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I think I am getting tired of the gee-whiz attitude of linguists who are forever marveling at “the astronomical variety of sentences and a natural language user can produce and understand.”  Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002).  I can’t recall anyone marveling at the astronomical variety of visual images a human observer can understand, or the astronomical variety of visual images a human artist can produce.  I am also tired of the gee-whiz attitude linguists take with respect to the fact that there can be no “longest” sentence.  With essentially the same argument, I can assert that there can be no “largest” painting.  So what?

Another gee-whiz topic for linguists is the fact that, “A child is exposed to only a small proportion of the possible sentences in its language, thus limiting its database for constructing a more general version of that language in its own mind/brain.”  Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002).  It is also the case that a child is exposed to only a small proportion of the possible visual experiences in the universe, thus limiting its database for constructing a more general version of visual experience in its own mind/brain.  If one is to marvel at “the open ended generative property of human language,” one must marvel at the open ended generative property of human endeavor in art and music as well.  And if we do that, must we also marvel at the open ended generative property of bower bird endeavor in bower building and whale endeavor in whale song composition?

Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002) refer to “the interface systems — sensory-motor and conceptual-intentional”.  Note that there is a nice parallelism between sensory and conceptual and between motor and intentional.  I like it.

Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch (2002) observe that it is possible that “recursion in animals represents a modular system designed for a particular function (e.g., navigation) and impenetrable with respect to other systems.  During evolution, the modular and highly domain specific system of recursion may have become penetrable and domain general.  This opened the way for humans, perhaps uniquely, to apply the power of recursion to other problems.”

Here, again, is a suggestion that to me points at a new kind of model found only in humans: a model of the self?  perhaps in some sense a model of models, but otherwise behaving like models in other animals.

A cat may be conscious, but does it, can it, know that it is conscious?

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