The most pressing question while reading Masse’s article for me was that if the power of language evolved from being able to have the advantage of saving time and learning by instructional language, why is this exclusive to humans? Can the explanation lie in the fact that humans simply have unique social and kin dependent cooperation? This seems more likely than language just being a byproduct of our brains getting larger, but cooperative behavior is not limited to humans. What underlying mechanisms would have allowed humans to engage more flexibly, efficiently, and extensively in cooperative behavior that could have given rise to natural language that could not have arose from the social cooperation of other species?
Regarding 5.1: “Because we were more social, more cooperative and collaborative, more kin-dependent—and not necessarily because we were that much smarter—some of us discovered the power of acquiring categories by instruction instead of just induction, first passively, by chance, without the help of any genetic predisposition. “
The whole reading sounds convincing to me in addressing the origin of language. However, when it comes to this part, I wondered if being more social and more cooperative are the reasons that brought us to discovered the power of categorization by instruction. There are animals that tend to live together in a group, that are kin-dependent and social too, but end up only humans have language. I think this specificity of language to humans is not well-explained by the reading. Being social of course is one of the very important bases that allows language to arise (because you will need someone to talk to), however, this may not be the biggest reason for the arising of language, though.
On top of that, in the part concerning the chimps, which were said to be lacking motivation in picking up symbols to define categories, remains unclear in explaining why only humans, but not chimps, can acquire language. I wonder if there is something, maybe a kind of capacity or a genetic predisposition, that exists only in humans, such that it enables us to develop language after discovering the power of acquiring categories by instruction, (instead of a kind of motivation that does the whole action of picking up the linguistic ball).
I was trying to discuss with Julia (top of this page) about the point she made, but apart from a weak shrug towards ‘more advanced vocal chords and speech-related motor machinery’ I didn’t have anything convincing to really say. You’re right, there are other species that are kin dependent, social, and do communicate to a degree, just not like we do, and I have also wondered why only humans have advanced language- especially since chimpanzees are capable. Though unmotivated, surely there must be points in time when, out of the lab setting and with their peers (as in their natural habitat), there has to be a point in time when ‘saying’ something would be of great importance and convenience. One thing I’d be interested in knowing is if these lab-trained animals can then teach their peers the things they’ve learnt. More specifically, could Koko the Gorilla teach a ‘friend’ the signs that she has learnt?
This article very clearly summed up most of the topics covered in class. Blondin-Masse et al. describe the evolution of language as a transformation from sensorimotor induction (gesture and pantomime) to verbal instruction that was achieved through Baldwinian evolution favouring the “disposition to learn”. Human motivation was a driving force in the development of propositional language and the ability to instruct. Is the article suggesting that language is a by-product, or spandrel, to the selection for “motivation”? Moreover, why would humans specifically be endowed with “motivation”? The article attributes human “motivation” to humans being “more social, cooperative, collaborative and kin-dependent,” but these characteristics are not exclusive to humans – they can be found in many animal species.
Hello, I am not sure to understand the question, but to me it does not seem that the article presents language as a by-product of motivation. Rather, what it means is that humans were motivated to communicate better, and for that purpose they were able to create language, so language seems to be an end by itself. The authors wanted to insist that it is not a matter of intelligence, but rather of motivation. As for why they were more motivated than chimps, the article doesn't claim to answer that question,rather they leave it as an open question. It is true that chimps for example are also very much kin-dependent, but the authors suggest that our ancestors were even more collaborative. How the "click" happened, is what Pinker criticizes Chomsky for not explaining.
RE: “ tell—just as many of them are also present in our contemporary ape cousins as well as in other intelligent social species today: the capacity to learn the features distinguishing categories by sensorimotor induction; the capacity to learn by observation and imitation; the capacity for pointing, shared attention, and mind-reading; a strong tendency for kin cooperation in the rearing of late-developing young; and the possession of both “canonical” or “affordance neurons” (which recognize what you can do with what) and “mirror neurons” (which recognize when another organism is doing the same kind of thing you are doing).”
In this section the paper discusses the idea that there are cognitive components in humans and animals that we may have had available before we had language. They had the ability to learn by observation and imitation, point, use shared attention etc. it then talks about whether or not the power of language was invented or discovered. They tell us how proposition was born however I’m confused as to why this happened. How did the knower become “actively involved in the communication of the composite categories”? Was there some cognitive component that was turned on? Or did a new part of the brain develop that was devoted to communication?
What I enjoy about the Harnad papers is that they tend to provide a fairly broad overview/summary about the issue/topic at hand, and then go into depth for the explanation. I found this article nicely sums up what we’ve been talking about up to this point (symbol grounding, language, categorization, etc.) not to mention an easy-to-understand definition of syntax/semantics/logic systems. The origins of our language are intuitively theorized in the opening pages and many large concepts, such as UG and the translatability hypothesis are smoothly explained. Having been interested in the adaptive benefits of language and just how strong of an impact it must have had, to be so hard-wired into us (and to have overcome the disadvantages, such as choking – briefly alluded to in another reading), I was very interested in the artificial life simulation. When we spoke about chicken-sexers in class, and how the skill takes years to master – and how a researcher then very explicitly taught it to a novice class, quickly bringing them up to a high level of sexing ability much faster than normal – I was hoping to see a model or simulation showing just that (in my previous cognition class, 532 - which some of you have taken, we also spoke a little bit about this). Though intuitive after the fact, it was still incredible to see the evidence, how much of a benefit instruction, vs. induction, bestows onto a population. What I really want to know is why chimps and other high primates don't communicate through language like us - for sure in the lab they may be unmotivated, but when it comes to communicating to their kin that there's a snake on the jungle floor? I assume hopping around and screaming are hardly specific enough. I don't know if it's something we can research, but I wonder nonetheless.
I agree with the authors over the use of the word “proto-language”, mostly in the fact that if we consider all languages to be functionally equivalent and to have the same ability of expression, then the proto-language would be identical in that regard to any modern language. However, studying to origin of UG is onlygoing to lead to (if we ever find an answer) the origin of UG. If we are trying to establish a ‘grand unified theory of cognition’, it’s actually really important to consider domain-general processes that are used in human communication and are facilitated by propositions. So perhaps we developed this propositional ability after other cognitive processes and the propositions piggy-backed off of those, or perhaps new cognitive abilities have been added over time through evolution and this contributes to the whole package that we call language…linguistic study as well as study of the brain and cognitive processes will maybe give insight into what is essential to make this compete language package – as in all the bits and pieces that were needed to make the first proto-language.
Regarding the question of what sets humans apart from all other species in our capacity for language, this article suggests, “What seems missing is not the intelligence but the motivation, indeed the compulsion to name and describe.” In speculating about the origin of language, I don't think that the role of motivation can be simply reduced to a “doing” capacity; motivation is a feeling state. Considering the role of motivation in propositionality raises the hard problem because it feels like something to be motivated to teach/learn. We don’t know the why/how underlying this motivation (or lack thereof in the case of other species), and so any attempt to address this question is speculative at best.
In their discussion of the sequential order of events, the Harnad and Lefebvre question: "How did it happen? And what was the tremendous adaptive advantage that it conferred—an advantage great enough to have resulted (within a relatively short period of evolutionary time) in the fact that that new capacity and propensity became encoded in the genotypes and encephalized in the brains of every normal member of our species?"
This implies that this formal logical system of propositional statements with truth values happened and then was hard-coded into our genetic material. But what if, like with many other phenomena, the causal description is an interaction of genes and environment. So, perhaps we and all other organisms who have more rudimentary forms of language, have certain genes which make it possible for us to learn language (UG, lets say), and what is required to activate these genes is specific interactions between the organism and the environment that are only possible due to the particular sensorimotor capabilities that humans have. This is different from the process described above because it does not assume that an "origin event" occurred, and was followed by a gradual hard-coding until all normal humans possessed these genes, but rather that there was a precise interaction between the environment and genes that that humans already possessed which allowed language to develop. As to the continuation of this ability in subsequent generations, perhaps it was a "tipping point" phenomenon, and after this ability was conferred to an individual, these activated genes were passed down for posterity. Although a controversial and possibly ridiculous explanation, I think it is interesting to consider alternate causal events and temporal patterns that could have brought about the genesis of language as we define it (not too broadly and not too narrowly) today.
I think this paper builds nicely off of the readings on the symbol grounding problem. Previously we learned that symbol grounding is essential to passing the Turing Test. From this paper we understand that symbol grounding is also essential to the process of categorization and is intimately connected with language. While not the exactly the same thing as a Turing machine (since a Turing machine represents computation), language can likewise be viewed as a set of symbols (with a rather arbitrary shape) that are subject to a set of rules which dictate how these symbols can be combined to form propositions. Language requires that a subset of these symbols be grounded in “real world” terms (ie sensorimotor experience). These more concrete words can be used to create more abstract or complex concepts (ie categories) in the absence of direct sensorimotor experience with those concepts.Once these new words have been learned they can then in turn be used to create more new categories. This is why you can look up a new, previously unknown word in a dictionary and gain a reasonable understanding of this word by reading a definition (that notably does not include any images to illustrate the word in question). The ability to name categories using language and then to relay the name using words is extremely powerful and can greatly facilitate learning via instructional learning.
I suppose in this context we are describing words as means of identifying and representing categories. However I would posit in any natural language there need to be words that do not represent categories per say such as “with” “the” “or” “because” to help form propositions. Is there a specific set of propositions that are essential to have in any given language? For example is there a word that shares the same logical meaning of “because” in every human language? Based on my knowledge of philosophy classes in logic, I would assume that there is a specific, finite set of propositional symbols that would be necessary to communicate a full range of meaningful propositional structures.
“We have now reduced the question of what is the origin of language to the question of what is the origin of a symbol system in which you can say anything that can be said in any natural language.” This reminds me of the symbol grounding system. Without our cognitive abilities, these symbols (and thus language systems) become altogether meaningless. Our minds ground language to the physical world and to communication.
The part the speaks about motivation is also intriguing. Motivation is a great explanation of the quick learning of small children. It also explains why highly linguistic environments lead to more verbose children whereas vocabulary low environments are not as motivating. However, would there not be a precursor to that initial motivation? There must be a innate/genetic pre-motivation for children to seek out language as something they must learn. Perhaps it is an innate drive for communication and social adhesion? Humans are a very social species, and we create social circles and cultures based on the exchange of information and ingroup/ outgroup dynamics.
The reading talks about a necessary groundwork for language to evolve. Some of the necessities are a capacity for sensorimotor induction, a capacity to learn by observation and imitation (enter mirror neurons), a strong tendency for kin cooperation (to motivate a member to teach another using instruction about a new category using existing categories), and provide assistance for rearing late-developing young.
On that last potential necessity, is late-developing young one of the crucial environmental features that motivated humans to develop propositional language whereas apes did not? Harnad, in the previous reading said that apes simply lack the motivation to learn propositional language. I'm guessing this is purely due to differing environmental conditions. Perhaps humans originally had a more demanding environment coupled with particularly late-developing young (humans have one of the most late-developing young in the animal kingdom).
Although I find that Pinker's argument that it is too soon to discard the evolutionary argument certainly makes sense to a certain degree, it seems to me that this claim is in contradiction with his other argument, namely that we should discard non-evolutionary explanations. Indeed, on the one hand he argues that it is normal that just because we havent found any concrete evolutionary mechanism it does not mean that we should stop looking, yet on the other he very categorically concludes that only the evolutionary theory can bring an explanation for complex mechanisms -on the sole basis of the absence of evidence in support of other theories. In other words, he seems to set a much higher standard for other possible theories that would aim to explain the appearance of language, which seems to me a quite conservative approach.
This experiment with mushrooms is fascinating because to me it gives further evidence that Pinker's argument about the absence of evidence in favor of evolutionary theories is flawed. Indeed, the mushroom experiment shows that even before we reach the level of propositional language, having some sort of communication is functionally/evolutionary advantageous. Therefore, if, like Pinker claims, language was born through evolutionary mechanisms, we would expect each stage between this "show" (the mushroom experiment) and "tell" (our language) to have been increasingly functionally advantageous. In other words, it makes little sense that there would be no living species that would display intermediate language abilities, yet Pinker argues that this is normal. His claim either undermines the importance of function/advantage in Darwinian evolution, or requires more explanation (eg.: humans would have eliminated any species that would display such abilities because they would be a threat/competitor)
This reading made me think back to Searle’s Chinese Room Argument and how language really is just a set of arbitrary symbols which physically and objectively have no meaning. It is only when you ground it, which you do through sensorimotor experience, that you get meaning. And meaning is also really only achieved if you can feel it. But language is obviously so useful, otherwise it wouldn’t have been passed on and it wouldn’t be our main way of communicating now. I think the point that it transitioned from pantomiming to a vocal language was interesting, but it also makes me wonder why we didn’t just evolve to people primarily using sign language? What made it go to a vocal modality instead of continuing as a gestural language? Is it just so that we can use our hands for more useful things or so that we can multitask?
The question of why other intelligent animals, let’s use chimps as an example, haven’t picked up language really interests me. After reading the article, two alternative explanations came to mind. I don’t think motivation, as it relates to social and cooperative tendencies, is a sufficient explanation because chimps are also extremely social and orient their behaviours to promote the success of their kin. Motivation could play a different role, though. The article points out that learning categories through instruction is faster, but the time it takes to do the right thing with that category takes longer. The effort of instructing and compromised reaction time might be more costly to chimps than the associated benefits. This could be explained by what is necessary for survival and lifestyle between the two species. Chimps may only really need to know and interact with categories that are readily available to them to learn through induction, and may not need to communicate out of sight happenings for their survival since they are relatively safe in their natural habitat. On the other hand, humans have a lot more to gain from learning through instruction, since they are a relatively physically weak species, and need the use of tools/technologies to survive.
On another note, animal’s lack of language could be linked to their ability to imagine. Maybe animals *do* have the capacity to construe an A is a B as a proposition, but they just can’t mentalize a composite category made up of A and B if they have never experienced the composite category first hand before. The inability to create new categories could be because other animal’s are less able to imagine, which could be a result of a less developed sense of self, ability to mentally travel to past and future memories, or absence of a proper mutation or gene.
The most pressing question while reading Masse’s article for me was that if the power of language evolved from being able to have the advantage of saving time and learning by instructional language, why is this exclusive to humans? Can the explanation lie in the fact that humans simply have unique social and kin dependent cooperation? This seems more likely than language just being a byproduct of our brains getting larger, but cooperative behavior is not limited to humans. What underlying mechanisms would have allowed humans to engage more flexibly, efficiently, and extensively in cooperative behavior that could have given rise to natural language that could not have arose from the social cooperation of other species?
ReplyDeleteRegarding 5.1: “Because we were more social, more cooperative and collaborative, more kin-dependent—and not necessarily because we were that much smarter—some of us discovered the power of acquiring categories by instruction instead of just induction, first passively, by chance, without the help of any genetic predisposition. “
ReplyDeleteThe whole reading sounds convincing to me in addressing the origin of language. However, when it comes to this part, I wondered if being more social and more cooperative are the reasons that brought us to discovered the power of categorization by instruction. There are animals that tend to live together in a group, that are kin-dependent and social too, but end up only humans have language. I think this specificity of language to humans is not well-explained by the reading. Being social of course is one of the very important bases that allows language to arise (because you will need someone to talk to), however, this may not be the biggest reason for the arising of language, though.
On top of that, in the part concerning the chimps, which were said to be lacking motivation in picking up symbols to define categories, remains unclear in explaining why only humans, but not chimps, can acquire language. I wonder if there is something, maybe a kind of capacity or a genetic predisposition, that exists only in humans, such that it enables us to develop language after discovering the power of acquiring categories by instruction, (instead of a kind of motivation that does the whole action of picking up the linguistic ball).
I was trying to discuss with Julia (top of this page) about the point she made, but apart from a weak shrug towards ‘more advanced vocal chords and speech-related motor machinery’ I didn’t have anything convincing to really say. You’re right, there are other species that are kin dependent, social, and do communicate to a degree, just not like we do, and I have also wondered why only humans have advanced language- especially since chimpanzees are capable. Though unmotivated, surely there must be points in time when, out of the lab setting and with their peers (as in their natural habitat), there has to be a point in time when ‘saying’ something would be of great importance and convenience. One thing I’d be interested in knowing is if these lab-trained animals can then teach their peers the things they’ve learnt. More specifically, could Koko the Gorilla teach a ‘friend’ the signs that she has learnt?
DeleteThis article very clearly summed up most of the topics covered in class. Blondin-Masse et al. describe the evolution of language as a transformation from sensorimotor induction (gesture and pantomime) to verbal instruction that was achieved through Baldwinian evolution favouring the “disposition to learn”. Human motivation was a driving force in the development of propositional language and the ability to instruct. Is the article suggesting that language is a by-product, or spandrel, to the selection for “motivation”? Moreover, why would humans specifically be endowed with “motivation”? The article attributes human “motivation” to humans being “more social, cooperative, collaborative and kin-dependent,” but these characteristics are not exclusive to humans – they can be found in many animal species.
ReplyDeleteHello, I am not sure to understand the question, but to me it does not seem that the article presents language as a by-product of motivation. Rather, what it means is that humans were motivated to communicate better, and for that purpose they were able to create language, so language seems to be an end by itself. The authors wanted to insist that it is not a matter of intelligence, but rather of motivation. As for why they were more motivated than chimps, the article doesn't claim to answer that question,rather they leave it as an open question. It is true that chimps for example are also very much kin-dependent, but the authors suggest that our ancestors were even more collaborative. How the "click" happened, is what Pinker criticizes Chomsky for not explaining.
DeleteRE: “ tell—just as many of them are also present in our contemporary ape cousins as well as in other intelligent social species today: the capacity to learn the features distinguishing categories by sensorimotor induction; the capacity to learn by observation and imitation; the capacity for pointing, shared attention, and mind-reading; a strong tendency for kin cooperation in the rearing of late-developing young; and the possession of both “canonical” or “affordance neurons” (which recognize what you can do with what) and “mirror neurons” (which recognize when another organism is doing the same kind of thing you are doing).”
ReplyDeleteIn this section the paper discusses the idea that there are cognitive components in humans and animals that we may have had available before we had language. They had the ability to learn by observation and imitation, point, use shared attention etc. it then talks about whether or not the power of language was invented or discovered. They tell us how proposition was born however I’m confused as to why this happened. How did the knower become “actively involved in the communication of the composite categories”? Was there some cognitive component that was turned on? Or did a new part of the brain develop that was devoted to communication?
What I enjoy about the Harnad papers is that they tend to provide a fairly broad overview/summary about the issue/topic at hand, and then go into depth for the explanation. I found this article nicely sums up what we’ve been talking about up to this point (symbol grounding, language, categorization, etc.) not to mention an easy-to-understand definition of syntax/semantics/logic systems. The origins of our language are intuitively theorized in the opening pages and many large concepts, such as UG and the translatability hypothesis are smoothly explained. Having been interested in the adaptive benefits of language and just how strong of an impact it must have had, to be so hard-wired into us (and to have overcome the disadvantages, such as choking – briefly alluded to in another reading), I was very interested in the artificial life simulation. When we spoke about chicken-sexers in class, and how the skill takes years to master – and how a researcher then very explicitly taught it to a novice class, quickly bringing them up to a high level of sexing ability much faster than normal – I was hoping to see a model or simulation showing just that (in my previous cognition class, 532 - which some of you have taken, we also spoke a little bit about this). Though intuitive after the fact, it was still incredible to see the evidence, how much of a benefit instruction, vs. induction, bestows onto a population. What I really want to know is why chimps and other high primates don't communicate through language like us - for sure in the lab they may be unmotivated,
ReplyDeletebut when it comes to communicating to their kin that there's a snake on the jungle floor? I assume hopping around and screaming are hardly specific enough. I don't know if it's something we can research, but I wonder nonetheless.
I agree with the authors over the use of the word “proto-language”, mostly in the fact that if we consider all languages to be functionally equivalent and to have the same ability of expression, then the proto-language would be identical in that regard to any modern language. However, studying to origin of UG is onlygoing to lead to (if we ever find an answer) the origin of UG. If we are trying to establish a ‘grand unified theory of cognition’, it’s actually really important to consider domain-general processes that are used in human communication and are facilitated by propositions. So perhaps we developed this propositional ability after other cognitive processes and the propositions piggy-backed off of those, or perhaps new cognitive abilities have been added over time through evolution and this contributes to the whole package that we call language…linguistic study as well as study of the brain and cognitive processes will maybe give insight into what is essential to make this compete language package – as in all the bits and pieces that were needed to make the first proto-language.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the question of what sets humans apart from all other species in our capacity for language, this article suggests, “What seems missing is not the intelligence but the motivation, indeed the compulsion to name and describe.” In speculating about the origin of language, I don't think that the role of motivation can be simply reduced to a “doing” capacity; motivation is a feeling state. Considering the role of motivation in propositionality raises the hard problem because it feels like something to be motivated to teach/learn. We don’t know the why/how underlying this motivation (or lack thereof in the case of other species), and so any attempt to address this question is speculative at best.
ReplyDeleteIn their discussion of the sequential order of events, the Harnad and Lefebvre question:
ReplyDelete"How did it happen? And what was the
tremendous adaptive advantage that it conferred—an advantage great enough to have resulted (within a relatively short period of evolutionary time) in the fact that that new capacity and propensity became encoded in the genotypes and encephalized in the brains of every normal member of our species?"
This implies that this formal logical system of propositional statements with truth values happened and then was hard-coded into our genetic material. But what if, like with many other phenomena, the causal description is an interaction of genes and environment. So, perhaps we and all other organisms who have more rudimentary forms of language, have certain genes which make it possible for us to learn language (UG, lets say), and what is required to activate these genes is specific interactions between the organism and the environment that are only possible due to the particular sensorimotor capabilities that humans have. This is different from the process described above because it does not assume that an "origin event" occurred, and was followed by a gradual hard-coding until all normal humans possessed these genes, but rather that there was a precise interaction between the environment and genes that that humans already possessed which allowed language to develop. As to the continuation of this ability in subsequent generations, perhaps it was a "tipping point" phenomenon, and after this ability was conferred to an individual, these activated genes were passed down for posterity. Although a controversial and possibly ridiculous explanation, I think it is interesting to consider alternate causal events and temporal patterns that could have brought about the genesis of language as we define it (not too broadly and not too narrowly) today.
I think this paper builds nicely off of the readings on the symbol grounding problem. Previously we learned that symbol grounding is essential to passing the Turing Test. From this paper we understand that symbol grounding is also essential to the process of categorization and is intimately connected with language. While not the exactly the same thing as a Turing machine (since a Turing machine represents computation), language can likewise be viewed as a set of symbols (with a rather arbitrary shape) that are subject to a set of rules which dictate how these symbols can be combined to form propositions. Language requires that a subset of these symbols be grounded in “real world” terms (ie sensorimotor experience). These more concrete words can be used to create more abstract or complex concepts (ie categories) in the absence of direct sensorimotor experience with those concepts.Once these new words have been learned they can then in turn be used to create more new categories. This is why you can look up a new, previously unknown word in a dictionary and gain a reasonable understanding of this word by reading a definition (that notably does not include any images to illustrate the word in question). The ability to name categories using language and then to relay the name using words is extremely powerful and can greatly facilitate learning via instructional learning.
ReplyDeleteI suppose in this context we are describing words as means of identifying and representing categories. However I would posit in any natural language there need to be words that do not represent categories per say such as “with” “the” “or” “because” to help form propositions. Is there a specific set of propositions that are essential to have in any given language? For example is there a word that shares the same logical meaning of “because” in every human language? Based on my knowledge of philosophy classes in logic, I would assume that there is a specific, finite set of propositional symbols that would be necessary to communicate a full range of meaningful propositional structures.
“We have now reduced the question of what is the origin of language to the question of what is the origin of a symbol system in which you can say anything that can be said in any natural language.” This reminds me of the symbol grounding system. Without our cognitive abilities, these symbols (and thus language systems) become altogether meaningless. Our minds ground language to the physical world and to communication.
ReplyDeleteThe part the speaks about motivation is also intriguing. Motivation is a great explanation of the quick learning of small children. It also explains why highly linguistic environments lead to more verbose children whereas vocabulary low environments are not as motivating. However, would there not be a precursor to that initial motivation? There must be a innate/genetic pre-motivation for children to seek out language as something they must learn. Perhaps it is an innate drive for communication and social adhesion? Humans are a very social species, and we create social circles and cultures based on the exchange of information and ingroup/ outgroup dynamics.
The reading talks about a necessary groundwork for language to evolve. Some of the necessities are a capacity for sensorimotor induction, a capacity to learn by observation and imitation (enter mirror neurons), a strong tendency for kin cooperation (to motivate a member to teach another using instruction about a new category using existing categories), and provide assistance for rearing late-developing young.
ReplyDeleteOn that last potential necessity, is late-developing young one of the crucial environmental features that motivated humans to develop propositional language whereas apes did not? Harnad, in the previous reading said that apes simply lack the motivation to learn propositional language. I'm guessing this is purely due to differing environmental conditions. Perhaps humans originally had a more demanding environment coupled with particularly late-developing young (humans have one of the most late-developing young in the animal kingdom).
Although I find that Pinker's argument that it is too soon to discard the evolutionary argument certainly makes sense to a certain degree, it seems to me that this claim is in contradiction with his other argument, namely that we should discard non-evolutionary explanations. Indeed, on the one hand he argues that it is normal that just because we havent found any concrete evolutionary mechanism it does not mean that we should stop looking, yet on the other he very categorically concludes that only the evolutionary theory can bring an explanation for complex mechanisms -on the sole basis of the absence of evidence in support of other theories. In other words, he seems to set a much higher standard for other possible theories that would aim to explain the appearance of language, which seems to me a quite conservative approach.
ReplyDeleteThis experiment with mushrooms is fascinating because to me it gives further evidence that Pinker's argument about the absence of evidence in favor of evolutionary theories is flawed. Indeed, the mushroom experiment shows that even before we reach the level of propositional language, having some sort of communication is functionally/evolutionary advantageous. Therefore, if, like Pinker claims, language was born through evolutionary mechanisms, we would expect each stage between this "show" (the mushroom experiment) and "tell" (our language) to have been increasingly functionally advantageous. In other words, it makes little sense that there would be no living species that would display intermediate language abilities, yet Pinker argues that this is normal. His claim either undermines the importance of function/advantage in Darwinian evolution, or requires more explanation (eg.: humans would have eliminated any species that would display such abilities because they would be a threat/competitor)
ReplyDeleteThis reading made me think back to Searle’s Chinese Room Argument and how language really is just a set of arbitrary symbols which physically and objectively have no meaning. It is only when you ground it, which you do through sensorimotor experience, that you get meaning. And meaning is also really only achieved if you can feel it. But language is obviously so useful, otherwise it wouldn’t have been passed on and it wouldn’t be our main way of communicating now. I think the point that it transitioned from pantomiming to a vocal language was interesting, but it also makes me wonder why we didn’t just evolve to people primarily using sign language? What made it go to a vocal modality instead of continuing as a gestural language? Is it just so that we can use our hands for more useful things or so that we can multitask?
ReplyDeleteThe question of why other intelligent animals, let’s use chimps as an example, haven’t picked up language really interests me. After reading the article, two alternative explanations came to mind. I don’t think motivation, as it relates to social and cooperative tendencies, is a sufficient explanation because chimps are also extremely social and orient their behaviours to promote the success of their kin. Motivation could play a different role, though. The article points out that learning categories through instruction is faster, but the time it takes to do the right thing with that category takes longer. The effort of instructing and compromised reaction time might be more costly to chimps than the associated benefits. This could be explained by what is necessary for survival and lifestyle between the two species. Chimps may only really need to know and interact with categories that are readily available to them to learn through induction, and may not need to communicate out of sight happenings for their survival since they are relatively safe in their natural habitat. On the other hand, humans have a lot more to gain from learning through instruction, since they are a relatively physically weak species, and need the use of tools/technologies to survive.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, animal’s lack of language could be linked to their ability to imagine. Maybe animals *do* have the capacity to construe an A is a B as a proposition, but they just can’t mentalize a composite category made up of A and B if they have never experienced the composite category first hand before. The inability to create new categories could be because other animal’s are less able to imagine, which could be a result of a less developed sense of self, ability to mentally travel to past and future memories, or absence of a proper mutation or gene.