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>. Then again, Pinker is a philosopher (don't get me wrong, a wonderful one), He is a bit of a philosopher, but his ph.d. is in experimental psychology. In ot

• vanderZwan 12y ago
  Fair enough, but that is perfectly compatible with my claim that he can be a bit overly reductionist at times (I'm not denying that reductionism is a useful tool of course - far from it). He seems to be either unaware or ignoring indications that music is way older than language. * We acquire language through prosodic or "singsong" language - you know, the way people tend to go up and down and exaggerate in their intonation when talking to babies. * Conversely, it stays with us much longer than language does, and capable of "reviving" someone in a way language can't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyZQf0p73QM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyZQf0p73QM * Based on nerve size we know our muscle control of our vocal apparatus was at our "modern" quality long before we acquired the capacity for symbolic manipulation that is required for language - in the order of hundreds of thousands of years versus tens of thousands or years. We couldn't have used it for language, but we already were a social species so it stands to reason that we were using it for communication. So what other options do we have aside from language that still require such refined control of our vocal output but some singsong form of uttering "intentions" towards each other?