Kevin Kuhle - An Interesting Observation

In our last class while I was listening to discussion and thinking to myself, I came to an interesting connection or observation about the way in which human cognition is formed and how it operates. When listening today, the point was brought up the we as humans don't learn much, come to beliefs or know much of anything first hand purely through our interactions with our surroundings and environment. What Tomesello writes is that we are massively dependent on other for our learning. We are dependent on communication with others to come to hold beliefs, learn about our surroundings and environment and know anything; the ratchet. Tomesello continues on to talk about humans' ability to be uniquely flexible in their thinking and ability to explain things in multiple different ways. While all of this is very interesting, the most intrigueing fact is that while we learn from communication with others and not from our environment, our ability to communicate and understand each other is hugely dependent upon our interactions with our environment and our experiences. Aditionally, our language is based in metaphors, which makes sense to humans because of shared experiences with our environment. So, we learn from communication with others, but our ability to communicate and understand each other is dependent on our experiences and interactions with our environment. Am I explaining this properly and does anyone else see this as being intriguing/ confusing???