Re: OT: Helen Keller & Whorf-Sapir
| From: | william drewery <will65610@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, August 15, 2004, 0:50 |
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> I wonder how the case of Helen Keller might be
handled by philosphers such as Daniel C. Dennet. He
claim, in "Other Kinds of Minds" that human thought
does not begin untill one learns some sort of
language. He reasons that language allows us to
internalize the environment and then manipulate it as
we manipulate language symbols. Thus giving us the
ability to imagine the world as other than it is. Like
most philosophers he's a little blurry... after
spending several chapters arguing that symbolic
reasoning is essential for conceptualization, he then
admits that nonlanguage using animals nevertheless
have limited abilities to form abstract general
concepts.
Mortimer J. Adler also argues that abstract thought
requires symbolic reasoning, unique to humans, and
then in "Ten Philosophical Mistakes" write that
animals may form some concepts through pure perceptual
thinking.
Travis
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