How children pick up a language: new comment (Humans)

by David Turell , Wednesday, August 02, 2017, 19:50 (2668 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: "The light that illuminates Wolfe’s book is the idea that humans invented speech, the way we invented so many other things. Evolution doesn’t explain the invention any more than it explains kaleidoscopes or microprocessors. That we can and do invent tools, luxuries, games, and cultures testifies to capacities that set us apart from animals. Where those capacities came from is a question still worth asking." (DAVID's bold)

DAVID's comment: The sentences in bold raise an issue that fits my theory about human brains. We were given the capacity in our large complex brain to invent language, which is immaterial. As such it is our invention, not a product of evolution which deals in the material.

dhw: Under "dualism verses materialism", in your capacity as a dualist, you finally agreed that our large complex brain does not invent anything: the brain supplies information and IMPLEMENTS the ideas provided/invented by the “soul”. But of course it is our invention, just as the weaverbird’s nest is the bird’s invention, the anthill is the ants’ invention, and whale language is the whale’s invention. That does not mean that it did not come about through a process of evolution. The problem as always is the unknown source of consciousness, and in the case of humans, the reason for our hugely enhanced degree of consciousness. But our ancestors must have had their own means of expression (one definition of language), just as modern apes do, and my proposal – as you well know – is that our enhanced consciousness resulted in the need for a more complex form of expression. And just like the efforts of land animals to adapt to life in the water, or fish to adapt to life on the land, or Little Billy to transform himself into Big Billy by exercising his body, pre-Sapiens’ efforts to create new sounds resulted in the necessary changes to the brain and the anatomy. I find this hypothesis more convincing than the proposal that your God made all the changes before pre-whales swam, fish walked, and humans talked. But we have now agreed to disagree on this.

You forget that our larynx dropped to the proper position for speech at the time sapiens arrived, but it took over 200,000 years to learn how to use it. Form first, use second.