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ok, suppose language was evolved. what is the evidence of that? how would we verify whether or not it is true that language evolved? it seems like a reasonable

ok, suppose language was evolved. what is the evidence of that? how would we verify whether or not it is true that language evolved? it seems like a reasonable assumption because we think of essentially every attribute of an organism to be evolved, but is this really true? there is evidence of physiological changes that support the production of speech but the puzzle is really about why those changes would ever occur in the first place. they are not adaptive (in fact, maladaptive) unless you can already speak. so what is the evolutionary ancestor of modern language? it doesn't leave a fossil record. it's really hard to gather evidence that satisfies anything about this. the cave paintings are some evidence of a mind that has a level of symbolic abstraction consistent with being able to speak, but the oldest cave paintings we find are not really on the evolutionary time scale. basically we just don't have the robustness of evidence that we wish we had when it comes to supporting the hypothesis that language evolved. it's understandable why we make this assumption, but finding the evidence for it is problematic.

andrewflnr 10y ago
Your argument of "it's hard to prove it evolved" is a far cry from TFA's "it definitely didn't evolve". That's what GP was objecting to.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  Cormac McCarthy's point can be summarized in this sentence that he wrote in TFA "...the inheritance of ideas remains something of a sticky issue. It is difficult to see them as anything other than acquired." which is an interesting way of putting it. we are very comfortable discussing evolutionary history of body parts. what is language though? it doesn't really seem like a body part (though certain structures in the brain, as well as in the mouth and throat, are very important for language) and it does rather seem like an idea. you can teach someone English. you can't teach someone Left Arm. and yet, language is inherited. babies learn it automatically just by being around it in the environment. that makes it something like a communicable "disease", actually. the language-as-virus metaphor is one that McCarthy referenced frequently in his discussion. so what if it's not just a metaphor? what if it really is something transmitted through the environment and that certain kinds of animals become "infected" by it? it's interesting to consider things like this specifically because of the absence of clear evidence that language is like any other physical trait that an animal might have. it's not like those traits. it's something different. something stranger. we don't really have a clear understanding of what exactly it is and so positions like McCarthy's are interested to consider. I don't think you should mistake his own coherence for misplaced confidence though. He isn't saying "it definitely didn't evolve". He isn't making any strong claims like that, as far as I can tell. He's just exploring the interesting differences between language and other things that mammals have/do.

andrewflnr 10y ago

Your argument of "it's hard to prove it evolved" is a far cry from TFA's "it definitely didn't evolve". That's what GP was objecting to.

metaphorm 10y ago
Cormac McCarthy's point can be summarized in this sentence that he wrote in TFA "...the inheritance of ideas remains something of a sticky issue. It is difficult to see them as anything other than acquired." which is an interesting way of putting it. we are very comfortable discussing evolutionary history of body parts. what is language though? it doesn't really seem like a body part (though certain structures in the brain, as well as in the mouth and throat, are very important for language) and it does rather seem like an idea. you can teach someone English. you can't teach someone Left Arm. and yet, language is inherited. babies learn it automatically just by being around it in the environment. that makes it something like a communicable "disease", actually. the language-as-virus metaphor is one that McCarthy referenced frequently in his discussion. so what if it's not just a metaphor? what if it really is something transmitted through the environment and that certain kinds of animals become "infected" by it? it's interesting to consider things like this specifically because of the absence of clear evidence that language is like any other physical trait that an animal might have. it's not like those traits. it's something different. something stranger. we don't really have a clear understanding of what exactly it is and so positions like McCarthy's are interested to consider. I don't think you should mistake his own coherence for misplaced confidence though. He isn't saying "it definitely didn't evolve". He isn't making any strong claims like that, as far as I can tell. He's just exploring the interesting differences between language and other things that mammals have/do.