Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
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From: daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough)
Subject: Re: What's innate?
Message-ID: <1995Feb20.031837.19442@oracorp.com>
Organization: Odyssey Research Associates, Inc.
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 03:18:37 GMT
Lines: 40

rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:

>>Neil, I don't know where you are coming from with these analogies,
>>since they seem to me to work against your argument. *If* children
>>learned juggling or integral calculus the same way they learned
>>language, then I would agree that the same kind of learning was
>>involved. But children don't just "pick up" integral calculus from
>>being exposed to it, the way that they do language.
>
>You are missing the point.  Students pick up integral calculus with
>about 5 hours per week for two semesters.  A child experiences
>language perhaps 50-100 hours per week for much longer than two
>semesters.

There is a big, big difference, and that is that calculus is taught
*using* language. Students do not simply "pick it up", they are taught
it. It's explained to them. That's the whole idea behind language
after all---using language, skills and knowledge can be transferred
much, much quicker than they can through simple "exposure". If you
could teach a pre-language infant to do integral calculus in  50-100
hours a week, *then* I would be impressed.

>>I don't have any idea whether there is any evidence for UG. I only
>>know that the arguments against it in this newsgroup are pretty weak.
>
>This is getting sillier.  A little while ago you accuse me of not
>addressing the arguments for UG.  Now you admit to not knowing
>whether there is any evidence for UG.  What I have trying to argue
>all along is that the evidence for UG is sufficienly weak that one
>should be agnostic on the issue.  If you don't have any idea whether
>there is any evidence for UG, then why are you disagreeing with me?

I just told you why. It isn't your conclusions that I am disagreeing
with, since I really don't know enough about UG. I'm disagreeing with
the tone and quality of your arguments, which seem to me to be mostly
ridicule and bad analogies.

Daryl McCullough
ORA Corp.
Ithaca, NY
