Gurdur

Wrong.
I gave you the evidence from linguistic universals; do you wish to challenge that ?
Plus I found your own dogmatic declaratives rather beside the point, as well as being flat out wrong (contradicted by two things; one, the evidence from non-Western languages, and two, your letting the evidence be suborned by theory, rather than letting the evidence suggest the theory.
Indeed I do; I don't believe you have yet grasped my drift here.

Ierrellus

Gurdur,

Thanks again. I agree on Chomsky. I would rather try to understand Nim Chimpsky!

But how is Bohr's analogy any less poetic than mine?


Ierrellus

Gurdur

As I've already explicitly replied in this thread (to James Still), yes.

Non-verbal communication is capable of disputing and agreement, though not the transfer of abstract concepts.

Take a look at dog and chimp mirror experiments; chimps are capable of recognizing that a reflection is of themselves, dogs are not.
An SOD differention in cognition there, I believe ?

In what context ?
Please specify your question a bit more.

Pardon me, but my own poetic language is at fault here.
SOD is deeply cognitively based, and finally results from a seperation of the individual from the enviroment.
Grammar is deeply based, annd results from the development of specialised circuits.
Grammar simply transfers the result of cognition; SOD as a conscious concept results from the evolution of self-consciousness, and it is possible that grammar itself when used communicatively in the transfer of abstract concepts requires firstly the evolution of self-consciousness.

Yep.
I mean: mostly.
A person on LSD may express great anxiety at the perceived feelings of loss of ego, of self-identity; oddly, such a person will still use the words "I", "me", "my".
A person extremely skilled in meditation can acheive the "melting-in" with the enviroment, and be able to describe it coherently at that moment.
Some drugs, such as from various species of the Datura and Solonacae families, can induce an exalted state where the ego is not felt to disappear, but becomes rather hidden, while the person is able to speak at great lengths on quite complex matters, if somewhat without rigour.

Yes.
(more or less)
I believe I excused infancy from this all before.
Furthermore, various psycholinguistic experiments seem to show a marked embryonic SOD in very young infants.
You tell me, and we'll fight it out here.

copernicus

There are at least two serious problems with Chomsky's rather high-level and vague discussion of linguistic universals. First of all, he doesn't have any way of distinguishing accidental universals and innate universals. Secondly, he doesn't seem to grasp the nature of innately developed behavior. That is, he seems to believe that universals are purely hard-wired into the brain and have little to do with experience during development.

Gurdur

Indeed, and thanks.
I'm getting here at cognitive universals, really, as reflected in linguistic universals; or IOW, I regard the linguistic side as pure evidence rather than an end in itself.
The point about accidental universals is excellent and taken; however, I think there's enough evidence for the psychological universals to overcome that problem.

copernicus

It is reasonable to attribute the universality of the subject/object dichotomy to cognition, since there are semantic universals that seem to govern the assignment of thematic case roles to subject and object slots. However, we don't really have solid proof of that. I think that Chomsky is too quick to attribute everything to cognition (which makes sense, since he thinks that language is all about intuitions of well-formedness). Myself, I'm more inclined to think that phonological universals, for example, have more to do with the universal structure of the speech tract than with so-called innate "markedness" categories that babies inherit from their parents.

Gurdur

Yeppers, this is along the lines of what I am getting at, though I would substitute "pre-cognitive inbuilt semantics" for "cognition", in order to avoid confusion with "higher" cognition.

I think it's impossible owing to ethical reasons to ever get definite proof of this or any countervailing view.

Let's agree, Chomsky is the Anti-Christ, and an opinionated twit to boot.

However, allow me to stress I am not basing my view of linguistic universals here on Chomsky's work.
I would agree, except why do you leave out the universal cerebellum, something which I find incredibly important ?
Yeah, I see the point, but this doesn't address the psycholinguistic experimental evidence showing evidence for at least putative "categorical markedness" in young infants, which does not depend on phonology.

Ierrellus

Copurnicus and Gurdur,

Great posts! Now there is some meat on the bones of the discussion.

When anyone suggests that a thing (SOD, universal grammar) is innate, I always wonder where it is "in there" and if being "in there" somehow categorizes it as irreducible. Does evolution in reductionist terms smack of the naturalistic fallacy?

Ierrellus

Gurdur

First off:
the fact of specific human attributes often means we can't really explore them to any great depth, owing to ethics (no nasty experiments on humans, and no animals with such attributes to experiment upon).

However, to some degree we can form predictions from the theories, and test those predictions. That already happens.

Then, if a finished system is no longer reducible - which is very different from irreducible - what we can do then is try building up that system (in a theoretical model way) again from scratch, and follow its development, thuis understanding it.

For more info on that process, I refer you to the great book:

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-titleid=329490&ve-field=none/qid=1021817727/103-5947974-5670219" target="_blank">The Recursive Universe : Cosmic Complexity and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge</a>, by William Poundstone.

Evolution in any other terms than reductionist ones simply does not make sense.

I refer you to:

Darwin's Dangerous Idea, by Daniel Dennett

The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins

No.


Keep in mind that there are an awful lot of twits an awful lot of pseudo-scientific, pseudo-evolutionary crap being peddled around --- including on this board --- yet that doesn't invalidate the actual theory.

e.g.
The existence of quacks does not invalidate medicine.

Ierrellus

Gurdur,

Much appreciation, sir, for your recommended reading and for your clear distinction between irreducibility and reducibility as far as possible or now knowable. I look forward to reading Poundstone! I will read Dennett and Dawkins while fighting my own biases. Dennett has made statements about animal mind that tick me off. With Dawkins, I have to get past my aversion to "selfish genes" and the "mitochondrial Eve." lol.

Thanks for your patience with me. I can pseudoscience with the best of them. I would like to know more about linguistic universals.

Ierrellus

[ May 19, 2002: Message edited by: Ierrellus ]</p>