A response to "Building machines that think and learn like humans"

[Bitking]

In a separate post on language vs conscious, I related some cases where a human is raised past the language plastic period without learning a human language; there is a deficit in symbolic learning and reasoning. This strongly suggests that symbolic reasoning is a byproduct of learning to name things in language.
It would also point to language as an elaboration of somatosensory learning.
I don’t see this in any of the linked papers, in fact, the symbolic reasoning seems to be an expected inherent behavior.

The plastic period for language:

The Development of Language: A Critical Period in Humans - Neuroscience -...

Language the base of conscious thought?

Language is partly innate and partially learned. We have the necessary mental hardware but without the social training, we can’t learn the tricks that come with developing the motor skills that we call language. Learning these motor skills come with a corresponding training of the matching sensory skill set. Part of this learned skill set is symbolic representation. There are sad cases of people that are raised without learning language past the critical period for language plasticity. It has …