It's pretty cool that you're doing this! Quite a lot of effort involved, I'm sure. I do think language evolved (and continues to evolve). Efforts are often made to control it -- the French are notorious for it -- but such efforts usually fail, which emphasizes perhaps how language isn't controlled.
But I said 'No' to the poll exactly because of chimps (and other animals) who use tools. What else do I call that if not "invented"? Is it "discovery" versus "invention"? What makes an "invention" different from a "discovery"?
Yes, in most cases, it probably is. And many more are accounted for by accidental discovery that then gets passed on by example. Monkeys on one side of a river who discover a new way to dig for grubs all learn the trick, but those living across the river don’t. No language to pass it on or record it.
OTOH, parrots and corvids have shown the ability to solve multi-step puzzles, so it seems there is some degree of analysis and intention possible in the more intelligent animals. Definitely a spectrum.
I think invention without language is possible but it’s vastly more effective with language, no doubt about that. Language lets you reason.
In particular, what may be missing without language is our apparently unique ability to look at an existing tool and think of ways to improve it. That seems a function of higher reasoning.
Even so, all of evolution involves a history of trials and errors that finds something new that works. Are all of these novelties "inventions" or none of them? Where and how would you draw the line?
Thanks! Yeah, it's a bit of effort, but maybe not as much as you would think. After all, I already had the audiobook recorded and edited, so it was a matter of dropping chapters in individually. Still, there is the formatting for the posts, which does take work (especially since I keep changing my mind).
I wondered about chimps and other such animals myself, since it's not quite the same as a beaver building a dam or a bird building a nest. That is clearly instinct. But it could be that animals that use tools also do so by instinct, brought out by a certain kind of environment.
Definitely could be, we can't read their minds. I think we're converging on it being a matter of degree. Some of the higher animals may be intelligent enough to figure out how to use a tool. Even bears scratching themselves on trees kinda look like they know what they're doing.
I don't know if you meant to flip the question from: does language presuppose invention, addressed in the chapter (and which I agree with), to: invention presupposing language.
But I answered No for pretty much the same reasons Wyrd lays out. it seems like there are animal studies demonstrating highly intelligent species having the ability to construct things on the fly without any need for language. I'm thinking of crows who figure out how to manipulate things to get at food, chimps fashioning sticks for getting at honey, cephalopods figuring out all kinds of things, and other examples of essentially inventing a mechanism on the fly. Of course, we could insist that "invent" means something more stringent until we have a meaning that requires language, but it seems like a matter of degree.
That is a good question! I'm not sure there is a definition since the topic is debated, but I'd say what characterizes natural (human) language is that it is a culturally evolving system with a complex grammar that allows words to be creatively combined in an infinite number of meaningful ways.
You won't be surprised to hear I was not a fan of that article. The last line about his secret theory was laughably bad:
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Establishing such a view is beyond the scope of this paper and thus I leave it for another time. However, given the shown implausibility of an evolutionary account of language, such an account is at the very least more plausible than an evolutionary account.
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Would everything be more plausible by this argument?? Come on.
I can't possibly go through that article to refute it all, but I did just read another article with an interesting theory about the evolution of human language by the psychologist Steven Hayes.
It's pretty cool that you're doing this! Quite a lot of effort involved, I'm sure. I do think language evolved (and continues to evolve). Efforts are often made to control it -- the French are notorious for it -- but such efforts usually fail, which emphasizes perhaps how language isn't controlled.
But I said 'No' to the poll exactly because of chimps (and other animals) who use tools. What else do I call that if not "invented"? Is it "discovery" versus "invention"? What makes an "invention" different from a "discovery"?
Oh, dear, another semantic rabbit hole. 😣
What I was trying to get at with the animal examples is that tool use could be instinctive.
Yes, in most cases, it probably is. And many more are accounted for by accidental discovery that then gets passed on by example. Monkeys on one side of a river who discover a new way to dig for grubs all learn the trick, but those living across the river don’t. No language to pass it on or record it.
OTOH, parrots and corvids have shown the ability to solve multi-step puzzles, so it seems there is some degree of analysis and intention possible in the more intelligent animals. Definitely a spectrum.
I think invention without language is possible but it’s vastly more effective with language, no doubt about that. Language lets you reason.
In particular, what may be missing without language is our apparently unique ability to look at an existing tool and think of ways to improve it. That seems a function of higher reasoning.
Even so, all of evolution involves a history of trials and errors that finds something new that works. Are all of these novelties "inventions" or none of them? Where and how would you draw the line?
Thanks! Yeah, it's a bit of effort, but maybe not as much as you would think. After all, I already had the audiobook recorded and edited, so it was a matter of dropping chapters in individually. Still, there is the formatting for the posts, which does take work (especially since I keep changing my mind).
I wondered about chimps and other such animals myself, since it's not quite the same as a beaver building a dam or a bird building a nest. That is clearly instinct. But it could be that animals that use tools also do so by instinct, brought out by a certain kind of environment.
Definitely could be, we can't read their minds. I think we're converging on it being a matter of degree. Some of the higher animals may be intelligent enough to figure out how to use a tool. Even bears scratching themselves on trees kinda look like they know what they're doing.
I don't know if you meant to flip the question from: does language presuppose invention, addressed in the chapter (and which I agree with), to: invention presupposing language.
But I answered No for pretty much the same reasons Wyrd lays out. it seems like there are animal studies demonstrating highly intelligent species having the ability to construct things on the fly without any need for language. I'm thinking of crows who figure out how to manipulate things to get at food, chimps fashioning sticks for getting at honey, cephalopods figuring out all kinds of things, and other examples of essentially inventing a mechanism on the fly. Of course, we could insist that "invent" means something more stringent until we have a meaning that requires language, but it seems like a matter of degree.
Well said. It may be a matter of degree, but that would make 'invention requires language' half right if not more.
Yes
My comment on the poll: how do you define language?
That is a good question! I'm not sure there is a definition since the topic is debated, but I'd say what characterizes natural (human) language is that it is a culturally evolving system with a complex grammar that allows words to be creatively combined in an infinite number of meaningful ways.
Here's an interesting post explaining why language could not have evolved from animal communication:
https://open.substack.com/pub/mattfujimoto/p/against-an-evolutionary-account-of?r=schg4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
You won't be surprised to hear I was not a fan of that article. The last line about his secret theory was laughably bad:
-----------
Establishing such a view is beyond the scope of this paper and thus I leave it for another time. However, given the shown implausibility of an evolutionary account of language, such an account is at the very least more plausible than an evolutionary account.
-----------
Would everything be more plausible by this argument?? Come on.
I can't possibly go through that article to refute it all, but I did just read another article with an interesting theory about the evolution of human language by the psychologist Steven Hayes.
https://www.prosocial.world/posts/the-evolution-of-consciousness-enables-conscious-evolution
The passages starting with "Human Symbolic Learning" might answer some of Matt Fujimoto's objections.