[zR0x]

We had to learn to collaborate before “language”.

Perhaps thinking language is a key aspect of consciousness is wrong.

Chomsky has said human languages themselves are just random sounds we’ve been polishing the meaning of.

So yeah I have no doubt a machine can sort them correctly if we tell it to. They mean what we want and see in them.

That’s hardly proving anything about consciousness. Just that a computer can sort and count syntax, and guess at meaning by frequency of relative placement.

It’s acting on English data sets. Not human biology.

[mcswell]

"Chomsky has said human languages themselves are just random sounds we’ve been polishing the meaning of." I've read a lot of Chomsky, and I don't recall him ever saying anything like this. Can you provide a citation?

And I don't think "sorting" has anything to do with language.

[emodendroket]

Theoretically, if we had a perfect understanding of human mechanisms of language, we could reproduce it in code. Of course we don't.

[zR0x]

I don’t understand how we don’t?

I make sound snapping my fingers. Whistling.

Why is it so hard to accept mirror neurons fired when early humans heard birds and animals, each other’s grunts and over time we refined it?

Everyone has some capacity to refine and strengthen muscle. Why do we need some abstract meta-construct to explain where language comes from? It comes from us. Fleshy meat bags that mutate state over a short period then die.

Chomsky diagrams, conceptual organs and the like are useful for “being on the same page” in a particular context, but there’s no reason to believe language is a requirement for consciousness except our own propensity for romanticizing our existing.

[goatlover]

Because other animals don't produce sounds which constitute abstract meaning that can be combined into sentences. Possibly a few birds and dolphins or whales might get close. But there's clearly something more going on in the brain than making sounds which contribute to word formation.

[zR0x]

Sure there is more going on than we see on the surface.

Before neuroscience and modern imaging we needed to sit and imagine and theorize.

Now we don’t.

[mcswell]

Neuroscience and brain imaging still don't tell us how language works--they're at a much to course level of granularity. Even if we could see every single neuron as it fired (which we can't), the volume of data would be overwhelming, far more than if you followed every transistor in a modern computer.

[goatlover]

You don't think neuroscience involves theorizing? You think the neuroscientists can just image the neuronal activity and read it out in some complete scientific explanation?

[zR0x]

Yes. It’s emergent behavior of a physical universe that has no meaning. It just is.

“Meaning to us” is subjective. That’s how we have conflicting theories in many fields. Science isn’t about meaning. It’s about measuring how matter coalesces at various speeds relative to light.

I make noise because my biology “just has” properties to allow it given the other physical conditions.

Perfectly elegant theory based on the physical structure of reality alone. No ephemeral language organs.

Theory can quickly go from scientific observation to reinforced nonsense used to sell books and bond as species.

That’s fine, it’s how society works. It doesn’t mean anything to reality.

[emodendroket]

I'm not talking about "where language comes from." I'm talking about a mechanical understanding of how humans produce and understand language.

Chomsky's idea goes deeper than "just random sounds," given his theory of universal grammar.

[zR0x]

Religion shows we can create very detailed belief in ornate ideas that are scientifically nonsensical. It’s possible the concepts linguists seek to develop are similarly self reinforcing feedback loops that are meaningless to science.

There’s been an explosion in biological science since Chomsky became prominent. He even admits his work is abstract and to serve his ends. We may be putting more into his ideas due to his fame and infamy than we should.

Trial and error, social constraints on sounds and the mechanics of biology can explain it elegantly. What do the ornate theories and ephemeral organs provide except to satisfy “linguists” biological agency to create and imagine?

Linguistics came about in a much less scientifically aware era in human history. My money is on it going the way of religion; an abstraction that’s so orthogonal to advancing science we leave it behind.

[emodendroket]

You can believe that if you like but it doesn’t bring us any closer to an answer.