[Slide: dominant task shaping the softwiring of
childhood] This is a model for how you might take
a dominant task, something like throwing or food
preparation that would be in later childhood, and
move it back into a region where it's now operating
upon observational stuff instead, such as language.
Now language tunes up the circuitry in an area when
softwiring is really much easier and produces these
permanent effects into adulthood. Now we have this
situation where kids handle structured sentences at
an age when they still can't tie their shoelaces - they
have the speed of operation for the vocal system but
still not for the limbs.
The other thing about intellect that I want to say is
that there are levels of intellect just because of our ability
to handle abstraction. I want to remind you that levels
of organization are a very common notion and a level
is semi-independent of its foundations, a study unto
itself. For example, if you start with fleece and you spin
it into yarn, you produce something that doesn't backslide
into fleece very easily. There's a stabilization. Yarn
can be woven into cloth; cloth sticks together into clothing.
Each of these things is a study unto itself. You can
understand how to do clothing without understanding
anything about weaving or spinning. That's one of the
other characteristics of levels.
, one of the things that the
arbitrariness of symbol buys you is this
ability to play the same games with
abstractions that you're playing with
concrete objects.