^ What I thought of first, too.
Interestingly, I’m just now reading Room by Emma Donoghue, whose setting is broadly similar, only with more of an abduction and rape background – there, too, a child is raised, though only by his mother, in a confined space without contact to the outside; there’s a TV but at the beginning, the child thinks that what’s in the TV is just fantasy.
I’m just mentioning this because I have no idea what else to contribute to this thread…
Is this a debate, or a screenplay?
Emma Donohue’s Room was my first thought, too. But I, too, have no idea what we’re supposed to be debating in this thread.
Would it make any difference if it were Star Wars, or does it have to be The Color Purple?
:D:D
And what is in these books that doesn’t expose him to the outside world?
I blame postmodernism.
Debates typically state a position.
Those are just(vague and not very well thought out) questions.
What is the debate here?
Living is a conscious choice as it requires eating, drinking, maintaining health, and so forth. Place a person in conditions where the physical or mental suffering is too great and they will eventually drift towards death by one means or another. I believe there was a Straight Dope column on the topic of the maximum time that a human has survived in total isolation from others and the answer was about a year. In this scenario we’d have three human beings but the same principles would be at work.
But there would be social interaction in this situation. The parents are interacting with the child.
After all this time, why the hell would the parents keep quiet about the nature of the experiment? You can’t ask us about the actions and motives of hypothetical humans if they refuse to act or think in a human manner. This is like asking what would happen if you stuck a red pribblebit and a blue tselayle in a box-can’t know, and thus don’t care.
A more realistic and more interesting experiment IMO would be to raise a child in a room completely insulated from the outside world, and with rules against reference to the existence of an outside world. There is no need for the room to be white or have robotic panels as an interface and so on. It would simply be a fairly normal room, but with strict controls against references to the existence of a larger universe. Food and companionship would come from outside the room through an airlock-type door system so the child could never see outside, or get outside. Human companions would act as though they were gods, appearing through the airlock door. The only thing that exists – the universe – is the room, and only the room.
It would be interesting to see how an intelligent child raised in such a solipsistic universe would react psychologically/philosophically. It would be interesting to see what questions he/she asked, and whether he would find this universe philosophically frightening.
Kozmik, as numerous posters have noted, this is the debate forum. It is not the “throw a lot of text at a white wall and hope something catches someone’s eye” forum.
Lacking a thesis or even a question, this thread is closed.