How children pick up a language: denying Chomsky 2 (Humans)

by dhw, Tuesday, September 13, 2016, 11:46 (2992 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: Firstly, over and over again, we have agreed that the evolutionary process is NOT adaptations to immediate stresses, since that would not require life forms beyond bacteria […] In other words, the disagreement is over how the evolutionary process works. Nobody knows, but your theory simply makes no sense to me. All I can see in the history of life is one vast free-for-all, with organisms coming and going in accordance with the vagaries of environmental change. […] - DAVID: And what I see in the evolutionary process is a built-in drive to complexity, perhaps triggered by environmental stresses, but not necessarily as evidenced by bacteria survival unchanged and the drive to humans for no obvious reason. This easily explains the h-p bush. - I don't see much difference between what you see here and what I see. The drive to complexity is what I have called the drive to improvement, and I would add environmental opportunities to stresses (both of which explain why life advanced beyond bacteria). By editing my quote, you left out the all-important distinction between us: “The disagreement resides in your insistence that humans were always your God's purpose, while at the same time every innovation and natural wonder has required his personal preprogramming or dabbling.” According to you, every product of the “built-in drive” has been designed by your God. It doesn't make sense to me that he should have designed the weaverbird's nest because he wanted to produce humans. That is why - when I wear my theist's hat - I suggest that instead he gave organisms the built-in drive (the intelligence) to design their own twigs of the h-p bush, though he may have reserved the right to dabble (which may be applied to humans).