Re: Nature or nurture?

On 9 Dec 2005 07:02:20 -0800, "Josh Rosenbluth" <jrosenbluth@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

>
>Ron Peterson wrote:
>> Josh Rosenbluth wrote:
>>
>> > Firstly, there is your premise that homosexuality goes against Natural
>> > Selection. Why then hasn't homosexuality died out?
>>
>> There is the possibility that bisexuality doesn't go against natural
>> selection because those individuals would have a larger extended
>> family.
>
>Or as Woody Allen once said, it doubles your chance for a date on a
>Saturday night.
>
>> > Secondly, even assuming your premise is correct, isn't it possible that
>> > homosexuality is environmentally acquired - implying Natural Selection
>> > plays no role and it can't be called a Natural-Selection pathology -
>> > and yet also not a choice. Again, I go back to the native language
>> > analogy. Native language is environmentally acquired, yet for the most
>> > part immutable.
>>
>> I think that you are correct in that sexuality is too complicated of a
>> process to be determined primarily by genetics.
>>
>> IIRC, Noam Chomsky claims that there is a genetic component to natural
>> language.
>
>That seems to conflict - admittingly based on anecdotes - with the
>experience of Asian orphans raised in the USA.
>
>Josh Rosenbluth



Not from Chomsky, but from Pinker, Pinker states that the
differences in structure between greatly separated languages
amount to a set of switches: nouns before or after adjectives,
position and verbs and so far. The setting of the switches is
learned, as are the actual words of course, but the fact that
the switches are there, and that there is a drive toward
learning language, is hard-wired.

There was a pair of autistic twins that were famous for
a while in scientific circles, who called each other Popo
and Cabenga. They had a complete and sophisticated
language between them, not related to the languages
they heard around them, but following the same
patterns as are found elsewhere, though many of the
switches were set differently from those of the language
they heard. (This paragraph is not Pinker.)




.

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