Definition of Consciousness: 2nd Poll

[Subsymbolic]

You simply confuse what Chomsky says about the origin and what he says about evolution from that and what he thinks would be necessary for language to exist.

He most certainly believes the language capacity likely arose by a single mutation in a single individual.

And I provided evidence of Chomsky saying it.

Case closed.

I'm impressed by your certainty. Can you point out precisely where in your video, rather than your imagination Chomsky says "the language capacity likely arose by a single mutation in a single individual". Because watching that video all the way through, he's absolutely explicit that whatever happens by a single mutation in a single individual isn't a capacity for language, it's just another necessary but not sufficient precursor to language. As he put it at around three minutes:

Whatever is going on in our heads is pre linguistic...

Now if all that was required now was learning a language, then perhaps you'd have a point, you could claim that 'the hardware was in place and it was just a matter of sorting out the software'. I wouldn't, but you might.

However, Chomsky is quite explicit between 3:29 and 4:10 that:

Externalisation is a very tough process, there's this internal thing in the head ... you have this thing in the head and then you have the external sensory motor system which has been around for hundreds of thousands of years and has nothing to do with it, and you have to match them up and that's a complicated process. In fact that's where, practically, as far as we know, that's where all, almost all, the complexity of language is.

In other words, it's two more quite distinct systems linking up. Just like the linking up of the fibre ring. Only far more complicated. Don't forget, he argues that there are three systems:

(1) the combinatorial operator Merge along with word-like atomic elements, roughly the "CPU" of human language syntax; and the two interfaces, (2) the sensorimotor interface that is part of language's system for externalisation, including vocal learning and production; and (3) the conceptual - intentional interface, for thought.

The one he's talking about in the early part of the film is the unification of Merge. Later in the video he talks about the unification of Merge and the sensorimotor interface.

Next time listen to your source all the way through. I'm sure you think you are right, but so far you have merely asserted it and linked to a video that you clearly don't quite understand that relates to complex ideas in a book I don't think you have read.

You want to try to prove me wrong then argue your case, don't merely assert it.

 

[fromderinside]

Not practical to argue with one who takes self evident truth to be a scientific fact.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Not practical to argue with one who takes self evident truth to be a scientific fact.

Give me a little while to get up to speed with the dynamics here. At the moment I know nothing (well I know that Mainyu knows what he's talkin about even if we don't always agree, but he's too smart to get drawn in often...)

 

[Subsymbolic]

Oh, and perhaps I should explain, my name, subsymbolic, makes it quite clear what I think of Chomsky. As you'd expect, given my approach to consciousness, I draw a sharp distinction between the conceptual and the nonconceptual, the symbolic and the subsymbolic. As such, I think the idea of a universal grammar, and worse a language of thought, is just wrongheaded. GOFAI spent fifty years making sod all progress trying to make language based AI work. Minsky shafted Rosenblatt's perceptrons in the sixties or we'd be decades ahead, but from the moment that Rumelhardt and Mclelland helped jump start Connectionist AI back in the late eighties and made connections with neurobiology we've made more progress than in all of time before it.

Language is a public phenomenon that while I'm sure is organised by the pattern completing and error correction processes of the entirely subsymbolic brain, really isn't a good guide to how the brain works. The laws of logic are not the laws of subsymbolic processing, but they are the laws of symbolic narrative running on specialised virtual structures. I'm sure chomsky is looking in the right places, but he's assuming that the mind's eye view of the brain is remotely revealing about the brain's eye. Chomsky is playing Mario and assuming that, because he sees Mario on that user illusion, that it is Mario all the way down.

In short, my name is a commitment to a particular approach to the mind/brain. Believe in God? I don't even believe in beliefs.

 

[untermensche]

Not practical to argue with one who takes self evident truth to be a scientific fact.

All self evident truths ARE scientific facts.

Which isn't?

 

[Subsymbolic]

Not practical to argue with one who takes self evident truth to be a scientific fact.

All self evident truths ARE scientific facts.

Which isn't?

There's always likely to be a problem with those that relate to how things seem to an individual. It's easy to confuse self evident with objective. However it is perfectly possible for people to have a self evident subjective truth. You know, two people take a chug from the same cup of home made Coffee. To one it is self evidently true that it tastes quite vile, to the other it is self evidently true that it tastes lovely. There is no scientific fact of the matter in these cases.

 

[untermensche]

2:08 "Now whatever happened would be some rewiring of the brain. Some mutation that caused a rewiring of the brain."

He is talking about the emergence of the language capacity.

2:24 "But a rewiring of the brain, a mutation, takes place in an individual, not in a group."

Chomsky clearly states that the language capacity likely arose in a single individual due to a single mutation. I have heard him say it dozens of times. That is how I know it for a fact. It is what he believes.

At the beginning of the video he says that the capacity has not changed in tens of thousands of years.

At the end he compares the emergence of language to the forming of a snowflake, a single event.

Case closed.

 

[DBT]

Language being a feature of consciousness enabled by the the evolution of the related neural architecture. No neural architecture dedicated to language equals no language ability, therefore brain and consequently consciousness without without the aptitude for language.

 

[untermensche]

Language being a feature of consciousness enabled by the the evolution of the related neural architecture. No neural architecture dedicated to language equals no language ability, therefore brain and consequently consciousness without without the aptitude for language.

Basically you have said that the consciousness is like the leg. Something that arrived via evolution.

No kidding.

It doesn't mean we understand the first thing about it beyond our subjective experience of it.

And we don't. We don't have the slightest clue what it is objectively.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Oh dear.

To prove your point you needed to:

point out precisely where in your video, rather than your imagination Chomsky says "the language capacity likely arose by a single mutation in a single individual".

So, quoting Chomsky stating that:

"Now whatever happened would be some rewiring of the brain. Some mutation that caused a rewiring of the brain."

(2:08) my bold

should cause you to think twice as he says 'whatever happened' rather than 'language' and quite what Chomsky thinks happened is precisely what we are arguing about.

Unfortunately, rather than referring to what Chomsky actually says, you refer to your imagination again and claim, once again, and again without a shred of evidence, that:

He is talking about the emergence of the language capacity.

This is the claim you need to be able to support. It's the claim you haven't yet given any supporting evidence for. The fact is that Chomsky states clearly that he isn't talking about language, he's talking about a prelinguistic internal computational mechanism:

And that rewiring of the brain would have given this mechanism, this computational mechanism, that allows these things to happen.

To be explicit, he's talking abou The Basic Property, the precursor of a Universal grammar, itself a precursor of language. He's quite clear about this in the book.

He then goes on to state that

there is no reason to think it was externalised at all, whatever is going on in our heads is prelinguistic

He couldn't be clearer, he's talking about a prelinguistic computational mechanism, one that is necessary but not sufficient for language. As if that wasn't clear enough, he then goes on to talk about the next stage that is necessary for language.

So when you say:

Chomsky clearly states that the language capacity likely arose in a single individual due to a single mutation.

You are simply wrong. He doesn't say that there at all. You said it, he didn't.

I have heard him say it dozens of times.

Well, if you believe that, then there are two possibilities: either you have watched the same video many times and failed to grasp what Chomsky is saying a dozen times, or you are claiming there's other videos in which he does say it, in which case, you'll need to post them instead.

That is how I know it for a fact. It is what he believes.

There's no worry at all that you might have misunderstood these videos? Because in his book he is very very clear that this isn't what he believes and in this video he is very clear that this isn't what he believes.

He clearly doesn't say what you stated he said in this video. FFS you must have noticed that he didn't say it when you tried to find him saying it and he in fact said something else?

Cherry picking your quote to miss the bit in which he says it's a computational mechanism and ignoring the fact that he explicitly says this computational mechanism is prelinguistic is bad enough, but to then blithely assert the opposite? I get that you are sure, but you are also wrong and it's time to admit that.

Your certainty in the face of overwhelming evidence is merely faith and, well, you know...

 

[untermensche]

This is an article critical of Chomsky's work.

I think the criticism is wildly absurd but at least the author understands one thing. In bold.

The endless possibilities exist because of the way recursion embeds a phrase within another phrase of the same type. For example, English can embed phrases to the right (“John hopes Mary knows Peter is lying”) or embed centrally (“The dog that the cat that the boy saw chased barked”). In theory, it is possible to go on embedding these phases infinitely. In practice, understanding starts to break down when the phrases are stacked on top of one another as in these examples. Chomsky thought this breakdown was not directly related to language per se. Rather it was a limitation of human memory. More important, Chomsky proposed that this recursive ability is what sets language apart from other types of thinking such as categorization and perceiving the relations among things. He also proposed recently this ability arose from a single genetic mutation that occurred be*tween 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

https://www.salon.com/2016/09/10/what-will-universal-grammar-evidence-rebuts-chomskys-theory-of-language-learning_partner/

You do not understand what Chomsky believes about this.

You confuse his discussions on the properties of the language capacity with it's origin.

A single mutation in a single individual.

 

[Subsymbolic]

This is an article critical of Chomsky's work.

I think the criticism is wildly absurd but at least the author understands one thing. In bold.

The endless possibilities exist because of the way recursion embeds a phrase within another phrase of the same type. For example, English can embed phrases to the right (“John hopes Mary knows Peter is lying”) or embed centrally (“The dog that the cat that the boy saw chased barked”). In theory, it is possible to go on embedding these phases infinitely. In practice, understanding starts to break down when the phrases are stacked on top of one another as in these examples. Chomsky thought this breakdown was not directly related to language per se. Rather it was a limitation of human memory. More important, Chomsky proposed that this recursive ability is what sets language apart from other types of thinking such as categorization and perceiving the relations among things. He also proposed recently this ability arose from a single genetic mutation that occurred be*tween 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

https://www.salon.com/2016/09/10/what-will-universal-grammar-evidence-rebuts-chomskys-theory-of-language-learning_partner/

Let me get this straight, you are telling me that someone disagreeing with Chomsky is a good guide to what Chomsky believes? You know how desperate this sounds? I suspect that as you can't find Comsky saying what you are sure he's said you are now casting around desperately for someone, anyone, saying what you want to hear.

So let's look at what this says in reality, rather than your imagination:

Here's your bold:

He also proposed recently this ability arose from a single genetic mutation that occurred be*tween 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

Look carefully. Do you see the word 'language'? No, you see the words 'this ability'. Now, I realise that in your imagination, 'this ability' is language. So now let's go and look at what 'this ability' is in reality. It's not hard, because it's made quite clear what the ability is in the previous paragraph:

More recently, in a famous paper published in Science in 2002, Chomsky and his co-authors described a universal grammar that included only one feature, called computational recursion (although many advocates of universal grammar still prefer to assume there are many universal principles and parameters). This new shift permitted a limited number of words and rules to be combined to make an unlimited number of sentences.

So the author is absolutely clear that the ability that arose from a single genetic mutation is computational recursion, not language.

You do not understand what Chomsky believes about this.

You know I rather think I do. I'm the one who can find clear evidence to support my position. You clearly can't. Yet, oddly, you remain dogmatically certain you are right.

You confuse his discussions on the properties of the language capacity with it's origin.

Well actually, at this point, I'm merely pointing out that the sources that you think say one thing actually say something quite different.

A single mutation in a single individual.

Sure, gives rise to the precursor of a generative grammar, the completion of the fibre ring that allows internal recursive thought. Do you think that is sufficient for language? Chomsky explicitly doesn't.

 

[ruby sparks]

The endless possibilities exist because of the way recursion embeds a phrase within another phrase of the same type. For example, English can embed phrases to the right (“John hopes Mary knows Peter is lying”) or embed centrally (“The dog that the cat that the boy saw chased barked”). In theory, it is possible to go on embedding these phases infinitely. In practice, understanding starts to break down when the phrases are stacked on top of one another as in these examples. Chomsky thought this breakdown was not directly related to language per se. Rather it was a limitation of human memory. More important, Chomsky proposed that this recursive ability is what sets language apart from other types of thinking such as categorization and perceiving the relations among things. He also proposed recently this ability arose from a single genetic mutation that occurred be*tween 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

https://www.salon.com/2016/09/10/what-will-universal-grammar-evidence-rebuts-chomskys-theory-of-language-learning_partner/

I can't help noticing the words in red above and wonder why you posted that link.

 

[untermensche]

Let me get this straight, you are telling me that someone disagreeing with Chomsky is a good guide to what Chomsky believes?

I provided Chomsky explicitly saying it. Whether you understand him or not.

I provided a third party agreeing with me.

It is your turn to provide more than a misunderstanding of the difference between the origin of the language capacity and what features are necessary for it.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Let me get this straight, you are telling me that someone disagreeing with Chomsky is a good guide to what Chomsky believes?

I provided Chomsky explicitly saying it. Whether you understand him or not.

No, one thing you absolutely have not done is 'provided Chomsky saying it', where 'it' equals "the language capacity likely arose by a single mutation in a single individual".

I provided a third party agreeing with me.

No, you provided a third party quite clearly disagreeing with you as he rightly slagged down Chomsky. In both cases, both were explicitly talking a about a prelinguistic recursive capacity in the brain. In both cases they are explicit that this is not language. In both cases I have quoted them making this explicit point.

It is your turn to provide more than a misunderstanding of the difference between the origin of the language capacity and what features are necessary for it.

Cool, following Gareth Evans, I hold that to be a language user a system has to be able to satisfy the generality constraint. That is, if it is capable of thinking, say, John loves Mary, it has to be capable of thinking all the other combinations, Mary loves John, John loves love and so on. I'm also quite clear, following Wittgenstein, that language is a public phenomena. While the mechanism that instantiates it can be private, the symbolic tokens can only be public for the simple reason that they are symbolic - the meanings have to be consensual. There's a complex reason as well but what's the point.

As such, while there are a host of precursors, necessary but not sufficient conditions for language use, they all need to come together, not just in an individual, but across a community before there is a capacity for language. Language takes two to tango and thus has to be expressed in external behaviour. Chomsky gets to the same position in a different way, but he's quite clear that if it isn't externalised, it isn't language. That's part of his point in the first half of the first video you posted.

As such, when he talks about a mutation causing changes, he's absolutely clear that the changes are internal, prelinguistic and need to be integrated with the motor systems across a community before language use is possible .

I've quoted him stating all three.

 

[untermensche]

From an interview with Chomsky:

Language as far as we know did not. Anatomically modern humans are found up to 200,000 years ago; behaviourally modern humans appear very recently in evolutionary time, as far as evidence now exists, perhaps within a window of 50-100,000 years ago, a flick of an eye in evolutionary time. That’s why palaeoanthropologist Ian Tattersall regards human intelligence generally as an “emergent quality”, not “a product of Nature’s patient and gradual engineering over the eons.”

I did not say that language as a completed system emerged in an individual in an instant. But I cannot think of a coherent alternative to the idea that mutations take place in individuals, not communities, so that whatever rewiring of the brain yielded the apparently unique properties of language, specifically recursive generation of hierarchically structured expressions, would therefore have taken place in an individual, and only later been used among individuals who had inherited this capacity.

https://libcom.org/library/interview-noam-chomsky-radical-anthropology-2008

Every bit of evidence in this thread points to my interpretation. Chomsky believes the language capacity arose in a single individual with a single mutation to a very complex system.

And there is no evidence in this thread of another interpretation.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Let me get this clear; you are claiming that:

Chomsky believes the language capacity arose in a single individual with a single mutation to a very complex system.

Despite the fact that Chomsky explicitly says, in the quote you chose, that:

I did not say that language as a completed system emerged in an individual in an instant.

In that case, I can only assume that you are both attempting to equivocate your way out of being flat wrong and also blindly oblivious to what Chomsky's position here is.

Once upon a time, Chomsky asserted that that the brain was uniquely structured with a knowledge of syntax which allowed it to learn language if exposed to it and that every human had an internal 'universal grammar' that all languages shared. Initially this looked pretty sensible, but as time when by, the problems mounted and eventually, around the time that connectionist accounts of language acquisition demonstrated that Chomsky's only game in town wasn't the only game and wasn't even the best game, Chomsky retreated into what he called his 'minimalist program'. By 2015, this minimalist program had retreated from the baroque excesses of his earlier theory to the seemingly innocuous claim that the ability to think in a recursive manner is the foundation of a universal grammar. If recursion wasn't built into every level of our neural architecture and cognitive science hadn't left this poor chap behind, this might have been interesting - at least as far as largely evidence free just so stories go. If I was arguing with Chomsky, I'd ask him to tell me what gene it was and what unique mutation of it led to the extended fibre growth and simultaneous guidance of the growing fibres, because 1) he's oddly silent about the actual mutation shared by us and not shared by our closest ancestors and 2) I can't imagine a single mutation that could achieve both. I'd also ask why he seems blithely unaware of other mechanisms, sexual recombination and epigenetic changes gene expression selection for a start.

Either way, the point is that Chomsky doesn't actually much care about the development of language per se, he's really only interested in that one putative aspect of it that supports his moribund theory that there is a universal grammar and it is unique to us. Sadly, being ignorant of that background, you are under the impression that he is identifying the moment when the capacity for language occurred, and that's why he's fetishising it. Sadly this isn't the case. Chomsky himself is quite explicit that the capacity for language has three necessary but not sufficient aspects. I've already quoted them twice. One of them is a recursive loop in the brain, this is what he's talking about in all your quotes.

If you want to claim that this recursive loop is the capacity for language, I suggest you take look at the language capacities of people lacking a full expression of the FOX P2 gene, for example, Even if Chomsky were right, it's just one part of a large jigsaw and you will need to explain how this one capacity alone is the capacity for language.

Or you can bluster some more...

 

[fromderinside]

Let me get this straight, you are telling me that someone disagreeing with Chomsky is a good guide to what Chomsky believes?

I provided Chomsky explicitly saying it. Whether you understand him or not.

I provided a third party agreeing with me.

Sez isn't is. Gotta agree with Subsymbolic​.

 

[untermensche]

Let me get this clear; you are claiming that:

Chomsky believes the language capacity arose in a single individual with a single mutation to a very complex system.

Despite the fact that Chomsky explicitly says, in the quote you chose, that:

I did not say that language as a completed system emerged in an individual in an instant.

In that case, I can only assume that you are both attempting to equivocate your way out of being flat wrong and also blindly oblivious to what Chomsky's position here is.

Once upon a time, Chomsky asserted that that the brain was uniquely structured with a knowledge of syntax which allowed it to learn language if exposed to it and that every human had an internal 'universal grammar' that all languages shared. Initially this looked pretty sensible, but as time when by, the problems mounted and eventually, around the time that connectionist accounts of language acquisition demonstrated that Chomsky's only game in town wasn't the only game and wasn't even the best game, Chomsky retreated into what he called his 'minimalist program'. By 2015, this minimalist program had retreated from the baroque excesses of his earlier theory to the seemingly innocuous claim that the ability to think in a recursive manner is the foundation of a universal grammar. If recursion wasn't built into every level of our neural architecture and cognitive science hadn't left this poor chap behind, this might have been interesting - at least as far as largely evidence free just so stories go. If I was arguing with Chomsky, I'd ask him to tell me what gene it was and what unique mutation of it led to the extended fibre growth and simultaneous guidance of the growing fibres, because 1) he's oddly silent about the actual mutation shared by us and not shared by our closest ancestors and 2) I can't imagine a single mutation that could achieve both. I'd also ask why he seems blithely unaware of other mechanisms, sexual recombination and epigenetic changes gene expression selection for a start.

Either way, the point is that Chomsky doesn't actually much care about the development of language per se, he's really only interested in that one putative aspect of it that supports his moribund theory that there is a universal grammar and it is unique to us. Sadly, being ignorant of that background, you are under the impression that he is identifying the moment when the capacity for language occurred, and that's why he's fetishising it. Sadly this isn't the case. Chomsky himself is quite explicit that the capacity for language has three necessary but not sufficient aspects. I've already quoted them twice. One of them is a recursive loop in the brain, this is what he's talking about in all your quotes.

If you want to claim that this recursive loop is the capacity for language, I suggest you take look at the language capacities of people lacking a full expression of the FOX P2 gene, for example, Even if Chomsky were right, it's just one part of a large jigsaw and you will need to explain how this one capacity alone is the capacity for language.

Or you can bluster some more...

whatever rewiring of the brain yielded the apparently unique properties of language, specifically recursive generation of hierarchically structured expressions, would therefore have taken place in an individual

You're just wrong.

Which is why you did not address this clear unequivocal statement at all.

Chomsky is talking about the language capacity.

A single mutation in a single individual.

I've presented it said in three ways. Three pieces of evidence to support my position.

How much more will it take?

You've presented nothing but misunderstanding and ZERO evidence. What you have presented makes it clear you have no idea what the difference is between Chomsky's ideas on the origin of the language capacity and the necessary components of observed language. You mistake the capacity for the "system". Two different things.

Just answer this to show you have a clue to what Chomsky believes.

What does Chomsky believe the language capacity first existed as? What did the first individual (the individual he talks about in the quote above) that had the language capacity do with it, according to Chomsky?

 

[DBT]

Language being a feature of consciousness enabled by the the evolution of the related neural architecture. No neural architecture dedicated to language equals no language ability, therefore brain and consequently consciousness without without the aptitude for language.

Basically you have said that the consciousness is like the leg. Something that arrived via evolution.

No kidding.

It doesn't mean we understand the first thing about it beyond our subjective experience of it.

And we don't. We don't have the slightest clue what it is objectively.

You claim to know. You hold to your claims in spite of all research, evidence and commentary of researchers to the contrary.....