quote:
Originally posted by jabidas:
A baby who is playing with a ball has been around for a while, the mind in some rudimentry form has developed by then. As for animals, Im not really sure. On a side note a theory for the eveloution of language is that back in the stone age when we were all in tribes or something like that, when a tribe saw say atiger coming up the hill they all saw a tiger and tried to scare it away. It was a group thing. Anyway say one of the cavemen goes off by himself for whatever reason he sees a tiger coming up a hill and he has to find a way to communicate this, but what if hes angry at the tribe and says nothing. This supposedly was the begginings of language and indiviuality. With that in mind I think its probable babys have minds before they speak they just have to learn the lingo. Sure their ID is still mostly in control making demands but there is a mind there.
Well the id is a part of the mind, if one subscribes to Freud's theory, which I don't really
. It's the most primitive part, later tempered by the ego and the superego, but it is all part of the "mind". I think that babies have words before they learn to vocalise them, whether they understand the significance of symbolism between words and objects is another matter, but assuming they do we could say that a baby thinks with language, primitively, when they're about 6 months or so. But before this time, babies are playing with things, seeing things. When a baby sees its mother when it's a few weeks old, what happens in their brain? Do they have an image of their mother? Is this a "thought" then, or is it just their visual system playing back what they are seeing?
Now as for evolution, apes also use this means of communication between themselves, they do not have the appropriate larynx etc so they can't vocalise, but in the same way your cavemen are indicating the tiger, so too do primates. So then they are thinking? How are they doing it? Is it images or something sort of symbolic representation?