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from the various accounts of so called 'feral children' or the few experiments that we know of that have been conducted involving depriving children of social c
by Barrin92 5y ago
from the various accounts of so called 'feral children' or the few experiments that we know of that have been conducted involving depriving children of social contact and the pretty severe consequences it had on development I always wondered in general how much of the functioning of the brain can only be understood in the context of social groups and connectivity between individuals. i wonder how much of a systems approach maybe at some point will enter these fields where people move away from thinking of cognition in terms of individual tasks and potentially start to think of it like more of an emergent property.
- alexpetralia 5y agoLove this idea. Imagine what the Internet did for connected consciousness, then!
- hyperpallium2 5y agoThe greatest survival advantage of humans may be specialized division of labour, which coordination of course seems to require language. Chomsky, being so argumentative that he's even antichomskian, has this idea that the primary purpose of language is not communication, but internal "linkage between interfaces", or thought (whatever that means). Feral children of course are isolated from exchange; but their isolation also prevents acquisition of language. While it takes a community to spontaneously invent language (https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language), the primary benefit may yet be individual thought. > how much of the functioning of the brain can only be understood in the context of social groups and connectivity between individuals. Could be absence of language.