I’m not sure if we’re talking past each other or if there is genuine disagreement, but I’ll expound a bit.
When asleep or in a coma, the mind doesn’t interact with the environment at all.
The sleeping/comatose mind does interact constantly with the environment in two ways. For starters, it’s well established that external sensory input (specifically sounds and touch) regularly makes its way into the conscious experience of dreaming and comatose state. But that’s just a side issue here. At a more fundamental level, every living thing interacts 24⁄7 with its environment through its metabolism.
That confuses causality with necessity (metabolism causally preceding understanding doesn’t mean that metabolism or continuous input are necessary for it).
Maybe this is the crux of a misunderstanding. I don’t claim that “continuous input” in the sense you (seem to) mean is necessary/causally antecedent to semantics. E.g., I’m not saying that I have to constantly look at a tree out in the woods in order to think about what a tree is. I’m only saying that any thought I have, and whatever language and semantics attached to it, are the result (causal/necessity if you like) of my metabolic processing. (Using metabolism in the broadest sense to mean any chemical pathways that use energy and produces entropy in the body, which includes neural activity). If that’s not the case, then something non-biological makes human language possible, which I assume you don’t intend. Either way, that would be a hypothesis for a different type of discussion forum.
I’m not sure if we’re talking past each other or if there is genuine disagreement, but I’ll expound a bit.
The sleeping/comatose mind does interact constantly with the environment in two ways. For starters, it’s well established that external sensory input (specifically sounds and touch) regularly makes its way into the conscious experience of dreaming and comatose state. But that’s just a side issue here. At a more fundamental level, every living thing interacts 24⁄7 with its environment through its metabolism.
Maybe this is the crux of a misunderstanding. I don’t claim that “continuous input” in the sense you (seem to) mean is necessary/causally antecedent to semantics. E.g., I’m not saying that I have to constantly look at a tree out in the woods in order to think about what a tree is. I’m only saying that any thought I have, and whatever language and semantics attached to it, are the result (causal/necessity if you like) of my metabolic processing. (Using metabolism in the broadest sense to mean any chemical pathways that use energy and produces entropy in the body, which includes neural activity). If that’s not the case, then something non-biological makes human language possible, which I assume you don’t intend. Either way, that would be a hypothesis for a different type of discussion forum.