Jacob, when you speak of the 'Tabula Rasa' theory, (#truth Forum, Dephi) are you including the innate "wiring" that allows a child to learn the mother tongue of its guardians, and other such unused yet unfolding abilities? Or are you only speaking of bona fide "knowledge" that only comes with education? Do children learn to feed themselves, are they pushed towards their cultural conventions for table manners or do they have the innate ability to feed themselves but need time to aquire the motor skills? Inquiring minds want to know.
Hello Peaux, it is a pleasure talking with a mind inquiring, 'cause, mind you, it is inspiring.
I was just referring to the 'clean slate' that Locke believed could be applied as a quality of the newborn's brain, in terms of knowledge. Meaning, that it is not like Plato's belief that we are born with all the posssible knowledge, and that learning is just remembering.
If you think about the survival of the fittest, it is not viable to suggest that table manners are an evolving ability. In contrast, think which
human groups are more prone to die of hunger and disease, and to live in dire poverty, but those who have not evolved in the direction of better inborn wiring for the capacity to compete in a rapidly industrialized and technologically advanced and advancing 'global village.'
Peaux, I composed the above in a few minutes, and this is the first time that I write on this subject. I believe that in scant words I've given the gist of how a new branch grows out of the evolutionary stem and subsequent trunk, constituting new branches and ramifications. I'm telling you this, because it is through reading and musing that one improves inborn intellectual facilities, as is logical to accept nowadays; it is perhaps less known that writing one's thoughts is the royal road to intellectual advancement. I've written in a parallel manner about the evolutionary process that could explain the recent discovery of the "mtEve" as our female ancestor of some 150,000 years ago. I call it, 'The Cain Hypothesis.'
You just helped me too, to put in writing inchoate ideas that had been incubating in my neurons. I might be wrong in general, but I'm right in believing that you have enjoyed this exchange. In fact, I could write a dream I had, which is easily interpreted as symbolizing what I just said to you.
It is widely accepted that we are born with the brain wiring that makes facile learning languages in general. This means that such acceptance bespeaks an ancient evolutionary development. The Nearthentals are believed not to have been capable of speaking. Now, imagine one of them --or from another species of the same genus Homo-- undergoing a benefic mutation allowing him to start the process of speaking. By miscegenation, eventually a fitter group developed --and continued evolving-- the speaking capability. It is not hard to conceive that they incorporated --or extinguished-- the non-speaking members of the Homo species, such as the Nearthentals. We are the descendants of such successful mutated first individual.
Take now the ability to write: it is an acquired feature, since it could not have been intiated by a specific mutation. This belief is supported by empirical observation: it is hard to learn writing, and it is much easier to recover the ability to speak after suffering cerebral damage.