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I'd go out on a limb and speculate that much of existence was peviously described amid a fog of superstition, with only a handful of objective facts for primiti

I'd go out on a limb and speculate that much of existence was peviously described amid a fog of superstition, with only a handful of objective facts for primitive humans to draw consensus on. Vocalization among animals finds its roots in high energy emotions, typically fear and rage. Barking, roaring, hissing. As you walk up the socialization gradient, vocalization gets combined with body language (raised hackles, charging), facial expressions (staring down with a domineering gaze, bearing teeth). Then, with inversions like group hunting tactics, coordination of remaining silent while stalking prey. Highly social animals have a seemingly partial grasp of fair play. Performing tricks for rewards, or a pet ruining an owner's bed as revenge for a slight. Most "pet" chimpanzee maulings are the consequence of a chimpanzee's perception of a violation of status, noticing a peer enjoy briefly held favouritism, or a favorite toy transgressed by a stranger. When it comes to perception of experience, and descriptions thereof, and objectively related concepts arrive VARY late to the party, so a null finding is unsurprising to me. First you need counting and accounting, in order to quantify, and then to objectify, you you also need codification and enumeration. So already, you have prerequisites of intellect, before anything objective happens. This means writing and consistent phonemes, to establish conrete rules. But speech is operational and practical long before it becomes romanticized with experience. People would be counting and naming discrete essentials as part of primitive trade, long before ascribing color to the sky. Indeed, color probably wasn't important until decoration and desirable possessions became noteworthy. Interesting animal pelts, face paints, stone and shell beads and bird feathers. Probably by the time leather and textiles are normative, you really begin to see vocabulary take off, but still, it's not about what we sense, but material objects to be grasped. Some of the object aspects of sensory description that took centuries to isolate are pretty subtle. How many colors are there? Only six, or many millions? Which parts of the world boast the highest variety of flavorful foods? Quanitfying tone scales, harmonics and other auditory details like timber and rhythm require not only complex materials to emit controlled sound, but also time pieces to measure duration and period. Finally, we have centuries of superstition plagueing the discovery of facts as science. Is the earth round? What happens when we die? How did the world and universe come to be? Did an intelligence conjure us into existence by intent? When will the world end? Are we the most important thing? Is nothingness actually something? So objectivity is not an incidental thing, even if experience is.

corey_moncure 8y ago
>Indeed, color probably wasn't important until decoration and desirable possessions became noteworthy. The prime mover for these things is probably sexual selection, and we can see that they are foundational all throughout nature, let alone animals, in plants and fungi which do not even have brains or move. I guess that they are more central than you are giving them credit for.
- deleted 8y ago
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- anchovies 8y ago
  in plants and fungi which do not even have brains or move. You’ve adjusted context to change focus from qualities of established vocalization patterns to fundamental motility. Color as a phenomenon of outward appearance does not obey the same principles as observation, cognition, willful behavior and verbalization. The externalities involved in plants adapting colors to suit pollinating insects, versus crustaceans adapting colors to avoid being scavenged by birds when they wash up on shore, have nothing to do with the noises animals make to sound alarms or warn of aggression. The next layer beyond the more obvious emotive sounds, is subtle noises in proximity like cats purring or infrasound at a distance among elephants. These sorts of noises still don’t signal choices, which is why we wouldn’t find obvious objective patterns for color. Most telling though, is the history of the word for Orange. This alone indicates that the factors for thinking about colors, no matter how attention grabbing they might innately be, is extremely subjective. Most colors find their root words in a famous noun as the parent object for the concept of the color. Blue as the sky. Brown as the dirt. Green as the grass. (not literally these words, but definitely words like azul or chartreuse) We know that colors exist, but to converse about them with peers is something few animals seem to do. The next cognitive leap after dividing up the observable world with discrete vocabulary, is mastering the underlying principles that underpin the jargon used to describe objects. Realizing that light travels from source to target. Understanding that wind is an expression of air pressure and that air is more substantial than vacuum. Differentiating between fire and heat. When can words to describe these principles arrive within a linguistic subculture? Only after a rich vocabulary already exists, and rules for arbitrary word construction emerge. It doesn’t matter that evolutionary pathways are selecting for observable traits that result in ready differentiation of species. Language requires awarenes and the will to communicate. The subject matter that gets prioritized for communication is going to be based on immediate operational factors and urgency. Necessity being the mother of invention. So it’s not about the senses. It’s about reacting to surroundings, whatever they may be, to gain advantage and persist in the wild, at the moment. You won’t see apes describing orange as a quality of the fruit, nor would the orange trees be considering this fact as the orange gains success in convincing the apes to distribute the seeds widely. The orange trees require two factors to convince the apes to use the fruit. It needs to be obvious and it also needs to taste good and serve biological needs. Did the tree invent language constructs according to a linguistic model, to evolve the orange? Did the apes invent a complex dictionary to describe the subtleties the orange color or the citrus flavor as they introduced their young to the source of food? No, you just know an orange when you see it. The signal for it’s ripest best taste is a singular color, you’ll figure it out after you eat a few.

corey_moncure 8y ago

>Indeed, color probably wasn't important until decoration and desirable possessions became noteworthy. The prime mover for these things is probably sexual selection, and we can see that they are foundational all throughout nature, let alone animals, in plants and fungi which do not even have brains or move. I guess that they are more central than you are giving them credit for.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
anchovies 8y ago
in plants and fungi which do not even have brains or move. You’ve adjusted context to change focus from qualities of established vocalization patterns to fundamental motility. Color as a phenomenon of outward appearance does not obey the same principles as observation, cognition, willful behavior and verbalization. The externalities involved in plants adapting colors to suit pollinating insects, versus crustaceans adapting colors to avoid being scavenged by birds when they wash up on shore, have nothing to do with the noises animals make to sound alarms or warn of aggression. The next layer beyond the more obvious emotive sounds, is subtle noises in proximity like cats purring or infrasound at a distance among elephants. These sorts of noises still don’t signal choices, which is why we wouldn’t find obvious objective patterns for color. Most telling though, is the history of the word for Orange. This alone indicates that the factors for thinking about colors, no matter how attention grabbing they might innately be, is extremely subjective. Most colors find their root words in a famous noun as the parent object for the concept of the color. Blue as the sky. Brown as the dirt. Green as the grass. (not literally these words, but definitely words like azul or chartreuse) We know that colors exist, but to converse about them with peers is something few animals seem to do. The next cognitive leap after dividing up the observable world with discrete vocabulary, is mastering the underlying principles that underpin the jargon used to describe objects. Realizing that light travels from source to target. Understanding that wind is an expression of air pressure and that air is more substantial than vacuum. Differentiating between fire and heat. When can words to describe these principles arrive within a linguistic subculture? Only after a rich vocabulary already exists, and rules for arbitrary word construction emerge. It doesn’t matter that evolutionary pathways are selecting for observable traits that result in ready differentiation of species. Language requires awarenes and the will to communicate. The subject matter that gets prioritized for communication is going to be based on immediate operational factors and urgency. Necessity being the mother of invention. So it’s not about the senses. It’s about reacting to surroundings, whatever they may be, to gain advantage and persist in the wild, at the moment. You won’t see apes describing orange as a quality of the fruit, nor would the orange trees be considering this fact as the orange gains success in convincing the apes to distribute the seeds widely. The orange trees require two factors to convince the apes to use the fruit. It needs to be obvious and it also needs to taste good and serve biological needs. Did the tree invent language constructs according to a linguistic model, to evolve the orange? Did the apes invent a complex dictionary to describe the subtleties the orange color or the citrus flavor as they introduced their young to the source of food? No, you just know an orange when you see it. The signal for it’s ripest best taste is a singular color, you’ll figure it out after you eat a few.