In article <41392480 at dnews.tpgi.com.au>, John Hasenkam
<johnh at faraway.?.invalid> writes
>>"dan michaels" <feedbackdroids at yahoo.com> wrote in message
>news:8d8494cf.0409030853.7911b8bf at posting.google.com...>> > >In contrast, since ungulates pop out into the world being able to walk
>> > >and run within hours, I was also wondering that their visual systems
>> > >might also be similarly advanced, as compard to humans and other
>> > >animals like you mentioned. Do they have to "learn" what a lion looks,
>> > >or might their visual systems already have some hard-coding regards
>> > >this?
>>To come at this from a tangent, it is interesting to recall studies showing
>how axons for varous senses, after injury, can end up projecting to regions
>other than their "programmed" targets. Auditory axons will project to visual
>areas, perhaps explaining the echo location noted in some blind individuals.
>Not many studies on this but the few are surprising in their results.
>Results such as these suggest a top down guidance of axonal projections, but
>I'll freely admit I find that very spooky.
>>John.
>>What's even more "spooky" (although predictably so) is the far more
prevalent (and unquestionably demonstrable) empirical finding that
people (cf. Michaels, Zick, Ozkural, Legris, Savain, Navega etc as a
small but sadly representative, sample) make the "connections" that they
do make - *and yet fail to make far more useful and reliable others*.
What should attract more interest than it does is the fact that people,
as a rule, so tenaciously hold onto, and mutually reinforce their naive
intensional heuristics or prejudices despite abundant (*extensional*)
evidence to repudiate or replace them.
How people align themselves in their public responses to the above
assertion can, I suggest, be taken as a fair, pragmatic & extensional
indicator of their scientific acumen.
--
David Longley
http://longley.demon.co.uk/Frag.htm
