Different in degree or kind: Egnor's take (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, September 26, 2016, 12:42 (2768 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Please reread your own comment above, as regards human language not appearing until 50,000 years ago, though the anatomical changes were present 200,000 years ago. Now you are simply repeating what I said in my response above and in my initial response to the article you posted (new sounds gradually evolving into the complexities we know today), except that in the first quote above I suggested that the anatomical changes were the result of the need for new sounds - i.e. the organism responding to new requirements, as we see in the less complex process of adaptation.-DAVID: 'Needing new sounds' is fine, but the anatomic changes which occurred and are required for precise sounds, are a complex mix which require advanced planning to put together requiring many different mutations. But all we have from the fossils is punctuated equilibrium, which means saltation.-Back to your advanced planning. In most cases of innovation, I have suggested that the new structures are formed as a response to changes in the environment (new needs or opportunities) - not to advance planning. (“Advanced” is a little ambiguous: do you mean in advance, or do you mean highly sophisticated? Of course, I accept the latter.) In the case of language, my suggestion is that the pressure came from inside, in so far as early humans needed new sounds. Every innovation has to be complex, as it has to fit in with the structure of the rest of the organism. In that sense the eye, the leg, the liver, the kidney, the sex organs all required many different “mutations”, and we have long since agreed that Darwin's gradualism doesn't work, because they would be no use if they didn't function. They might be improved with time, but the original change would have to be a saltation. And so I suggest that early humans rapidly responded to the need/desire for new sounds by imposing the anatomical changes on themselves (major adjustments to existing organs), just as organisms rapidly impose changes on themselves when they adapt to new conditions. And I would also suggest that if these anatomical changes took place 200,000 years ago, it is possible that human language began 200,000 years ago and not 50,000 years ago.