The symbolic world

[I've been gone for a few weeks getting married, going on my honeymoon, and getting settled in. It's nice to be back.]

One thing I love about what NRLG does is that we are trying to understand what is underneath our symbolic capacity. So it's always exciting to reflect on what our symbolic capacity is capable of.

From Science Blog

The researchers, Constance Steinkuehler and Dmitri Williams, claim that MMOs [Massively Multiplayer Online video games] function not like solitary dungeon cells, but more like virtual coffee shops or pubs where something called "social bridging" takes place.

Their overall conclusion in this newest study: "Virtual worlds appear to function best as bridging mechanisms, rather than as bonding ones, although they do not entirely preclude social ties of the latter type."

The pervasiveness of consciousness, whether non-humans are conscious, is controversial even among this research group. However, I personally think that it should not be controversial to say that the symbolic capacities of humans as far as we can tell outstrips any other living creature. People engaged in social bonding on MMOs are applying their biological systems to a world that does not materially exist. Yet they can experience the bodily responses they might encounter in a face to face interaction.

I guess to return to language, a couple questions are raised
1) What is the neurobiological nature of symbolic capacity?
2) How did it evolve?
3) Is language built on symbolic capacity or vice versa?
4) As always, is language uniquely, modularly in the brain or coopting previously/otherwise deployed systems.