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The main problem with the nativist hypothesis is that it's breaching Occam's razor rule. Is there a simpler explanation than being hardwired with information, w
by erispoe 11y ago
The main problem with the nativist hypothesis is that it's breaching Occam's razor rule. Is there a simpler explanation than being hardwired with information, which would be a fairly complicated thing to explain, considering what we know of the brain today? Yes, there is: languages are related and sound symbolism could be passed from language to language, or the perfectly reasonnable explanation offered by Christine Cuskley at the end of the article. In the world we live in, some set of sounds are associated to small animals, other to big animals.
Nativist hypothesizes suffer from a lack of imagination in looking for alternative explanations. I cannot explain it? Must be innate! Or, children do it? Must be innate!
Cognitive research points to a much more promising explanation: we are really good at learning, and we can learn abstract concepts pretty quickly, even as very young children. See Stanislas Dehaene's work for instance.
Abstracting concepts for big and small from our environment and associating sounds with it is much more plausible than passing around information about abstract concepts in genes through natural selection based on random genetic mutations.
- oldmanjay 11y agoThat your argument is both an appeal to parsimony and imagination is slightly dissonant.
- erispoe 11y agoYou're right. Let's say it's a failure to consider the universe of possible explanations to select the simplest, by restraining yourself to the one you already like.
- copsarebastards 11y agoThat’s the danger of Occam’s razor and of simple answers. “Simplicity” is often a hiding place for our biases. We reach the conclusion we want to reach and then call it simple. --Plaza Garabaldi I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that I don't actually agree with you that brains being hardwired with information is that hard to explain.
- erispoe 11y agoGreat, I want to know more about it. Do you have some references on that?
- briantakita 11y agoTry interpreting the observation of animals & humans through a lens of their behavior being similar given certain contexts.
- erispoe 11y agoI don't want to solve a riddle here, but I am genuinely interested in the evidence supporting the nativist hypothesis in this context, especially on how you'd pass abstract information through genes. Do you have any reference, a good scientific paper that could be an entry point?
- riffraff 11y ago> In the world we live in, some set of sounds are associated to small animals, other to big animals. except even that is not generally true, e.g. "small" sounds larger than "big" ("i" being in "chirp" or "squeak"). Compare with "slow" and "quick". I call BS on the whole thing.