I've started to think that a lot of what we are isn't present inside our heads although it informs them. Things like books, culture which are all intergeneratio

I've started to think that a lot of what we are isn't present inside our heads although it informs them. Things like books, culture which are all intergenerational memories. We're constantly immersed from the earliest developmental stage in what dawkins called our extended phenotype. Of all the animals humans have the most extraordinary extended phenotype, particularly our information infrastructure. If we take the much vaunted abilities of humans over computers, such as creativity, and we had a human being who was brought up without any contact without any exterior sources of information such as reading materials or other humans to play with then I doubt their 'human ability' would amount to much. It'd be arguable whether they were a true human. They'd seem developmentally disabled to other humans though biologically they could be in rude health. When you look to monkeys and other animals like ravens you find they test better than we do on a range of cognitive tasks and yet we are us and they are them. I believe there really is something different about us but that may exist at the collective level instead of the individual.