Origin of Language; second afterthought (Origins)

by David Turell , Tuesday, April 14, 2015, 00:31 (3509 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: ...it is patently absurd for anyone to claim they know how long it normally takes for apes to evolve into humans. 
> DAVID: The Wistar Institute's presentations have never been refuted. Judgments about human mutation rates are published from time to time as relatively accurate assessments.
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> dhw: How can you refute a hypothesis about or assess the accuracy of judgements on events without precedent or points of comparison? Besides, once again, we are not dealing with random mutations.-Purposeful mutations mean teleology. Are you joining me?-> dhw: Once more, nobody knows how innovations are created, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that a mechanism capable of changing an organism's structure for adaptation might also be able to innovate, given the right conditions.-Epigenetics research tell us that organisms do adapt and subsequent generations carry those adaptations. As I've noted before this means changes are environmentally driven by changing environmental challenges. This is still a chance driven evolution, in which the odds for human consciousness seem insurmountable.- 
> DAVID: It must be a very intelligent IM to have that much foresight in planning for language and speech. Sorry, but this reeks of design.[/i]
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> dhw: Yes, it does, and these are brilliant posts for which many thanks. .... You constantly talk of planning, and that is not how I see the progress of evolution. Just as with adaptation, I visualize the changes coming about IN RESPONSE to new conditions, not in preparation for them. Either there is a need for change, or conditions encourage change for the sake of improvement. And so in this particular case, the changes in the larynx, epiglottis etc. would have come about because with their ever expanding intelligence and acquisition of information, humans needed a more sophisticated method of communicating. In other words, the changes were not planned in advance of that need - they arose from it. -You keep skipping over the knowledge we have about the stages of development. Tell me about the conditions that told the larynx to drop well before speech developed. Speech also required a brain to learn speech. Your claim seems to be all of this happened because the environment demanded it?!-> dhw: In anticipation of your usual objections, I'd better repeat for the umpteenth time that nobody knows how innovations take place. You offer preprogramming from Year One, divine dabbling, or a list of multi-choice questions; I offer a mechanism which is known to be capable of adaptation and may therefore also be capable of invention.-"May therefore", without recognizing the coordination of stages of development which reek of purpose is very unreasonable to me.