Is synesthesia responsible for the evolution of conscious thought in humans?

Question

I heard that it was one theory anyway; anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

i read some articles about this subject a few monhts ago.
according to one of the article, there are two types of stimulants to trigger synthesestic experience. these are "perceptional" and "conceptual" stimulants.

In "perceptional" type, the conjugations appear, after a spesific sensorial stimulant is perceived. In "conceptual" type, thinking a special concept cause to trigger conjugations, then synthesestic experience occurs.

They also classify synthesesia into 3 groups :
"developmental", "acquired" and "pharmacological". According to the text, synthesestical perception is only seen with the "acquired" type and "conceptual" synthesestic experience isnt seen with it.

I thought that there is a contradiction. because of "verbal learning". For example, as a non-synthesestic person, i can learn to react to a letter (lets say "A" letter) after i saw a color (red, for examle). or i can learn to say "beautiful" after i smell a thing. or i can learn to say "red" after i smell the same thing. after enough repetations, i would react to it without thinking and quicker than before. but this doesnt mean i "perceive" that thing's scent as red and doesnt proof that i am a synthesestic person.

as i read, synthesestic people can people a letter (i.e. "A"), however you write it (italic, bold, etc.). I think this might be only true for a spesific alphabet. according to my conjecture, they can perceieve the same letter's equivalent in russian alphabet or arabic alphabet. so this shows their synthesestic experience is learnt. in other words it is "acquired".

The article says :

"...This is likely result of poor neurocognitive functioning, which can stem from infancy. But according to the learning theory, one of my favorites, it is learned very early in life. All of the factors of the diagnosis can shape how one perceives or conceptualizes things.."

i agree with the learning theory. i read about theory about genetics about the subject, but in my opinion saying that something about genetics is not enough to deny the probable erosion of the senses during the historical and social adaptation of humans' cognitive development. for example, today the majority of people have eyesight, this "ability" comes with genetic factors and we dont suprise when a newborn has eyesight ; in informal jargon, we expect the eyesight ability as "naturally" or "normally" thing.
suppose that majority of people in the world are lack of eyesight. in that case, when a newborn borned as blind, we would say in our jargon, that is "normal" or "natural". maybe we would say it is a "strange" ability to have an eyesight.
here, that is why i am thinking about the synthesesia. i dont know, maybe it sounds to you as a kind of conspiracy theory but humans could have lose some of our "natural" abilities for some reason. we have already known that it is easy to cheat the brain about perception, we have already known how the attitudes can change from negative to positive or vice versa in a short time period.
for instance, Asch's and Sherif's experiments are great examples about it. While writing these, i remembered the article of Baumeister(2000) about gender. According to one of the arguments of this article, female sexuality will exhibit larger effects than male in response to most specific socioculturel variables. So, in my opinon, losing some abilties may be a forfeit for adaptation to society/ social enviroment and its unreal formal and informal system.

"normal" concept is relative and it determines by majority of people, so this may cause labelling as a bias. i said if the majorith of people would blind, the majority of newborns would be blind because of genetics. and non-blind people (the minority)would be labelled as "talented" or the ones who has a special ability. but today, this is not an ability or else. because we are living in a world which contains non-blind people in 2006 ! so our description of concepts are different.

i agree with the theory about synthesesia, that claims all newborns have sythesestic ability. i think it can be shown in frame of social control and socialization, as i told before. Some minor theories can help to explain the roots of the major problems of society. Unfortunately i dont find these current theories are enough to explain things in details.

Answer 2

There have been very little research on synesthesia until the last years. Although we can never be sure, the most likely is that synesthesia is something you can have or not have, indicating that it was not a vital part of evolution. There are often examples with brilliant people who had or have synesthesia, but recent investigations suspects that there are many "normal" people, without special abilities that have synesthesia. They don't really know why some people got it.

Answer 3

Huh?

Answer 4

Where did you find that bloody word :-) ???