Chimps'r' not us: they do not use speech or language (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, July 31, 2019, 18:45 (1737 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: We are in your words, 'immeasurably more complex and advanced'. This is exactly why Adler argued for God since we are different in kind not degree. You are still touting degree as an agnostic, ignoring the underlying argument.

dhw: The subject is language, and I am talking to you and not to Adler. Are you really saying that the complexities of human language prove that God exists, whereas the complexities of animal, insect, bird and cellular language do not? You use our complexities to bolster your case for anthropocentric evolution. You use design to bolster your case for God.

I know what I do. The complexities of our language definitely shows how different we are from all other primates and lesser animals. We differ in kind.

QUOTES: In our view, as well as in Berwick and Chomsky’s, the potential for modern human cognition was almost certainly born some 200,000 years ago with anatomical Homo sapiens. The archaeological indications are that this new potential lay fallow for upwards of 100,000 years, until it was activated by a cultural stimulus of some kind. (DAVID’s bold)
[…] They bolster this position with Riny Huybregts’s recent conjecture that “the language faculty emerged with Homo sapiens, or shortly thereafter, but externalization in one form or another must have been a later development.”

dhw: I don’t understand this at all. The purpose of spoken language is communication, which means externalization. What archaeological indications can prove that early H. sapiens did not communicate? (Perhaps this is explained elsewhere?)

DAVID: Archaeology judges aesthetic evidences of brain uses, and use that evidence to infer when language might have appeared.

dhw: Totally inadequate. Once more, do you really believe that for 100,000 years H. sapiens lived, loved, hunted, protected himself etc. etc. without communicating? And do you really believe that if he did communicate, he did not use the physical means at his disposal?

Of course they spoke but as McRone describes in his book, slow and halting at first. I've described all this before.

DAVID: The bold strongly points out my position that the brain appears with established complexity and later it is learned to be used.

dhw: I don’t suppose you’d like to give us your theory as to why your God allegedly made the anatomical changes “appear” 100,000 years before they were needed, would you?

DAVID: I have. Provide the instrument and let the organism learn to use it. You can't play a piano unless there is one in your house.

dhw: The proposal I object to here is that the instrument was not used for 100,000 years. How can you learn to play the piano without playing the piano?

Playing requires learning to play, so it took time. That is all I am presenting. The instrument was there when sapiens started, and they took time learning to use it. Mechanism first, use second as I have always told you. Obvious.