Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Something to ponder...

As I was reading this chapter, I had no difficulty accepting Tomasello's hypothesis that human infants start understanding others as intentional agents like the self at around nine months of age (61). However, this got me wondering what causes this understanding of self to develop. The only thing I could think of was language, because this seems to develop at around nine months as well (I think). This suggests to me that language introduces the concept of self to the infants--they learn from others to talk, think and understand in terms related to the concept of self because the way society talks, think and understands is also shaped by the concept of self.

Is this why nonhuman primates do not seem to possess an understanding of self? Because they do not possess language? Or perhaps they do possess language, but do not possess a cultural idea of self?

This leads me to wonder if the self is an actual entity (do we all really have selfs?) or if it is only an idea that is created by the language of our society or culture. Perhaps it is not a biologically inherited trait, but only a culturally inherited trait. In that sense, does the self really exist if it is a cultural phenomenon and not a biological one?

In the Theories of Consciousness class that I am taking we have discussed the theory of a cultural evolution of consciousness through gene-like replicators called "memes," which is similar to my idea. If you're interested, you should definitely google that and read up on it.

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