi Tim, I am posting my reply here, because the great blogmeister won't let me put it all in a comment. Me thinks I get your point: is it that we can name and chimps can't, so therefore we are of greater value than chimps? Naming is something above and beyond what a chimp can do, right? In other words, you are illustrating the point I am making (if I catch your drift). My argument is only a sketch, but I think adding the ability to name names, as it were, is still not enough to make the argument seem cogent. For one can still ask why we prefer being able to name over other skills had by animals but not by humans. The objector would demand a more convincing reason. The answer I have in mind is, to put it briefly, that there is something infinite about human beings in comparison with the subhuman. That "something" has to do with our ability to think of the meaning of the cosmos. Whereas one might say"He's got the whole world in His han
2 comments
Read more

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others.  But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and  may eventually go out of existence.  The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual.  The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being.  In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here.&qu
Post a Comment
Read more