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How the Brain Links Gestures, Perception and Meaning

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Re: How the Brain Links Gestures, Perception and Meaning

#11
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seemed to have left off the second part of the sentence, which you appear to agree with "No other species points, Novack explained, not even chimpanzees or apes, according to most reports, unless they are raised by people" edit: I suppose the clause "unless they are raised by people" could be interpreted as pertaining to either "not even chimpanzees or apes", or "No other species", but I don't think it matters.

Do humans point if they're not raised by people? The few cases of such that I've heard about seem to be incapable of most "uniquely human" behaviours.

Possibly not, since we're pretty good at following another person's gaze instead. And different cultures point differently. I knew a guy who lived in Papua New Guinea for a while and he had to untrain himself to point with his finger. People there would just look at his finger. They only pointed with their chins.

Re: How the Brain Links Gestures, Perception and Meaning

#12
post #3

I’ve always thought that proponents of “embodied cognition” are onto something. Like the whole field of so-called machine learning is missing something fundamental about how humans learn. This article provides a cogent explanation for what could be missing. “When children are learning their first language, Macedonia argues, they absorb information with their entire bodies. A word like “onion,” for example, is tightly…

Among psychologists, Laurence Barsalou is one of the most prominent academics working in the emobodied cognition, or as his lab calls it, grounded cognition, tradition: http://barsaloulab.org/

His work has influenced one of the most distinguished philosophers of mind working in this area: Jesse Prinz: http://subcortex.com/

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