Vanderzyden

The Darwinist supposes that humans are descendants of some species of ape.

On such a view, everything that makes us human must necessarily have natural origins--for both primary and secondary causes. This includes consciousness, complex emotions, introspection, language and reason.

It is the last to which I would like to draw your attention: language and reason. Consider an excerpt from the work of a famous philospher:

"Let us consider how many ideas we owe to the use of speech; how much grammar trains and facilitates the operations of the mind. And let us think of the inconceivable difficulties and the infinite amount of time that the first invention of languages must have cost. Let us join their reflections to the preceding ones, and we will be in a position to judge how many thousands of centuries would be necessary to develop successively in the human mind the operations of which it was capable."

--Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality


So, I ask, the following:

Which came first, reason, which requires language, or language, upon which reason depends?

Vanderzyden

[ August 29, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]</p>

Wyz_sub10

False dilemma. Why does reason require language? Are you saying that a person with no language skills cannot reason?

Ought Naught

Reason would be my answer. It's only my opinion, but I don't agree that it depends upon language.

Cretinist

You beat me to it, Wyz_sub10.

For an example of beings capable of reasoning without a (complex) language, just look at animals.

[ August 29, 2002: Message edited by: Cretinist ]</p>

ps418

That's an obvious non-sequiter. Many people believe for instance that humans are in fact descendents or some type of ape, but that part of the modification that makes us human was accomplished by the direct intervention of a deity (implantation of a soul, etc.).

[ August 29, 2002: Message edited by: ps418 ]</p>

Baloo

Vanderzyden,

This has already been addressed <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=001313" target="_blank">here</a>.

Oolon Colluphid

Hey vander, it's nice that you're keen an' all, but maybe you should respond to earlier threads you've started before opening (potentially very ramificatious ( ) new ones...?

Oolon

Doubting Didymus

I would say that the ability to use basic reasoning exists in animals, such as predators using a very rudimentary kind of logic in selecting prey from a herd.

I think language would have come later, and gave humans the capacity for much more sophisticated feats of resoning, including the ability to express resoning with symbols.

Perhaps our freind van would like to be more specific in exactly what problems he sees with the evolution of language and reason? There are many comprehensive books on the subject.

Valentine Pontifex

While I was reading his question the first thing that entered my mind was "false dichotomy." I am glad that the first reply said pretty much the same thing.

Vanderzyden,

Clearly some reasoning is possible without reason. Reasoning, problem solving, and communication are all observed in non-human animals: none of which have language.

Clearly the development of language greatly facilitated the process of reasoning though.

You also seem to be under the idea that the whole thing must appear at once in one-step.

Why can't a little reason evolved followed by a little "language" followed by more development of reasoning which leads to more language, etc. I am not saying that this is exactly how it happened, only this kind of possiblity shows that your question is a false dichotomy.

Automaton

Congratulations Vanderzyden, you have now degenerated yourself into the position of troll. You start a thread, the arguments in it get torn to shreds, you only respond on an evasively rhetoric level, if at all, and then you disappear only to create another thread as if nothing ever happened. If you can't or won't answer the responses to you, the intellectually honest thing to do would be to concede at least some form of defeat, rather than simply ignoring it. If things continue to go this way, and you become simply a non-responsive troll who posts a new thread and then runs away, you will be soon on the road of all the other trolls before you, towards being banned.

Good day.