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Literally absolutely nothing. Human (and any other) brain has been shaped by evolutionary forces according to constrains and features of the shared environment

Literally absolutely nothing. Human (and any other) brain has been shaped by evolutionary forces according to constrains and features of the shared environment (gravitation, light, sound, day/night changes, climate, etc) and has evolved machinery to pick up any language from the shared social environment. So-called hard-wired "knowledge" is just a structure of neurons in specialized areas of the brain, shaped by evolution (selection on random mutations) which reflects the environment.

ontouchstart 10y ago
Ther time scale of evlolution is a few orders of magnitude longer than learning process. So perhaps we are not talking about "hard-wired knowldedge but "physics intuition" in the context of how babies response to those "artificial" magic tricks. > In one recent experiment, for example, Aimee E. Stahl and Lisa Feigenson of Johns Hopkins showed 11-month-old babies a sort of magic trick. Either a ball appeared to pass through a solid wall, or a toy car appeared to roll off the end of a shelf and remain suspended in thin air. The babies apparently knew enough about everyday physics to be surprised by these strange events and paid a lot of attention to them.
gnaritas 10y ago
> Literally absolutely nothing. That position is known as the blank slate and is no longer taken seriously among scientists. Language is an instinct that springs forth even when there is no language to pick up from the environment. What you think you know is incorrect.
- dschiptsov 10y ago
  I said in the comment above that "knowledge" is represented as a structure of specialized areas of the brain - stored procedures, if you wish, but the system needs to be "trained" by the spoken (or signed) language from the shared environment. The "machinery" probably has notions of a thing, a process, and an attribute, because it reflects characteristics of shared physical environment and every human language has nouns, verbs and adjectives. There are also notions of time and space, due to serialized input of sense organs and self-centered nature of our perception. Evolved, highly-specialized machinery of the brain's specialized areas reflects major characteristics of the shared environment available to it through the sense organs. There is nothing more than that. No other "knowledge".
  - gnaritas 10y ago
    That's quite a lot of something for "literally absolutely nothing".

ontouchstart 10y ago

Ther time scale of evlolution is a few orders of magnitude longer than learning process. So perhaps we are not talking about "hard-wired knowldedge but "physics intuition" in the context of how babies response to those "artificial" magic tricks. > In one recent experiment, for example, Aimee E. Stahl and Lisa Feigenson of Johns Hopkins showed 11-month-old babies a sort of magic trick. Either a ball appeared to pass through a solid wall, or a toy car appeared to roll off the end of a shelf and remain suspended in thin air. The babies apparently knew enough about everyday physics to be surprised by these strange events and paid a lot of attention to them.

gnaritas 10y ago

> Literally absolutely nothing. That position is known as the blank slate and is no longer taken seriously among scientists. Language is an instinct that springs forth even when there is no language to pick up from the environment. What you think you know is incorrect.

dschiptsov 10y ago
I said in the comment above that "knowledge" is represented as a structure of specialized areas of the brain - stored procedures, if you wish, but the system needs to be "trained" by the spoken (or signed) language from the shared environment. The "machinery" probably has notions of a thing, a process, and an attribute, because it reflects characteristics of shared physical environment and every human language has nouns, verbs and adjectives. There are also notions of time and space, due to serialized input of sense organs and self-centered nature of our perception. Evolved, highly-specialized machinery of the brain's specialized areas reflects major characteristics of the shared environment available to it through the sense organs. There is nothing more than that. No other "knowledge".
- gnaritas 10y ago
  That's quite a lot of something for "literally absolutely nothing".