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

by dhw, Tuesday, September 27, 2016, 14:39 (2979 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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.-DAVID: Of course they needed the best communication they could develop. Mc Crone describes the probable vocal abilities of pre sapiens. But he states that proper speech required the prior development of the anatomy.-If the changes resulted from the need to make new sounds, the speech and the anatomy would have developed simultaneously, just as exercise and muscular development go together in a single process.
 
dhw: 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.-DAVID: You've repeated yourself. Of course H. erectus was speaking in a very limited way and they had simple spoken communication, not our sophisticated language, which required our brain and our sapiens anatomy. McCrone's book is quite specific.-I repeated myself because you did not acknowledge the obvious flaw in your statement: “the anatomic changes for spoken language, which I have described in the past were present 200,000 years in H. sapiens skeletal remains before language is thought to have appeared 50,000 years ago.” Now you are agreeing that language (albeit limited) must have appeared when the anatomy appeared, and must have evolved from the comparatively simple to the current levels of sophistication. All of this makes nonsense of the claim that evolution cannot explain language: it is a perfect example of evolution at work: in this case, the physical form adapts itself to new requirements as part of the drive to improvement.