The plasticity of primate behavior is quite high. Baboon aggression may be cultural in origin. So what to say of humans, whose behavior is so much more plastic than baboons? Yet people look for the roots of murder and rape in human societies in evolution and genetics. And they miss the more interesting thing that is to be explained: the origin of the plasticity of behavior. Considering how stuck in a rigid determinism that these evolutionary behaviorists are, one would think that this would be their supreme puzzle: how do deterministic parts combine to produce an organism with such an enormous ability to learn?
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macgupta 81p · 616 weeks ago
As to grammar, I suppose people have shown that grammar is not a law of language but a law of our brains? I.e., grammar less language or languages with wildly different grammar is feasible? If not, I wouldn't take that wired for grammar too seriously. It would be more like 2+ 2 = 4, which is a property of numbers, not our brains.
That the Nicaraguan deaf people's language evolved is evidence of a learning process that took place in a group over a period of time, I.e., a cultural process and not something hard wired in the brain.