I mean the more basic you make a language, the less it is a language, and if ideas are inextricably linked with language, they may, the further you trace them back, lack the qualification of being ideas and end up as just emotions or motivations or drives. — Baden
What I mean is: are we just talking about a battle of definitions here? — Baden
It allows this because negation is what allows language to refer to itself (it introduces recursion into language) insofar as to say 'not-x' is to refer to one's use of language, rather than some positively existing entity. — StreetlightX
So what does it mean in our times if someone accepts innateness of ideas or doesn't? I guess this thread is about whether the question can shown to be in need of reformulation. Is it really a question about language? — Mongrel
As I said.. I stole it from human origin studies. There are hominins who had the apparatus for speech, but there's no clear evidence of abstract thought in the remnants we have of their cultures. Thus.. maybe they had some sort of abstraction-free speech. — Mongrel
Slabs!
But what is basic language for? For the hominims? I'd suggest - imperatives. Then the negative must be ready to hand: to be able to refuse. — mcdoodle
It allows this because negation is what allows language to refer to itself (it introduces recursion into language) insofar as to say 'not-x' is to refer to one's use of language, rather than some positively existing entity. — StreetlightX
Basic Language: has nothing but present tense, and can't be used to express abstractions or universals. It can't be used pass on old sayings like "Never eat the yellow snow", because it doesn't contain the word "never." — Mongrel
Socialization is a two way street; the rock might mean a lot to me; but I can't make any sense of the idea that I might mean a lot to the rock. — John
What if the reason for the development of language is precisely the need to express abstract thought? — Barry Etheridge
in a sense, language could be the product of the needs of abstract thought. But now this doesn't mean that Homo sapiens had evolved an individual biological capacity of abstract thought that needs its expression. We are now talking rather more Platonically of the Cosmos as a realm of ideas that had to have a speaking animal to use as the vehicle of its expression. — Apokrisis
I've honestly given up trying to make sense of anything wuliheron says. He seems to be post-linguistic! — Barry Etheridge
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