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Yellow Pants


Registered: 05/14/17
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Quote:
DividedQuantum said: Well like I said, evolutionary biology, genetics, ethology, psychology, neurology, linguistics, etc. each have to solve a lot of problems, and then figure out how their solutions tie in with the solutions of all the other fields. It's a totally multidisciplinary problem, and academia these days doesn't do well with that. Moreover, we need more physical evidence than we will ever be able to have to answer some of these questions. So, at least to me, a real answer seems hopeless.
Certainly complex, but at its base isn’t the larynx and the parts of the brain dealing in symbolism/speech based on the mutation of genes from an organism that didn’t previously have these things ?
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


Registered: 08/28/09
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language is a fucktangular mess, yo.
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pineninja
Dream Weaver



Registered: 08/17/14
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Loc: South
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Language is a means to an end. What is that end?
How could we possibly explain that end (or the means) with the means created solely for the purpose.
We think we are clever...just ask us.
-------------------- Just a fool on the hill.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
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you could say that the ability to detect and articulate phonemes is inherited, and therefore, you could say that our phoneme producing ability evolved an that genes may be located that encompass these abilities.
Other animals and especially some birds actually have a much more capable phoneme detection production apparatus, to the extent for example, that the lyrebird is capable of imitating almost any sound: they have been recorded mimicking human sounds such as a mill whistle, a cross-cut saw, chainsaws, car engines and car alarms, fire alarms, rifle-shots, camera shutters, dogs barking, crying babies, music, mobile phone ring tones, and even the human voice. Parrots also can reproduce sounds.
these creatures are not that adept and sharing sounds in socially meaningful situations, (although the very idea of socializing between birds and humans is not easy to resolve) but they do love to perform, and that might be as meaningful a sharing that they are going to seek. They want admiration, and a bit of food wont hurt either. Other social opportunities with humans such as for work, marriage, child rearing, food preparation, and home building, are unlikely to arise, so the suitability of their vocabularies, and their logic in grammar are usually missing in utterances they make except in outright repetition.
What is special about people, aside for our social interdependence (that language facilitates),is that we have learned to deconstruct larger sequences into smaller ones and then string together other sequences (of words) to convey ideas.
this is not inherent in any vocal apparatus (human hearing and voice is far less accurate and capable than that of the Lyre bird) but it is in how we can isolate and repeat aspects of our experience and with that share meaningful ideas with others.
Dogs and horses and other animals can get some aspects of what we are speaking about, which means that they can follow language to a degree, usually more so than a human idiot.
what is important is the abstract thought capability that has evolved in humans more than in other creatures. This combined with vocal and hearing abilities supported the development of many hundreds of languages in various cultures here on Earth.
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,818
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Yellow Pants said: Certainly complex, but at its base isn’t the larynx and the parts of the brain dealing in symbolism/speech based on the mutation of genes from an organism that didn’t previously have these things ?
Well but as I implied, the situation is not dependent on the evolution of the larynx or on any putative speech gene themselves, but a whole confluence of factors that are numerous and poorly understood at present. So really it's a question of a whole host of genetic factors, many of them not even related to each other, and many other factors besides.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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Yellow Pants


Registered: 05/14/17
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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hdUbIlwHRkY
Ran into this old Chomsky bit on language. Interesting stuff. He basically says what has already been captured here.
However towards the end he alluded to the ability of the child to rapidly acquire the concept of basic words at an alarming rate and suggests a sort of “latent knowledge” of the child hidden within some unrealized portion of its nature where understanding is already there.
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laughingdog
Stranger

Registered: 03/14/04
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Not only is the human brain not really understood, neither is that of the so called lower animals, such as that of termites, who built huge nests that are air conditioned https://duckduckgo.com/?q=termite+nests&iax=images&ia=images or any of the brains of the other social insects, all of whom communicate to some degree. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=leaf+cutter+ants&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images
Regardless of Chomsky, if we go back a million years, the development of human language, obviously gave humans an evolutionary advantage, and started out as purely utilitarian. The expression of emotion, and noises that go along with it, in animals, is utilitarian. Emotion in animals, is perhaps almost always a form of communication, with others, as well as often the way an organism prepares its metabolism to go into the state appropriate for a coming action. There are also series of actions that perform both functions such as mating rituals and 'dances' (such as those of birds seen in David Attenborough nature documentaries). So what we think of as language has roots that go back many many millions of years, and these roots are preverbal.
Once we get to modern humans ( say the last 30,000 or 10,000 years) language becomes so intricate that it can be used to condition humans, to perform all sorts of actions that are at cross purposes with evolution. Where ever there was a geographic separation between tribes, villages, clans, cliques, large enough to create an 'us versus them', we get a different culture. Now it is politically correct to pretend they are all wonderful. They could perhaps just as easily be seen as sets of conditioned responses, the are to a large extent counter productive, whose conditioning was largely created by language. As language arbitrarily categorizes all of 'reality'.
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laughingdog
Stranger

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Even within large cultures we have sub cultures, with their own slang or jargon. Even if we don't travel or get around much, movies portray this very well.
From gangsters, to golfers, to California Valley Girls, to bikers, to rappers, etc etc. , we see both identity, and solidarity / belonging being created by humans imitating each others language patterns. That this of course also tends to narrow one's view of the larger 'reality' is lost on most of us, most of the time. Even psychologists, who have their own jargon, according to their preferred brand of therapy, must perhaps reap the consequences, of the hypnotic effect of all language. A few have avoided this by not developing a theory, or joining a school of therapy that they feel gives them legitimacy. IMO studying language in the brain is one thing, but as humans are very social creatures, and much of the structure of society is maintained by language, one cannot really hope to understand much about language, without also studying the structure of human society. Seems its a weird world...
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akira_akuma
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι ὕψιστος φιλεῖ


Registered: 08/28/09
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in everything the infinitely small, in everything thing the infinitely large.
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pineninja
Dream Weaver



Registered: 08/17/14
Posts: 12,468
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If everything is fractal (as I believe it too be) then so are our relationships.
Facebooks ability to see the massive has helped them understand the minute for instance.
-------------------- Just a fool on the hill.
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laughingdog
Stranger

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DQ was interested in whether language could talk of states encountered in tripping. 'The Farm" in Tennessee, is a commune from the the 70's, founded by hippies, and interestingly they developed their own jargon and rituals, partly based on psychedelic use. Some of the jargon can be found in Stephen Gaskin's books. Also interestingly the jargon never seems to have been taken up by anyone outside the community.
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Loaded Shaman
Psychophysiologist



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Language and math are the ultimate, most useful (efficacious) abstractions of the conscious self.
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  "Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance." — Confucius
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laughingdog
Stranger

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pineninja said: If everything is fractal (as I believe it too be) then so are our relationships.
Facebooks ability to see the massive has helped them understand the minute for instance.
Facebook is not a person, it doesn't understand anything. and Zuck is an A hole. Furthermore using facebook regularly leads to less happiness.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=facebook+use+happiness&ia=web
You can surely find better examples of the fractal nature of things.
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pineninja
Dream Weaver



Registered: 08/17/14
Posts: 12,468
Loc: South
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Facebook represents massive data set and knows more about you as an idividual within a society then you would probably like to imagine.
The power that comes from such a data set is only now starting to be used effectively by governments and industry.
This perspective... through data... is and will continue to be driving force in policies and societcys for many years to come.
For me fractal is all.
Stream. River. Ocean currents. Wind and waves. Sound and light.
Schoolyard politics. Friendship politics. Workplace politics. World politics.
Patterns are fractal and Facebook has an overview on us.
*I'm not on Facebook. *I realise Facebook isnt a person.
-------------------- Just a fool on the hill.
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pineninja
Dream Weaver



Registered: 08/17/14
Posts: 12,468
Loc: South
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The weather as random nuanced and imperfect as it is can now be somewhat predicted...every year we get better.
They do this by effectively breaking the whole atmosphere down to individual points and putting them in a 3d grid of little blocks.
Each block has at its points an interactive algorithm which are fed by.. a weather balloon or wind reader a thermometer or rain catcher...so on.
Over the years with the more accurate data they have and the more computational power to run their numbers...the more accurate they have become.
We are much like the weather from a data perspective....fractal almost.
They can see thunderstorms a week out. They can see a coup too.
-------------------- Just a fool on the hill.
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kitten6
hiker

Registered: 05/13/19
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I think that the oldest languages have the most meaning and power. Each language as a whole can grip a speaker and change them, the way they act and think. Some languages can be dark and evil and others honest and good. Some languages cause collectivism between speakers. Some can cause charity between speakers. Maybe even possible to cause hate and disgust between speakers.
I can only imagine the power of the oldest and most forgotten languages. I'd imagine that these are the kinds of languages that we use to explain the unexplainable. Especially under the use of psychedelics.
However languages can change from continuous use and encounters between speakers. Like in the Chinese characters many characters become obsolete and aren't used for hundreds of years and then suddenly picked up again in times of need or greed. And in Chinese, the average speaker uses several thousand characters. Throughout history there is upwards of 50,000 characters possibly hitting 70,000. The oldest characters are still used today giving meaning to the oldest of names given to the oldest families of ancient times. Old blood.
One could only ponder as to the kind of meanings attached to some of these symbols from ancient times. Pretty mad I'd say.
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redgreenvines
irregular verb


Registered: 04/08/04
Posts: 37,531
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how can a language be evil - any examples? is darkness evil?
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kitten6
hiker

Registered: 05/13/19
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i believe that there is a strong correlation between what language you speak and how you behave/think about things, (your method of understanding things) each method of understanding comes with different conclusions.
As a language develops, the language is heavily influenced by the activities and thoughts of the speakers. Most modern languages that are still spoken are developed to suite modern standards to an extent, but of course there are always differences.
If a language is used for murder, control, temptation, by the speakers overall, that language becomes suited for that purpose. Then either the speakers live on and the evil roots dilute and eventually disappear, or the speakers die off, leaving the language to be forgotten. If that language is then picked up again and a new speaker emerges, that language will still have the same affect on the new speaker as the original speakers intended it to.
These are the kind of languages that come from times of legend, ancient times when the people could see deeper, lower populations and miracles happened. The words used by the legendary people of old. There power is left behind in their forgotten words that we can only dream of being able to understand fully.
that is what i believe at least, I'm no linguist or language historian or whatever, these are just ideas I've had in my head that i think sound about right.
Edited by kitten6 (12/22/19 09:21 AM)
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,818
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Re: Language [Re: kitten6] 1
#26395488 - 12/22/19 11:49 AM (4 years, 1 month ago) |
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Most definitely, language conditions our very thought processes and our very consciousness. English, German, French, Spanish, going back to Latin and all the way back to Sanskrit, can only work for civilized cultures. We have objects acting on objects through verbs. In something like Navajo, there are basically no nouns -- objects, if they are referred to as objects (which they aren't very often) are constructed out of verb-forms. Chinese is interesting because China has been civilized for about six or seven thousand years, but they mostly used verb-forms in the early versions of Chinese.
Ancient Chinese and especially Navajo as process-based languages, and the Indo-European languages are object-based languages. Obviously, in cultures that create stratification and technology, with a split from the environment, it is only natural to think in terms of objects -- especially after money came around. And written language.
So you're totally right that language itself conditions our perceptions and awareness, and I'm sure the way modern humans subjectively experience the world is a dramatic exception to humans of the past.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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r00tcmplx
Stranger

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You already concluded on your first paragraph :
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DividedQuantum said: If finite, it is still quite enough of a system for creativity to flourish indefinitely.
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DividedQuantum said: Do you feel language is finite, or infinite?
It's a body of effective communication. It expands/contracts as needed. Un-evolved languages have huge alphabets and restricts higher level thinking as such. Expression/language is currently compressing to more dense forms not expanding for language's sake.
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DividedQuantum said: More than that, do you feel that language can, maybe not describe or fully illustrate any phenomenon, but refer to, or in some way deal with any possible phenomenon at all?
For all intent's purposes.. Yes. Otherwise, you get into pointless philosophy. Old english is not a better form of english. It was an expanded lexicon premised on elitism : A bunch of rich people having nothing productive/better to do with their time than to huff their own farts and formally represent their supposed 'elite' depth. Most of it died because it was superfluous.
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DividedQuantum said: Some people feel that psychedelic states are completely beyond language, and this may in some sense be true, but on the other hand, isn't it wonderful that we can even talk about these states?
Psychedelic states aren't beyond language. All of it can be represented by current language. The issue is that the participant of this activity doesn't always have a broad range of intellect/knowledge/experience/grasp/practice of language to often be able to represent their experience in language. I could in short form discuss exactly what happens in the brain during this experience and describe the connection/details of the experience in average English if I chose. Most can't.
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DividedQuantum said: We can say quite a lot about them, so perhaps it is not totally relevant that I cannot communicate what an acid trip feels like to someone. But if two people have experienced nonordinary states, they can use language to have a very constructive conversation about it.
I'd love to hear your insights.
Reality isn't beyond language. Every experience can be expressed in it. However, it requires a unique brain and a broadly informed person to be able to do so. These experiences don't turn an individual into an 'Einstein' after-all. Modern Language doesn't hold a person back. It more often is the individual and their brain state of development that does. Most people are unaware of a large percentage of words in the dictionary... Not that they're necessary to speak intelligently but I use it to highlight that most of the language/dictionary capacity is sitting on a table unused. Until you've fully covered it, it's pointless to try to form an argument that language is somehow a limiting factor.
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