Mental Models of Purpose of College
2 years ago
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Thursday, April 2, 2009
Tomasello, Ch. 3
While I found this chapter to be extremely interesting, I would have liked to see Tomasello discuss autism more than he did. If what sets us apart from non-human primates is our ability to identify with others in our species, it seems like a huge deal that there has been an increase in autism cases, where people have a disease that stops them from doing precisely that. I would have liked to see Tomasello discuss how that fits into the puzzle, instead of briefly touching on the topic.
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I also found the discussion of autism and Asperger's disease interesting. I think Tomasello did integrate that conversation into the larger discussion, however. The primary way I saw him doing this was by showing that children with autism have difficulty identifying themselves with others, like primates, and as a result we can see that biologically, our capacity to identify with others is necessary for the transmission of culture, and our ability to develop into full human beings also involves this biological development.
ReplyDeleteThis fits into the puzzle of how culture affects human development, and pertains to how we have as the human race developed to where we are now.
What I found interesting or thought-provoking from the chapter was whether it were possible to train primates to develop a sense of self and other and develop the capacity to identify with an other. It seemed like he touched on this a bit, indicating that primates appear biologically deficient in this area, though I didn't read any definitive statement that it would not be a possibility.