[David Cooper]

What makes you so sure then of your above allegations then ?
What makes your allegations regarding the origins of human language , or those of materialists for that matter , so 'scientific " and true then ?

If you come to this with an agenda that says "God done it", it blinds you to the open route by which language could have evolved. It is easy enough to see a route by which it could happen, so it would be very hard for you to get anywhere near to showing that it couldn't happen. All you can do is push the idea that it couldn't happen, and in order to do that you're requiring it to evolve from a sign language which is almost certainly not how human language came about. Humans needed spoken language in the hours of darkness when signs would be completely useless. It's the wrong path.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

What makes you so sure then of your above allegations then ?
What makes your allegations regarding the origins of human language , or those of materialists for that matter , so 'scientific " and true then ?

If you come to this with an agenda that says "God done it", it blinds you to the open route by which language could have evolved. It is easy enough to see a route by which it could happen, so it would be very hard for you to get anywhere near to showing that it couldn't happen. All you can do is push the idea that it couldn't happen, and in order to do that you're requiring it to evolve from a sign language which is almost certainly not how human language came about. Humans needed spoken language in the hours of darkness when signs would be completely useless. It's the wrong path.

Why do i keep getting misunderstood by most of you , people ? I wonder , Amazing .
I did not say that God did it = that would be an unscientific belief statement  or belief assumption , that's not necessarily false , as materialism is .
All i am saying is that human language is also a matter of consciousness, sub-consciousness, human cognition, creativity , imagination, feelings , emotions , memory , not just a matter of biology or neurology environment nurture  ....human language  in that sense  that could not have evolved from just physics and chemistry, via some prior to modern man species  ?

We have been debating the origin or nature of consciousness, haven't we , and we are stuck in there , as a result mainly of the fact that materialism in science regarding the nature and origin of consciousness gets confused with science on the subject , by our friends ...

Can't you see just that ? I thought that you were the most intelligent member of this forum , i do not think i was wrong about just that .


P.S. : Science does not have to be materialistic : science is not the exclusive "property or monopoly " of materialism or materialists : as one can be a materialist secular believer and a scientist at the same time , so can one be a religious believer and a scientist at the same time also : the difference between the 2 believers scientists is ( The religious believers scientists ,and the secular materialist believers scientists ) : is that materialism is sold to the people as science ,in science and elsewhere , while the religious scientists believers do separate as they should and must do between their religious beliefs and pure science .
Besides, many religious scientists were / are and will be behind many great scientific achievements as well .
Can't you get just that ? Come on, i know you can ...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Another question :

Why does human body language make up 93% of our human communication, while human verbal language just the remaining 7 % ?

[alancalverd]

Everyone on this planet does believe in something , someone , ....in the broader sense also , you are no exception to that rule .

Belief: acceptance of a hypothesis in the absence of evidence. So pray tell me, omniscient one, which hypotheses I accept in the absence of evidence.

       

Why does human body language make up 93% of our human communication, while human verbal language just the remaining 7 % ?

Speak for yourself. I can't see you, but I can imagine you waving your arms. What is the semaphore for "materialism"? Meanwhile I run a business and fly around the sky almost entirely without seeing the people who I interact with.

Anyway as this is a science forum, how did you measure those percentages so precisely? 

[cheryl j]

Another question :

Why does human body language make up 93% of our human communication, while human verbal language just the remaining 7 % ?

That would be a difficult thing to measure. 93% percent of communication might be non verbal, but five words, like "Your hair is on fire" might be much more meaningful or motivating.

[David Cooper]

Another question :

Why does human body language make up 93% of our human communication, while human verbal language just the remaining 7 % ?

That probably includes people walking down the street and all the little signals they give off that enable them to avoid collisions, though the percentages may date back to a time before the mobile phone became sugically attached to people's ears.

[David Cooper]

What makes you so sure then of your above allegations then ?
What makes your allegations regarding the origins of human language , or those of materialists for that matter , so 'scientific " and true then ?

If you come to this with an agenda that says "God done it", it blinds you to the open route by which language could have evolved. It is easy enough to see a route by which it could happen, so it would be very hard for you to get anywhere near to showing that it couldn't happen. All you can do is push the idea that it couldn't happen, and in order to do that you're requiring it to evolve from a sign language which is almost certainly not how human language came about. Humans needed spoken language in the hours of darkness when signs would be completely useless. It's the wrong path.

Why do i keep getting misunderstood by most of you , people ? I wonder , Amazing.

I did not say that God did it = that would be an unscientific belief statement  or belief assumption , that's not necessarily false , as materialism is .

I couldn't really tie your questions to what I'd said, so in "answering" them I took a shortcut and read between the lines, then just told you straight what the situation is, i.e. that there is a clear route by which language could evolve and that it would be one hell of a task trying to prove it couldn't happen when it so clearly could.

All i am saying is that human language is also a matter of consciousness, sub-consciousness, human cognition, creativity , imagination, feelings , emotions , memory , not just a matter of biology or neurology environment nurture  ....human language  in that sense  that could not have evolved from just physics and chemistry, via some prior to modern man species  ?

If you strip consciousness/feelings/emotions out of that, there is no obvious barrier to language evolving. Intelligence can evolve to increase, and lanugage will grow out of intelligence. The only difficulty is with consciousness itself and not language (although the words used to describe consciousness may be exceptions if they are describing a real phenomenon), so it's a mistake to take one problem and extend it into another area such as language and then claim there's a problem for language to evolve on that basis. There is no problem with language itself, regardless of whether there is a problem with consciousness.

We have been debating the origin or nature of consciousness, haven't we , and we are stuck in there , as a result mainly of the fact that materialism in science regarding the nature and origin of consciousness gets confused with science on the subject , by our friends ...

That's a discussion for a thread about consciousness rather than language.

P.S. : Science does not have to be materialistic : science is not the exclusive "property or monopoly " of materialism or materialists : as one can be a materialist secular believer and a scientist at the same time , so can one be a religious believer and a scientist at the same time also : the difference between the 2 believers scientists is ( The religious believers scientists ,and the secular materialist believers scientists ) : is that materialism is sold to the people as science ,in science and elsewhere , while the religious scientists believers do separate as they should and must do between their religious beliefs and pure science .

I don't have a great deal of interest in this materialism thing. So far as I'm concerned, science is about searching for truth and an understanding of reality. That reality includes anything that exists (i.e. is real) whether it is "material" or not, and it would even include a scientific study of "God" if such a creature was to present itself before us. Anything that you want to propose as an alternative to "materialism" is something that science should still be able to study and attempt to uncover the mechanisms behind it. Any point where you propose some kind of magic to fill a gap is a fail because magic cannot work without a mechanism behind it. However, it may be that you aren't proposing any such thing as magic and that you only have a beef with certain people within science who have hidden pieces of magic in their model which they refuse to acknowledge. I have a problem with such people too. They don't approve of reason as a tool of science except where it fits in with their beliefs, but whenever it contradicts their beliefs they immediately wave it off as "philosophy". They make a distinction between acceptable scientific reasoning and philosophical reasoning not on the basis of differences between the pieces of reasoning involved, but on the basis of what fits with their beliefs on a case by case basis. They are incapable of recognising that they do this because as soon as any depth of thinking is required to cover the ground, any logical argument which proves them wrong will be accused of being circular, even when it is fully linear. I have found this to be the norm in every field of study right up to the highest levels, and the only cure for it will be to provide everyone with logical thinking machines which have the patience to demonstrate time and time again to each individual in every discussion precisely how it is that the individual position which they hold is wrong by breaking it down for them into a chain of undeniable "x therefore y" steps for them. When a human tries to do this with even one individual, their response is to run here, there and everywhere pointing at things wherever they get complex and labelling things as errors which are not errors, running away from them over and over again and resorting to obfuscation tactics until the conversation turns into a trollfest. What is needed most of all in this world is an intelligent piece of software into which each individual can load their own personal model of reality and have the machine show up all the points which conflict with each other. It is only then that all the idiotic positions that so many people currently hold will begin to fall apart, because when this kind of machine calls someone stupid, it will be able to demonstate that it is right and will never tire of doing so.

So, rather than getting bogged down for my entire life in arguments that never end, I prefer to get out of them as soon as the other participants become incapable of taking anything on board, and then I get on with the task of trying to build the kind of intelligent software that will be able to solve all of these arguments in the future. Intelligent machines will probably still not be able to solve many of the problems (such as understanding consciousness), but at least it should get everyone with an ounce of intelligence to the point where they can see what the problems actually are rather them floundering about in areas where they aren't actually addressing real problems at all.

Besides, many religious scientists were / are and will be behind many great scientific achievements as well.

There is no bar to religious people making scientific advances, just as there is no bar to scientist who have little bits of magic here and there in their model of reality making advances. Many of the advances they make actually involve the elimination of bits of magic from the model by uncovering the hidden mechanisms behind things which were previously not understood, and it's only after the mechanisms have been found that the former existence of magic in the model is no longer denied by them, though they will typically rewrite history to hide their embarrassment, claiming that they always knew the problem was there and that they never saw the magic they previously relied on to fill the gap as valid solution.

[grizelda]

Leave it to Don Of the Gaps to use words to deny the existence of language.

That's exactly the other way around : this is all about materialism of the gaps = the materialist dogmatic belief system and materialist meta-paradigm dominating in science , that must not be confused with science , that's all .
So, i have been denying nothing (How can  i  deny the existence of language , be serious ) , i was just rejecting materialism in science , that's all .

Well, if the gaps are materialism, and the gaps themselves are gaps in materialism, then it's all materialism. You've proved your own irrelevance. Good job! Cookie?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Leave it to Don Of the Gaps to use words to deny the existence of language.

That's exactly the other way around : this is all about materialism of the gaps = the materialist dogmatic belief system and materialist meta-paradigm dominating in science , that must not be confused with science , that's all .
So, i have been denying nothing (How can  i  deny the existence of language , be serious ) , i was just rejecting materialism in science , that's all .

Well, if the gaps are materialism, and the gaps themselves are gaps in materialism, then it's all materialism. You've proved your own irrelevance. Good job! Cookie?

No, honey : you got it all wrong again :

I can't resist the temptation of making you realise your delusion : that would not be nice of me not to do that , on my way out of here , on my way home :

Since materialism reduces the whole universe to just physics and chemistry , so, materialism cannot but "deliver " some magical materialism of the gaps , in the form of all those materialist magical "emergence computational" trick performances ,regarding the origins and nature of consciousness, human cognition ...

Note that i do not reject the true emergence phenomena at the exclusively biological physical material levels ...

Materialism is obviously and undeniably false , unscientific = just a belief , and absurd at that ....

Bon appetit eating your own cookie ...

[grizelda]

Thanks, I just thought I'd share that rout of the "God of the Gaps" crowd with you, but it might not go over big in  your 'hood. Do you live by de Nile?

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Thanks, I just thought I'd share that rout of the "God of the Gaps" crowd with you, but it might not go over big in  your 'hood. Do you live by de Nile?

Nice try , thanks anyway :
There is in fact no such a thing such as "God of the gaps " = everything and being has been created by God, God's creation that's still an ongoing process , as the universe is still expanding :

We just have to try to understand and try to explain what we can , regarding God's creation, via our human limited faculties : via science mainly , reason , logic ....that do cover just a tiny piece of reality though :
There is way much more to the universe out there , within and without , than just what those human limited faculties + their technological and other extensions can reveal, obviously  :
So, metaphorically and ironically speaking , do not try to behave act think feel , experience things, see hear taste smell  ....things , concepts , ideas ...or beings , in the same fashion  like an ant would "do " on the back of an elephant , an ant that would assume that that tiny part of that elephant where it happens to be standing , moving , living , resting ....is all what there is to that elephant , let alone that the rest of the universe is all what there is to it ...............

I do live on this tiny insignificant planet , as you happen to do , amidst unimaginable oceans of billions and billions of galaxies out there , and maybe much more ...

So, to pretend to be able to know "everything"  there is to know within and without , via some sort of a theory of everything = a theory of nothing , is not only an idiotic belief assumption  , but it is also an untrue one+ an unscientific one  , obviously .

Cheers .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

What makes you so sure then of your above allegations then ?
What makes your allegations regarding the origins of human language , or those of materialists for that matter , so 'scientific " and true then ?

If you come to this with an agenda that says "God done it", it blinds you to the open route by which language could have evolved. It is easy enough to see a route by which it could happen, so it would be very hard for you to get anywhere near to showing that it couldn't happen. All you can do is push the idea that it couldn't happen, and in order to do that you're requiring it to evolve from a sign language which is almost certainly not how human language came about. Humans needed spoken language in the hours of darkness when signs would be completely useless. It's the wrong path.

Why do i keep getting misunderstood by most of you , people ? I wonder , Amazing.

I did not say that God did it = that would be an unscientific belief statement  or belief assumption , that's not necessarily false , as materialism is .

I couldn't really tie your questions to what I'd said, so in "answering" them I took a shortcut and read between the lines, then just told you straight what the situation is, i.e. that there is a clear route by which language could evolve and that it would be one hell of a task trying to prove it couldn't happen when it so clearly could.

All i am saying is that human language is also a matter of consciousness, sub-consciousness, human cognition, creativity , imagination, feelings , emotions , memory , not just a matter of biology or neurology environment nurture  ....human language  in that sense  that could not have evolved from just physics and chemistry, via some prior to modern man species  ?

If you strip consciousness/feelings/emotions out of that, there is no obvious barrier to language evolving. Intelligence can evolve to increase, and lanugage will grow out of intelligence. The only difficulty is with consciousness itself and not language (although the words used to describe consciousness may be exceptions if they are describing a real phenomenon), so it's a mistake to take one problem and extend it into another area such as language and then claim there's a problem for language to evolve on that basis. There is no problem with language itself, regardless of whether there is a problem with consciousness.

We have been debating the origin or nature of consciousness, haven't we , and we are stuck in there , as a result mainly of the fact that materialism in science regarding the nature and origin of consciousness gets confused with science on the subject , by our friends ...

That's a discussion for a thread about consciousness rather than language.

P.S. : Science does not have to be materialistic : science is not the exclusive "property or monopoly " of materialism or materialists : as one can be a materialist secular believer and a scientist at the same time , so can one be a religious believer and a scientist at the same time also : the difference between the 2 believers scientists is ( The religious believers scientists ,and the secular materialist believers scientists ) : is that materialism is sold to the people as science ,in science and elsewhere , while the religious scientists believers do separate as they should and must do between their religious beliefs and pure science .

I don't have a great deal of interest in this materialism thing. So far as I'm concerned, science is about searching for truth and an understanding of reality. That reality includes anything that exists (i.e. is real) whether it is "material" or not, and it would even include a scientific study of "God" if such a creature was to present itself before us. Anything that you want to propose as an alternative to "materialism" is something that science should still be able to study and attempt to uncover the mechanisms behind it. Any point where you propose some kind of magic to fill a gap is a fail because magic cannot work without a mechanism behind it. However, it may be that you aren't proposing any such thing as magic and that you only have a beef with certain people within science who have hidden pieces of magic in their model which they refuse to acknowledge. I have a problem with such people too. They don't approve of reason as a tool of science except where it fits in with their beliefs, but whenever it contradicts their beliefs they immediately wave it off as "philosophy". They make a distinction between acceptable scientific reasoning and philosophical reasoning not on the basis of differences between the pieces of reasoning involved, but on the basis of what fits with their beliefs on a case by case basis. They are incapable of recognising that they do this because as soon as any depth of thinking is required to cover the ground, any logical argument which proves them wrong will be accused of being circular, even when it is fully linear. I have found this to be the norm in every field of study right up to the highest levels, and the only cure for it will be to provide everyone with logical thinking machines which have the patience to demonstrate time and time again to each individual in every discussion precisely how it is that the individual position which they hold is wrong by breaking it down for them into a chain of undeniable "x therefore y" steps for them. When a human tries to do this with even one individual, their response is to run here, there and everywhere pointing at things wherever they get complex and labelling things as errors which are not errors, running away from them over and over again and resorting to obfuscation tactics until the conversation turns into a trollfest. What is needed most of all in this world is an intelligent piece of software into which each individual can load their own personal model of reality and have the machine show up all the points which conflict with each other. It is only then that all the idiotic positions that so many people currently hold will begin to fall apart, because when this kind of machine calls someone stupid, it will be able to demonstate that it is right and will never tire of doing so.

So, rather than getting bogged down for my entire life in arguments that never end, I prefer to get out of them as soon as the other participants become incapable of taking anything on board, and then I get on with the task of trying to build the kind of intelligent software that will be able to solve all of these arguments in the future. Intelligent machines will probably still not be able to solve many of the problems (such as understanding consciousness), but at least it should get everyone with an ounce of intelligence to the point where they can see what the problems actually are rather them floundering about in areas where they aren't actually addressing real problems at all.

Besides, many religious scientists were / are and will be behind many great scientific achievements as well.

There is no bar to religious people making scientific advances, just as there is no bar to scientist who have little bits of magic here and there in their model of reality making advances. Many of the advances they make actually involve the elimination of bits of magic from the model by uncovering the hidden mechanisms behind things which were previously not understood, and it's only after the mechanisms have been found that the former existence of magic in the model is no longer denied by them, though they will typically rewrite history to hide their embarrassment, claiming that they always knew the problem was there and that they never saw the magic they previously relied on to fill the gap as valid solution.

[/quote]

See my response to our gizelda   here above , friend .

Science can cover only a tiny piece of reality .....

Man is also a whole package : body and mind : you cannot reduce man ,or some of man's qualities properties ,such as human language , to just physical biological material ones to fit your purpose , no way + the whole is not the sum of its parts , obviously ,either

To say that you or any oneelse for that matter can develop some sort of software you referred to that would be able to address and maybe  even solve somehow the human intrinsic irrational tendency , that's part of the human nature , to stick to irrational subjective beliefs , even in the face of common sense , reason, logic , science ... is simply ludicrous, otherwise it would be easy to create or manufacture "sentient alive " machines = cannot be done, obviously  .

Man or life as a whole are no machines, or computers : it is about time that you let go of that machine computer analogy regarding life as a whole , that's been dominating in science for so long now ...

Have you ever encountered or seen any machine computer for that matter that's capable of growing from  some of its smallest parts genes , that's capable of creativity, felxibility adaptation evolution, that's capable of reproduction replication, self-reproduction self-replication,self-organization, self-maintenance , self-sustainance , that's capable of those unique to life metabolisms .............?

Do tell me when you have  , please ...

[David Cooper]

Evolution is a slow process, so of course I haven't seen it happen with machines. Everything that we see in nature though fits in with the machine "analogy" except for consciousness.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Evolution is a slow process, so of course I haven't seen it happen with machines. Everything that we see in nature though fits in with the machine "analogy" except for consciousness.

Quickly then, gotta go :
Everything we see in nature "fits in " with the machine "analogy or metaphor " except ...the nature of life  (Can you explain life just via just physics and chemistry ? describing life via just physics and chemistry is no full explanation of life, no explanation  of life  ,period  )  , except the nature of human intellect and consciousness, except consciousness in all living beings and things , except the nature of human emotions feelings , except the nature of human love , except the nature of human conscience , except the nature of human ethics ....the list is still long .

Living orgranisms are , obviously , no machines : see above .
Later , alligator .

[David Cooper]

Everything we see in nature "fits in " with the machine "analogy or metaphor " except ...the nature of life

No. Life is easy because it is just chemistry. Consciousness is the only real difficulty - the rest is just complexity making it hard to set out exact mechanisms, but the mechanisms are already understood in principle for everything except consciousness.

(Can you explain life just via just physics and chemistry ? describing life via just physics and chemistry is no full explanation of life, no explanation  of life  ,period  )  ,

There is plenty of explanation available to satisfy me that everything about life is an extension of chemistry and physics, except for consciousness.

except the nature of human intellect and consciousness,

Human intellect is just mechanistic applied reasoning (though typically done with many errors).

except consciousness in all living beings and things ,

Agreed

except the nature of human emotions feelings ,

Agreed - they are part of consciousness.

except the nature of human love ,

Agreed - it is part of consciousness.

except the nature of human conscience , except the nature of human ethics

Which again relates to consciousness - if there's no such thing as suffering, there is no role for ethics.

....the list is still long .

The list is short: consciousness.

Living orgranisms are , obviously , no machines : see above .

They are obviously chemical machines, but there is a problem with consciousness as it's the part that doesn't find an explanation yet in our current scientific knowledge, not even in principle.

[cheryl j]

except consciousness in all living beings and things ,

Agreed

except the nature of human emotions feelings ,

Agreed - they are part of consciousness.

Are you sure about that David, that emotions are not another kind of thought or reasoning process?

[grizelda]

There is in fact no such a thing such as "God of the gaps "

By denying that there is such a concept as "God of the Gaps" you are not commenting on its truth or falsity, but we just proved that it was false.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

except consciousness in all living beings and things ,

Agreed

except the nature of human emotions feelings ,

Agreed - they are part of consciousness.

Are you sure about that David, that emotions are not another kind of thought or reasoning process?

Whitehead or somoneelse stated so logically that emotions and feelings are just thought-projects in the making in fact :
Say , you are grabbed by an intense emotion or feeling : they are just a process that ends in being translated into certain ...thoughts at their resting points .

Feelings and emotions are just processes that translate themselves into ...thought thus .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

There is in fact no such a thing such as "God of the gaps "

By denying that there is such a concept as "God of the Gaps" you are not commenting on its truth or falsity, but we just proved that it was false.

"God of the gaps   thing " is just a false materialist belief assumption way to say that religion just tries to "fill in the gaps " that are momentarily not "explained " by science , while the latter 's realm and jurisdiction are just material empirical = science , per definition, can neither prove nor disprove beliefs , either the religious or the secular ones , sis .

[grizelda]

You're too modest comrade. Your proof that "God of the Gaps" is false is a triumphant accomplishment. Don Quichotte will be hailed far and wide for bringing God to par with witches, goblins and easterbunnies. Hell, they might even rename halloween in your honor. Bigtime, Don, bigtime.