Pharoah
Paranormal Adept
What my earlier work focuses on, is that increasing complexity happens accidentally at each level. Most examples of greater complexity (for example, most mutations) are not advantageous and do not perpetuate. But a small proportion do make a difference, which is why, however slow the process, complexity at each hierarchical level tends to increase. This is not to say however, that less complex forms count for nothing because less complexity can mean improved efficiencies. The former does not discount the latter...
@smcder what do you mean by "a fixed progression" #995
#998 "I would say the knowledge of disparate disciplines (including empirical knowledge) is implicit in the scientists' knowledge and technology" "I am not sure that no matter how sophisticated a knowledge of DNA one has, that all of this could be pulled out of only a sample of DNA? I'm not sure everything is coded in DNA - there is lots of information in the environment - and species move into novel environments - if you were given the DNA of an ancient mammal with a wide range (say a hominid) would you be able to tell everything about it? I don't think you would be able to say where it lived in that wide range?"
A reviewer made a similar point... but I am not saying that everything is coded in DNA. All I am proposing is that details about an organism and its environment will be coded for in some way and to some degree, and, therefore, that eDNA (and DNA) will bear a meaningful correspondence with its environment (courtesy of discourse through replication)
You are right... the term 'knowledge' need not be used. But I think the argument is very relevant to Jackson 1986 Knowledge Argument (which is where this paper started its life). And it is important to understand the different discourse levels and how they determine a unique class of meaningful correspondence. But... I agree that the term 'knowledge' is not vital.
#999 "Again, I am not sure that's important to your argument."
Don't get what you are saying
#1000 "1. that is a phrase that will be used in cases of ambiguity "did he means this or that" and the reviewer will go back to this and say "remember he said that .... so ..." because, if I read it write, it's radical ...
2. parsimony the standard theory would say something like human language came out of the (physiological) variability of various ways of communicating and some kind of mutation - or the physiology was there at some point and there was a new understand of how to use it ... now the physiology may have been there and continued to evolve and that may be what you are saying (?) - but to say that the physiology evolved as a result of the "compulsive desire" qua "compulsive desire" ... would be a departure, something more like Lamarckism ... but also we would need a "how" and would need to see if this is a parsimonious explanation ... at the species level would there be only one "compulsive desire"? Does it make sense in the light of what you may mean by this statement to ask "why didn't we evolve the physiology to fly?" as that also seem a compulsive desire ... or, since we have the compulsive desire to communicate directly with another person, why did we not develop ESP? (maybe we did!) ... why does language seem to have so much in common with the "languages" or "communications" of other animals - why aren't more and more species evolving it?"
Good points. Animals communicate and so would have early hominid. Let's say that at some early stage, hominid communication was not 'language'.
The question is, did a mechanism of language (a language acquisition device) arise due to some kind of mutation and language evolved from that? I say no. I say, that the early hominids started developing proto-concepts (as described in my paper) and that when an individual has a realisation of its own existential being, conceived thus, the individual then wants to relate that world-view... because it is revelatory. Proto-language then functions to inform about objects and subjects and their relation to one another and to the individual... and that ultimately requires a grammatical structure. Initially the language-specific physiology would not have been there... but the demand for new and novel sounds and expressions would have led to brain expansion and the evolution of physiologies. That's my argument. Perhaps "compulsive desire" is not the best term.
The problem with flying, is that our bones and brains are too heavy. You have to trade one for the other and then you don't end up with humans anymore. So perhaps some hominids did develop wings, but they ended up as crows.
@smcder what do you mean by "a fixed progression" #995
#998 "I would say the knowledge of disparate disciplines (including empirical knowledge) is implicit in the scientists' knowledge and technology" "I am not sure that no matter how sophisticated a knowledge of DNA one has, that all of this could be pulled out of only a sample of DNA? I'm not sure everything is coded in DNA - there is lots of information in the environment - and species move into novel environments - if you were given the DNA of an ancient mammal with a wide range (say a hominid) would you be able to tell everything about it? I don't think you would be able to say where it lived in that wide range?"
A reviewer made a similar point... but I am not saying that everything is coded in DNA. All I am proposing is that details about an organism and its environment will be coded for in some way and to some degree, and, therefore, that eDNA (and DNA) will bear a meaningful correspondence with its environment (courtesy of discourse through replication)
You are right... the term 'knowledge' need not be used. But I think the argument is very relevant to Jackson 1986 Knowledge Argument (which is where this paper started its life). And it is important to understand the different discourse levels and how they determine a unique class of meaningful correspondence. But... I agree that the term 'knowledge' is not vital.
#999 "Again, I am not sure that's important to your argument."
Don't get what you are saying
#1000 "1. that is a phrase that will be used in cases of ambiguity "did he means this or that" and the reviewer will go back to this and say "remember he said that .... so ..." because, if I read it write, it's radical ...
2. parsimony the standard theory would say something like human language came out of the (physiological) variability of various ways of communicating and some kind of mutation - or the physiology was there at some point and there was a new understand of how to use it ... now the physiology may have been there and continued to evolve and that may be what you are saying (?) - but to say that the physiology evolved as a result of the "compulsive desire" qua "compulsive desire" ... would be a departure, something more like Lamarckism ... but also we would need a "how" and would need to see if this is a parsimonious explanation ... at the species level would there be only one "compulsive desire"? Does it make sense in the light of what you may mean by this statement to ask "why didn't we evolve the physiology to fly?" as that also seem a compulsive desire ... or, since we have the compulsive desire to communicate directly with another person, why did we not develop ESP? (maybe we did!) ... why does language seem to have so much in common with the "languages" or "communications" of other animals - why aren't more and more species evolving it?"
Good points. Animals communicate and so would have early hominid. Let's say that at some early stage, hominid communication was not 'language'.
The question is, did a mechanism of language (a language acquisition device) arise due to some kind of mutation and language evolved from that? I say no. I say, that the early hominids started developing proto-concepts (as described in my paper) and that when an individual has a realisation of its own existential being, conceived thus, the individual then wants to relate that world-view... because it is revelatory. Proto-language then functions to inform about objects and subjects and their relation to one another and to the individual... and that ultimately requires a grammatical structure. Initially the language-specific physiology would not have been there... but the demand for new and novel sounds and expressions would have led to brain expansion and the evolution of physiologies. That's my argument. Perhaps "compulsive desire" is not the best term.
The problem with flying, is that our bones and brains are too heavy. You have to trade one for the other and then you don't end up with humans anymore. So perhaps some hominids did develop wings, but they ended up as crows.