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language

Where Wallace can shed light and Darwin can’t

From ENST: ... how did humans by means of natural selection alone develop language and sophisticated verbal communication? The answer: we didn’t. It was a product inherent in us, what Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin’s partner and challenger, said it was all along, an intrinsic part of human exceptionalism. Read More ›

Biologists can’t stop using purpose-driven language because life really is designed

Crawford: I conclude that, since teleological concepts cannot be abstracted away from biological explanations without loss of meaning and explanatory power, life is inherently teleological. It is the teleological character of life which makes it a unique phenomenon requiring a unique discipline of study distinct from physics or chemistry. Read More ›

Asked at Mind Matters News: But, in the end, did the chimpanzee really talk?

The Smithsonian article tells us a good deal about the motivations of those who, essentially, see bonobos not as apes in need of protection but, to judge from their rhetoric, as something like an oppressed people. Read More ›

L&FP40: Language is . . . (as a foundation for understanding machine code and mathematical language as just that, linguistic)

It seems we need to clarify language. For, we see in the Ortho types thread: EG, 140: >> . . . Definitions of language: Webster’s: the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a community. Britannica: a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. Cambridge: a system of communication consisting of sounds, words, and grammar, or the system of communication used by people in a particular country or type of work. Collins: A language is a system of communication which consists of a set of sounds and written symbols which are used by Read More ›

Cog sci prof: Homo erectus may have invented language

Well, if Homo erectus invented language, we must intensify our search for that subhuman. In any proper Darwinian scheme, someone must be the subhuman, right? Otherwise, we re playing a game of musical chairs where, when the music stops, there ARE actually enough chairs… Read More ›

Claims about the origin of language admitted to be “highly speculative”

In a pop science outlet, no less. What? Weren’t chimpanzees learning to talk just last year or something? It's almost like some people want to take language seriously now. Read More ›

At Salvo: The language barrier with animals is not a “cultural construct”

If human intelligence is an accidental outcropping of the animal world, a sufficiently diligent researcher may expect to find the same intelligence in many other animals. But, so the argument runs, we are too prejudiced to see it. Read More ›

Could speech have emerged 200,000 years ago?

They're even willing to conjecture that speech began as far back as twenty million years? So, speech could be very old so long as something like monkeys did it in the past? Despite the fact that nothing like monkeys does it today? Naturalism makes people confused. Read More ›

Language is much more complex than once thought

Researcher: Our brains process language with astonishing speed and 'immediacy', in a dynamic network of interacting brain areas. All the relevant information becomes available immediately, as we start combining the meanings of individual words, unifying the different sources of information. To speed up this process, our brain actively predicts what is coming next (for instance, we might expect 'newspaper' to follow 'the editor of the ...'). Read More ›