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I think the whole point/perspective of science is that claims have to be provable with evidence. Scientists don’t make claims without evidence. I am sure that

I think the whole point/perspective of science is that claims have to be provable with evidence. Scientists don’t make claims without evidence. I am sure that there were a lot of preconceived biases that blocked scientific research from occurring in this space, but it might also be that we didn’t have the tools to examine evidence until recently. Scientists are generally very curious, open to exploration, and absolutely want to prove the unproven or refute the previously proven with new evidence. It’s how they make their stamp in their field.

stult 2y ago
> I think the whole point/perspective of science is that claims have to be provable with evidence Really, the whole point of science is that claims have to be falsifiable with evidence, which is more or less the opposite of provable. Nothing is ever positively proven in science, hypotheses are only ever falsified, and only hypotheses susceptible to falsification with evidence are scientific. A failure to prove a hypothesis false is the closest we come to establishing a positive scientific truth.
seventytwo 2y ago
It’s both.
JohnMakin 2y ago
Pretty sure the reason stuff like this isn’t called language is because language is circularly defined as something only homo sapiens does.
- messe 2y ago
  You're pretty sure? Well, that's convinced me. (/s) I'm not going to debate this topic here, but for what it's worth you're coming across as somebody who has chosen their stance and is cherry-picking their evidence and anecdotes to suit their biases. While I agree with your suspicion that a lot of animals are more intelligent than most give them credit for, you're not arguing for that viewpoint well. You might want to revisit how you make your points.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    I mean wikipedia is free but yes this is how it is defined: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language https://www.britannica.com/topic/language https://www.britannica.com/topic/language I’ve never seen a definition of language in a scientific context that frames it in any other context other than something humans do. Please feel free to show me otherwise. Whether or not you are convinced isn’t really my concern - this is a well known scientific thing.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - tensor 2y ago
      A simple search on google scholar turns this up: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405722316301177 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240572231... For such a "well known scientific thing" I certainly haven't heard of it nor can find any evidence of your claim. Yes, most papers use communication instead of language, but that's because until more recently there has been little evidence that shows any other species communications have sufficient complexity to be called a "language." E.g. having words and sentences rather than signals with a given meaning. There is even a scientist claiming mushrooms have language https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.211926 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.2119... !
      - JohnMakin 2y ago
        I didn’t mean “the word language is never used in a scientific text,” I meant there has never been a case in science where science has ever said “this thing $organism is doing is language.” You could get pretty nitpicky with the examples you provided - however I made a new year’s resolution not to fall into these silly little semantics traps on this site that I’m now failing, so I’ll bow out.
        shkkmo 2y ago
        Language is a system of grammar and syntax for converying meaning. Until you find evidence of those, calling something language is a baseless opinion. The closest we currently have to evidence of non-human language use I know of, comes from attempts to teach language to apes, (which is an example of some scientists saying "$organism is doing language", which you claim never happened) The general criticism was that the great apes did fairly well learning semantics but show limited to no syntactic ability. We do see semantic capabilities in other species and there's long been reason to suspect semantic content in whale songs. Deciphering the Alphabet of whale songs is a great step towards figuring out the semantic structure. When we do, I wouldn't be surprised if we find syntactic structures as well. Until then, calling whale song language is speculation. Do you have specific examples of places where we have both syntax and semanti
- gloryjulio 2y ago
  Really? Does that mean the term 'alien language' is meaningless? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_language
  - crucialfelix 2y ago
    I think we anthropomorphize aliens. We expect individuals that communicate, but intelligent life could take many forms. Psychic ocean? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel) Distributed beings like coral or slime molds
- yau8edq12i 2y ago
  Where did you learn this definition? It's the first time I hear something like this. I very much doubt that it's a generally accepted definition.
  - glial 2y ago
    It's more a de facto definition than an official definition. Finding reasons that animal communication is not "Language" seems to be a hobby of linguists, in my experience.
bmitc 2y ago
> Scientists don’t make claims without evidence. History has shown that to not be true. > Scientists are generally very curious, open to exploration In my experience, it is the opposite. I often find scientists are in fact very uncurious when it comes to anything outside their domain of choice.
- toenail 2y ago
  > History has shown that to not be true. [citation needed]
  - bmitc 2y ago
    To not always be true. It's a little hard to cite hundreds of years of science history. But one of the big examples is general relativity, from many aspects. Many scientists simply didn't believe it (yes, the word "believe"). One could follow the theoretical arguments, which were sound, but many didn't want to. Even once evidence started coming in, many still didn't believe it. It took many decades for general relativity to be broadly accepted, and now today, it's one of the most tested and verified theories. The book Black Hole: How an Idea Abandoned by Newtonians, Hated by Einstein, and Gambled on by Hawking Became Loved is a pretty good one that covers various components of this story, in particular focusing on black holes. There's far more belief and bias in science than the science community will admit to.
  - umvi 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - toenail 2y ago
      Covid is not a scientist who lied.
      - umvi 2y ago
        There were tons of claims about the efficacy of masks at different points in the pandemic. Masks went from being ineffective, to super effective, to marginally effective (depending on material used) in a matter of months. Various scientists and talking heads (such as Dr. Fauci) appeared on television and promoted the claims with little to no evidence.
mitthrowaway2 2y ago
It's a claim one way or the other, isn't it? These sounds are thought to be language These sounds are not thought to be language The default position ought to be "we're not sure if it's language or not", but then why are people so surprised when they find out it is?
- andoando 2y ago
  Agreed. Even in physics there are many things we dont know. We dont just say "we cant prove it so its not true and were not going to consider otherwise".
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    It isn't true that scientists refuse to consider the possibility of other animals having language.
- bullfightonmars 2y ago
  A scientist would assert we have no evidence that they this is a language, but here is what we do know. Here is how it is like a language here is how it is not like a language, this is what we need to measure/prove that it is a language.
andoando 2y ago
Making unproven claims is exactly how science is advanced
- bullfightonmars 2y ago
  Defining an experimental and null hypothesis and measurably testing that hypothesis is how science is advanced. A claim is an assertion of fact. Science doesn’t make unproven claims. It tests them.

stult 2y ago

> I think the whole point/perspective of science is that claims have to be provable with evidence Really, the whole point of science is that claims have to be falsifiable with evidence, which is more or less the opposite of provable. Nothing is ever positively proven in science, hypotheses are only ever falsified, and only hypotheses susceptible to falsification with evidence are scientific. A failure to prove a hypothesis false is the closest we come to establishing a positive scientific truth.

seventytwo 2y ago

It’s both.

JohnMakin 2y ago

Pretty sure the reason stuff like this isn’t called language is because language is circularly defined as something only homo sapiens does.

messe 2y ago
You're pretty sure? Well, that's convinced me. (/s) I'm not going to debate this topic here, but for what it's worth you're coming across as somebody who has chosen their stance and is cherry-picking their evidence and anecdotes to suit their biases. While I agree with your suspicion that a lot of animals are more intelligent than most give them credit for, you're not arguing for that viewpoint well. You might want to revisit how you make your points.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  I mean wikipedia is free but yes this is how it is defined: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language https://www.britannica.com/topic/language https://www.britannica.com/topic/language I’ve never seen a definition of language in a scientific context that frames it in any other context other than something humans do. Please feel free to show me otherwise. Whether or not you are convinced isn’t really my concern - this is a well known scientific thing.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - tensor 2y ago
    A simple search on google scholar turns this up: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405722316301177 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S240572231... For such a "well known scientific thing" I certainly haven't heard of it nor can find any evidence of your claim. Yes, most papers use communication instead of language, but that's because until more recently there has been little evidence that shows any other species communications have sufficient complexity to be called a "language." E.g. having words and sentences rather than signals with a given meaning. There is even a scientist claiming mushrooms have language https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.211926 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.2119... !
    - JohnMakin 2y ago
      I didn’t mean “the word language is never used in a scientific text,” I meant there has never been a case in science where science has ever said “this thing $organism is doing is language.” You could get pretty nitpicky with the examples you provided - however I made a new year’s resolution not to fall into these silly little semantics traps on this site that I’m now failing, so I’ll bow out.
      - shkkmo 2y ago
        Language is a system of grammar and syntax for converying meaning. Until you find evidence of those, calling something language is a baseless opinion. The closest we currently have to evidence of non-human language use I know of, comes from attempts to teach language to apes, (which is an example of some scientists saying "$organism is doing language", which you claim never happened) The general criticism was that the great apes did fairly well learning semantics but show limited to no syntactic ability. We do see semantic capabilities in other species and there's long been reason to suspect semantic content in whale songs. Deciphering the Alphabet of whale songs is a great step towards figuring out the semantic structure. When we do, I wouldn't be surprised if we find syntactic structures as well. Until then, calling whale song language is speculation. Do you have specific examples of places where we have both syntax and semanti
gloryjulio 2y ago
Really? Does that mean the term 'alien language' is meaningless? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_language
- crucialfelix 2y ago
  I think we anthropomorphize aliens. We expect individuals that communicate, but intelligent life could take many forms. Psychic ocean? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel) Distributed beings like coral or slime molds
yau8edq12i 2y ago
Where did you learn this definition? It's the first time I hear something like this. I very much doubt that it's a generally accepted definition.
- glial 2y ago
  It's more a de facto definition than an official definition. Finding reasons that animal communication is not "Language" seems to be a hobby of linguists, in my experience.

bmitc 2y ago

> Scientists don’t make claims without evidence. History has shown that to not be true. > Scientists are generally very curious, open to exploration In my experience, it is the opposite. I often find scientists are in fact very uncurious when it comes to anything outside their domain of choice.

toenail 2y ago
> History has shown that to not be true. [citation needed]
- bmitc 2y ago
  To not always be true. It's a little hard to cite hundreds of years of science history. But one of the big examples is general relativity, from many aspects. Many scientists simply didn't believe it (yes, the word "believe"). One could follow the theoretical arguments, which were sound, but many didn't want to. Even once evidence started coming in, many still didn't believe it. It took many decades for general relativity to be broadly accepted, and now today, it's one of the most tested and verified theories. The book Black Hole: How an Idea Abandoned by Newtonians, Hated by Einstein, and Gambled on by Hawking Became Loved is a pretty good one that covers various components of this story, in particular focusing on black holes. There's far more belief and bias in science than the science community will admit to.
- umvi 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - toenail 2y ago
    Covid is not a scientist who lied.
    - umvi 2y ago
      There were tons of claims about the efficacy of masks at different points in the pandemic. Masks went from being ineffective, to super effective, to marginally effective (depending on material used) in a matter of months. Various scientists and talking heads (such as Dr. Fauci) appeared on television and promoted the claims with little to no evidence.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago

It's a claim one way or the other, isn't it? These sounds are thought to be language These sounds are not thought to be language The default position ought to be "we're not sure if it's language or not", but then why are people so surprised when they find out it is?

andoando 2y ago
Agreed. Even in physics there are many things we dont know. We dont just say "we cant prove it so its not true and were not going to consider otherwise".
- lupusreal 2y ago
  It isn't true that scientists refuse to consider the possibility of other animals having language.
bullfightonmars 2y ago
A scientist would assert we have no evidence that they this is a language, but here is what we do know. Here is how it is like a language here is how it is not like a language, this is what we need to measure/prove that it is a language.

andoando 2y ago

Making unproven claims is exactly how science is advanced

bullfightonmars 2y ago
Defining an experimental and null hypothesis and measurably testing that hypothesis is how science is advanced. A claim is an assertion of fact. Science doesn’t make unproven claims. It tests them.