0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
What was the question again? Oh yeah, it was "What was the origin of human language." Sorry for getting so off topic. I don't know how that keeps happening.
Human intelect and memory can be accounted for by what we already know about mechanistic computation systems. Life can be accounted for as complex chemistry. I see no point in imagining magical solutions for those to use in place of perfectly good mechanistic models which already work perfectly. The only difficulty left is consciousness.
Come on, do not be silly , be serious , please : i did respond to this non-sense of yours on many occasions : i talk about science "pretending , seeing , doing , saying ..." in the metaphorical sense , as a metaphorical (not literal ) figure of speech .
QuoteCome on, do not be silly , be serious , please : i did respond to this non-sense of yours on many occasions : i talk about science "pretending , seeing , doing , saying ..." in the metaphorical sense , as a metaphorical (not literal ) figure of speech .Metaphor for what? Metaphors are not used in science. Why not say what you mean?
I suspect you have a wholly bizarre view of what science is, despite having been told many times by people who actually do it
Quote from: cheryl j on 05/11/2013 00:39:46What was the question again? Oh yeah, it was "What was the origin of human language." Sorry for getting so off topic. I don't know how that keeps happening.Well, the origins of human language or rather the human language is a very essential element of explaining how humans have been capable of making sense of the intelligible reality , by trying to understand it and explain it via science mainly .Without human language , knowledge in the broader sense , including the scientific one , would not have been communicated or spread evolving...But, when science assumes that reality is just physical material , as science has been doing for so long now, thanks to materialism , that means that science has been giving us just a distorted pic of reality as a result ,just a distorted knowledge of reality , just a distorted materialist version of the origins of human language ...
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 05/11/2013 18:43:53Quote from: cheryl j on 05/11/2013 00:39:46What was the question again? Oh yeah, it was "What was the origin of human language." Sorry for getting so off topic. I don't know how that keeps happening.Well, the origins of human language or rather the human language is a very essential element of explaining how humans have been capable of making sense of the intelligible reality , by trying to understand it and explain it via science mainly .Without human language , knowledge in the broader sense , including the scientific one , would not have been communicated or spread evolving...But, when science assumes that reality is just physical material , as science has been doing for so long now, thanks to materialism , that means that science has been giving us just a distorted pic of reality as a result ,just a distorted knowledge of reality , just a distorted materialist version of the origins of human language ...So what are your non-materialist explanations for the origin of language? How did we did get it, when, and why? I'm not being sarcastic. I am genuinely interested. But I am a little skeptical because your discussions about the non-material never progress beyond attacks on materialism.
I didn't ask where human language didn't come from or we did not obtain it, I asked how you think it originated, which was the title of your thread.
Language is fairly simple once you understand the basic structures that hold it together. Your lack of knowledge of how it works is leading to you making a stack of claims which are plain wrong. Evolving a language should be easy once a species has sufficient intelligence to handle those structures, and a lot of it probably comes down to nothing more exciting than evolving sufficient working memory to hold the ideas long enough for them still to be there when the sentence has reached the point where they need to be inserted into it.Ideas have a network form which has to be converted into a linear string before it can be communicated, and you have to do that convertion with care so as to avoid ending up with a jumbled mess. The actual structure though is very simple with groups of subject-verb-object connected up into a net. A preposition is really just a verb in a relative clause. E.g. "The book in the kitchen is mine" consists essentially of two SVO groups: I own book; kitchen contains book. [The idea of "containing" is itself a complex idea which can be represented by a string of deeper SVO groups, but there's no need to go into that here.] The verb in the first group is the central part of the idea that's being communicated, while the second group is simply there to help identify which book is being discussed, which is why it's a relative clause when the two groups are combined into a sentence. A conjunction is a verb in the opposite way to a relative clause, meaning that the verb is more central to the net. E.g. "I visited that castle before it fell down" essentially consists of three SVO groups: I visited castle; castle fell down; visited preceeds fell. The key idea in the three is the last group, so the other two groups are more like relative clauses, but with the link being to the middle item instead of one of the ends.All a species needs to be able to develop a proper language is sufficient wit to be able to handle simple SVO constructions and to be able to equate an item in one group with an item in another so as to be able to represent more complex ideas. None of this requires anything supernatural - it's extremely simple, and the only complexity is that language is riddled with words built in ways which hide the components they're made of - we can break them down subconsciously with ease but only normally take in all the detail consciously when we first learn them and work out what they mean. We then stop monitoring the mechanisms and leave it to subconscious processes to do the work while we forget about it all, so we end up not understanding consciously what's going on under the surface. It then takes decades of work to go through all the words in language working out what the components of meaning within them are in order to build a mechanistic system out of them for use in an AGI system (which is what I've been doing, so I know what's involved).So, stop talking bilge about the supernatural nature of language. It is nothing more than a simple mechanistic system of representation.
You just talked about the physical material biological "mechanical " side of human language you do take for the whole real thing .
Well, what is the 'supernatural " then ? just semantics : everything that's outside of materialism is thus automatically mechanically labeled as supernatural , the latter that's in fact natural normal = makes part of reality as a whole ,simply because reality as a whole is not just material or physical once again, as the mechanistic materialism wanna make you believe it is .
So, when you do assume that reality as a whole is just material or physical , thanks to materialism thus , when you do assume that's the 'scientific world view " , then , logically , you can only try to approach reality as a whole , including human language its origins and evolution emergence , the same goes for consciousness, memory , feelings , life as a whole and the rest , you can thus only approach them all materialistically mechanically as a result .
Now, let's assume that the mechanistic materialist "scientific world view " is false ,as it is in fact , then, logically...
... , there is more to reality as a whole , to human language ,to its 's evolution emergence and evolution , the same goes again for the rest , than just physics and chemistry , than just mechanisms , than just the laws of physics : that changes the whole pic ...radically , and hence our whole approach of reality as such +our whole approach regarding the extensions of reality as a whole such as human language , consciousness and the rest , that changes radically even our own perception of what the scientific world view might be as a result also ,logically thus .
So, you cannot just isolate human language from its underlying elements such as human consciousness, human intellect , human memory , human feelngs emotions ....you cannot just reduce man or life for that matter as a whole package that's not the sum of its parts to just material mechanical physical biological processes , if you want to explain describe understand empirically life as a whole , reality as a whole , man as a whole, human language as a whole ...or just the parts of them all science can deal with empirically .
Tell me now then : why is only man the one and only species that does have a language (s) that's unique to man in many ways ?
If you wanna answer this question via evolution , then, you have to include the missing part of reality as a whole materialism has been believing it does not exist = evolution is not only material biological physical .
Even if we assume that reality as a whole is just material or physical, and therefore that evolution is exclusively biological , even then , you cannot explain the origins of the human language within that context , simply because you have to try first to explain the origins and natures of human consciousness, human intellect , human feelings emotions, human memory, the origins , emergence and nature of life .....first = the materialist explanations of all the latter is obviously not true= all that cannot be explained just in terms of physics and chemistry obviously ,despite your denials , except the fact that you do admit the fact that consciousness remains an unsolved hard problem .
There you are again brought back to square zero where you have explained ...nothing , despite those materialist "explanations of everything " just in terms of the laws of physics ....Congratulations .
A lot of "science" is not done in accordance with reason, and that makes it faulty. What I call science is what science should be, and that depends on it applying reason 100% correctly rather than picking and choosing when to apply it and when not to in the manner of a religion. AGI systems will force us all to do science properly.
Dave : i think you should try to read what i said on this same subject as a reply to these same statements of yours on the other thread concerning consciousness thus= the malaise in current science is much deeper than just what you were mentioning : goes way beyond just that .
All physical sciences will have to undergo a revolutionary and radical change, no one yet can imagine , let alone predict yet , in order to try to deal with the actual factual reality as it is , not only with what materialism tells them what reality is , a materialist paradoxical absurd predicament all physical sciences must and will have to face at some point of history thus : that's something inevitable in this time and age where the end of materialism is nearer than ever .
(P.S.: My sincere apologies for being rude earlier ,sorry: i do still think higher of you ,despite everything : Good luck to you regarding your own work, research ... or whatever you happen to be doing ,or will do ...Best wishes .)
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 08/11/2013 19:57:11Dave : i think you should try to read what i said on this same subject as a reply to these same statements of yours on the other thread concerning consciousness thus= the malaise in current science is much deeper than just what you were mentioning : goes way beyond just that .I think most of it is fine, but there are a few places where scientists state things as facts which are demonstrably false and they simply refuse to recognise the proofs that they are wrong. You can take them a certain distance through an argument that shows the position they hold to be wrong and they often accept every part of it right up to the point where it shows they are wrong, at which point they suddenly see the mortal threat it poses to their treasured beliefs and they backtrack hard, raising all manner of ludicrous objections to all the points they had previously accepted along the way. They are ordinarily rational, but as soon as that conflicts with their holy cows, reason gets thrown out the window and baseless belief triumphs. However, most of science isn't affected by this because it doesn't conflict with anyone's treasured beliefs.
QuoteAll physical sciences will have to undergo a revolutionary and radical change, no one yet can imagine , let alone predict yet , in order to try to deal with the actual factual reality as it is , not only with what materialism tells them what reality is , a materialist paradoxical absurd predicament all physical sciences must and will have to face at some point of history thus : that's something inevitable in this time and age where the end of materialism is nearer than ever .The only change that's going to come is the one brought about by machines forcing science to be done correctly. Unfortunately though, the most interesting question of them all (consciousness) will be beyond the experience of the machines. The only road forward there will be to follow back the chains/networks of causation in the brain to find out where the evidence comes from that leads to the generation of claims about consciousness, and that's going to be a major technological challenge which could take decades.
Quote(P.S.: My sincere apologies for being rude earlier ,sorry: i do still think higher of you ,despite everything : Good luck to you regarding your own work, research ... or whatever you happen to be doing ,or will do ...Best wishes .)I don't mind rudeness and insults as they are either just banter or come out of frustration - you prove periodically that you're a nice person and that's all that counts. You are probably the most pleasant person I've ever had a big argument with on the Interweb.
A while back, I asked whether or not animals hear their own vocalizations and ever mistake it for, say, a rival male, the way a bird attacks attacks his own reflection in a window. Even if response to vocalizations is a simple stimulus response mechanism, the animal has to make the exception “unless it’s coming from me.” I suppose it’s also possible that the animal simply doesn’t have the machinery to do those things at once, make the sound and hear it and the same time. In that same post I also wondered at what point humans or prehumans started talking to themselves, and not just using vocalizations to warn or provoke someone to do something. Maybe those were silly questions, but they still interest me. What I would really like to know about chimps and other animals that have rudimentary forms of language is whether they have internal language, non vocalized representations of vocalizations, or a mental representation of gestures that can exist without actually carrying out the action. In my late 20s I had a weird episode lasting about six months where I found myself attaching the wrong endings to words when I spoke, resulting in a word that was either grammatically incorrect, (with an “ing” ending instead of an “ed”) or resulting a word completely different in meaning, like “complicate” instead of “compliment”. Oddly, it was only verbs, never nouns, unless it was a gerund. Everyone misspeaks once in a while, but it seemed to be happening with a worrisome frequency, and it’s just the weirdest feeling when something comes out of your mouth that you didn’t intend to say, not just odd, but surprising and startling, as if it wasn't "I" who had said, although clearly it had to be. The problem eventually went away. I’m not sure how my odd experience relates to the questions above. We are conscious of our internal monologue and sometimes planning carefully what we want to say before we say it, but on some lower, less conscious level, there also seems to be a process that compares output with intentions, and we aren’t aware of it until there’s a screw up. I don’t know if chimps have an internal monologue, but it’s not hard for me to imagine that they might at the very least have a system that compares output with intentions and makes corrections. There are lots of feedback loops like this - the cerebellum does this for physical movements, although not on a conscious level. Without a working definition of consciousness, it's hard to say how self-awareness relates to consciousness. Some people see self-awareness and introspection as result of consciousness, but if consciousness evolved, it seems more likely that it developed from self-awareness, not the other way around, by turning those same thought processes that are applied to others on oneself, hearing and reacting to one's voice. At any rate, it's interesting that semantic capability and the degree of self-awareness correlate in great apes and babies and possibly other animals as well.
It all comes down to the following , lady :All the malaise at the very heart of science can be summarised by this lethal error that has been made in all sciences and elsewhere , thanks to materialism :Reality as a whole is just material or physical .As long as all sciences will continue looking at reality just through one eye , or rather through just the materialist key hole version of reality , as long as all sciences thus will continue to look at reality as a whole just via one eye , the materialist one , while assuming that the other eye is non-existent , then , all sciences will just give us a distortion of reality as a whole .In short :Reality as a whole is not just material or physical, as the false materialist mainstream 'scientific world view " has been assuming it to be for so long now .So, when all sciences will start including the mental side of reality which they have been missing ,or which they have been reducing to just the physical or material , well, then and only then , all sciences might be able to reveal some more deeper and more fundamental forms of causation that might be underlying the laws of physics themselves , who knows ?Then, all sciences will see reality as a whole , life in general , human language , consciousness ,evolution , and the rest from much wider angles, via science's both eyes , so to speak thus :Even evolution itself cannot be just biological or physical material as a result , the same goes for the origins of life ,its evolution and emergence ,the same goes for the origins of human language....and the rest .