Ana asks some interesting questions with regard to animals:
> The question is -- can we observe learning through construction of
> symbolic tools in animals?? Or some animals? Ability to construct and
> use symbolic tools becomes an interesting evolutionary difference
> between humans and other species. The question is, is there an
> intermediary step between learning by a direct feedback loop and
> learning through a mediated ZPD? How does this new way of leaning and
> understanding come into existence in the evolution?
Aren't these questions related to whether animals possess
the "ideal" in Ilyenkov's sense? We know that individual
animals do use tools in problem solving, but is there any
any example of animals _socially_ producing a tool? Is there
any example of animals taking a tool they have produced and
relating to it as a "fetish"?!
Ilyenkov ("The Concept of the Ideal") thinks not: "... the 'ideal'
exists only in man."
What do you think?
Peter
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