From "Design for a Theory of Meaning",
by Mark Turner:
- "Some of our experience is so constant and universal that it must
count as innate, in a certain sense. Capacities that are absolutely
indispensable to the phenotype do not have to be carried by the genotype,
or at least not exclusively by the genotype, provided that they arise from
experience that can be absolutely counted upon. For example, consider our
capacity to use the image schema of a path from a source to a goal. We use
this image-schema to attribute meaning to many things, from the street we
live on to the direction of an argument. A human being who lacked this
image-schema of SOURCE-PATH-GOAL would be so incapacitated
as to seem
fundamentally deficient. Now imagine that the SOURCE-PATH-GOAL schema
arises only through early experience. This would present no problem,
because it is a matter of necessary early experience. Conceivably, severe
sensory deprivation of a developing child could prevent it from
"acquiring" the SOURCE-PATH-GOAL schema. But this would not mean that,
because the schema is "acquired," it is therefore optional or exterior to
the organism or anything but fundamental to the organism.