Another knife in the heart of CTM, IMO... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_speech
> A striking feature of language is that it is modality-independent. Should > an impaired child be prevented from hearing or producing sound, its innate > capacity to master a language may equally find expression in signing [...] > > This feature is extraordinary. Animal communication systems routinely > combine visible with audible properties and effects, but not one is > modality independent. No vocally impaired whale, dolphin or songbird, for > example, could express its song repertoire equally in visual display. " > This would be hard to explain if consciousness were due to information processing, as we would expect all communication to share a common logical basis. The fact that only human language is modality invariant suggests that communication, as an expression of consciousness is local to aesthetic textures rather than information-theoretic configurations. Since only humans have evolved to create an abstraction layer that cuts across aesthetic modalities, it would appear that between aesthetic modality and information content, aesthetic modality is the more fundamental and natural phenomenon. Information is derived from conscious presentation, not the other way around. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
