What do you mean by system of thought? Are there multiple systems of thought, language being one? It looks like you're trying to distinguish between a "system of thought" and "communication". Is that correct or no? — Noble Dust

Yes, that's correct. What I mean by "system of thought" is one aspect of what we call "thinking." As I mentioned, we talk to ourselves constantly. Are you not thinking when you talk to yourself? I would say you are, but I wouldn't say that's the only form of thinking.

Because I don't understand what "system of thought" is supposed to mean, I'm not clear on how it differs from communication — Noble Dust

You're right, "system of thought" is rather vague, but that's because we understand very little about "thought" in general. Rotating an object in your mind's eye, which we can all do, doesn't necessarily involve language, for example. I know of some people who claim language and thought are the same thing, but almost no one who claims language (manifested in this case in just "talking to oneself") is entirely separate from thinking. So I say that language is one system of thought, one expression of thought.

Communication is something done with the sensorimotor system and is secondary.

Language is a system of thought. It's communicated very rarely, whether by sign or through speech. So it's communicative properties aren't what's essential. One can communicate with a hairstyle, bees with a waggle dance, etc. There are all kinds of ways to communicate, down through the insects. So language certainly isn't that. — Xtrix

I think commands, exclamations, etc. are social actions. Propositional language is a fusion of vocalization and just plain navigation through the world and the learning that follows. When you ask a question, your behavior is like looking or trying to hear. If you answer a question, you're taking the role the surrounding environment would to a seeker, whether that seeker is a tetrapod or a single-celled creature whose "seeking" is equivalent to chemical reactions.

Those chemical reactions evolved into propositional language that might have seemed to earlier humans as the voice of the divine. Some study (can't remember where I saw this) showed that the language centers of the brain become active when a person is experiencing things like the sight of objects.

The time frame Chomsky is pointing to coincides with an episode of dramatic change in human culture. There have been efforts to find a genetic change to explain it (unrelated to Chomsky or language). I don't think to date a genetic change has been discovered. All we know is that something happened that changed us from something not much more sophisticated than our neanderthal cousins into what we are now. It's not bizarre to expect that linguistic changes happened at the same time, maybe from a preceding proto language?

Evolutionary endowed language capacities evolved very slowly. (Chomsky can offer no real insights there...)... — VagabondSpectre

I disagree. In fact, it's very hard to see how the capacity for language -- a digital infinite system -- could have evolved slowly. You don't go from one word to an infinite number of words in gradual steps. The language capacity evolved through some sort of rewiring of the brain, no doubt, but it's more likely this happened in an individual 200,000 or so years ago.

I don't agree with that. A bees waggle dance is in no way "language," unless, as I stated earlier, you adhere to the belief that language is communication. I'm in no way convinced by that.

I'm basically of the opinion that if you take everything Chomsky said about language, and then held the diametrically opposite view to anything he ever wrote on language ever, you'd be roughly on the right track. Like, you couldn't ask for a better, more exemplary, utterly wrong way to look at language than from a Chomskian POV. — StreetlightX

That's fine. I'd be interested in hearing why you think that then.

The long and short of it for me is that Chomsky's approach to language is evolutionary nonsense. Not only does Chomksy and his ilk almost entirely divorce language from function, but so too does he universalize utterly contingent aspects of language while at the same time making those aspects 'innate'. It's a Platonism of language that is, for me, indistinguishable from a theism. No one who takes evolution seriously can take Chomsky seriously. — StreetlightX

What utterly contingent aspects of language? What Chomsky is referring to with universal grammar is almost trivial, and should be uncontroversial, but has been consistently misunderstood. He's saying there's a genetic component to the language capacity, on par with the mammalian visual capacity. That's not an amazing insight.

I agree there are aspects of Platonism involved, which Chomsky himself acknowledges as "Plato's problem" and discussed in the Meno. I don't see what's theistic about that.

Unfortunately, much of what you cite gets Chomsky completely wrong. To take one example:

"Further, because Chomsky has pronounced that language did not evolve"

Just this alone goes to show they've never read a word of Chomsky. Of course language evolved. It's difficult to see, however, how it evolved incrementally. So yes, it's possible that it appeared in one human a couple of hundred thousand years ago. Hence the sudden explosion of creativity that's seen at this time.

Here and here [both pdfs] are some easy reading if you're interested in some rather straightforward critiques of the Chomskian paradigm. The long and short of it for me is that Chomsky's approach to language is evolutionary nonsense. Not only does Chomksy and his ilk almost entirely divorce language from function, but so too does he universalize utterly contingent aspects of language while at the same time making those aspects 'innate'. It's a Platonism of language that is, for me, indistinguishable from a theism. No one who takes evolution seriously can take Chomsky seriously.

Edit: A popular article by Vyvyan Evans, a summary of his book on the utter and complete waste of time that is Chomskian linguistics, can be found here, if you'd prefer some lighter reading: https://aeon.co/essays/the-evidence-is-in-there-is-no-language-instinct — StreetlightX

I would suggest reading anything by Chomsky rather than taking the word of these authors. I can't see how anyone remotely familiar with Chomsky believes this nonsense. For example:

"Talk of linguistic universals has given cognitive scientists the impression that languages are all built to a common pattern. In fact, there are vanishingly few universals of language in the direct sense that all languages exhibit them. Instead, diversity can be found at almost every level of linguistic organization. This fundamentally changes the object of enquiry from a cognitive science perspective."

This has nothing to do with UG. Absolutely nothing. Of course there's an enormous range of language diversity.

More:

"A widespread assumption among cognitive scientists, growing out of the generative tradition in linguistics, is that all languages are English-like, but with different sound systems and vocabularies. "

Utter nonsense.

"The claims of Universal Grammar, we will argue, are either empirically false, unfalsifiable, or misleading in that they refer to tendencies rather than strict universals."

If the language capacity is shared by all human beings -- in fact essentially defines human beings as a property -- and no other organism has this capacity, then there is certainly a unique genetic structure underlying it. How this can even be disputed or controversial is mind-boggling.

As far as the Piraha language: here's a good response:
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/362672

Just this alone goes to show they've never read a word of Chomsky. Of course language evolved. It's difficult to see, however, how it evolved incrementally. So yes, it's possible that it appeared in one human a couple of hundred thousand years ago. Hence the sudden explosion of creativity that's seen at this time — Xtrix

You misunderstand - Chomsky et. al. effectively say that the FLN ('faculty of language in the narrow sense', which includes only recursion and nothing else) should not be considered to be adaptive. They want instead to insist that it is exaptive - it evolved for some other, entirely unspecified, entirely speculative, and entirely theoretically unsubstantiated purpose. Literally, they throw out a few half-hearted guesses ("If, however, one entertains the hypothesis that recursion evolved to solve other computational problems such as navigation, number quantification, or social relationships, then it is possible that other animals have such abilities") without providing a single rationale whatsoever for why it would have done so in any of these cases. Not even an undergraduate would get away with such a hand-wavy, completely unargued-for line of reasoning. And these guys supposed to be world-class experts. It's embarrassing. But they're not done. But that's just the first ridiculous line of non-argument.

The next utterly incredulous step they make is to say that having evolved for something else (who knows what or why?), this adaptation (which was decidedly not for language) became harnessed by humans for the purposes of language. How and why? Not. a. single. attempt. at. an. answer. Instead we get this shit: "During evolution, the modular and highly domain-specific system of recursion may have become penetrable and domain-general. This opened the way for humans, perhaps uniquely, to apply the power of recursion to other problems. This change from domain-specific to domain-general may have been guided by particular selective pressures, unique to our evolutionary past, or as a consequence (by-product) of other kinds of neural reorganization." (Quotes from "The Faculty of Language", Chomsky et. al.).

That's it. Literally this is a bunch of speculative conditionals stung together: "maybe this happened (how? no idea), and then once that happened, this other thing happened (how? No idea), and ta da! language." The linguist Daniel Dor comments: "Well, this is really not a solution. Not even a tentative one. There is nothing here but a weary and desperate attempt to keep the essence of language (whatever is left of it) in the realm of mystery—away from the domain of evolutionary explanation. Of course, capacities may evolve for one function and then be adapted for others, and they may also be by-products of other “kinds of neural reorganizations,” but in such processes the capacities evolve and change to fit their new functional contexts: they do not simply stay the same. What is even more problematic is the capacity itself that is thus salvaged from explanation." (Dor, The Instruction of the Imagination)

Or, to quote the evolutionary biologists Jablonka and Lamb: "There is no reason to doubt that combining several different preexisting faculties can lead to important and surprising evolutionary novelties. ... However, it is difficult to accept that an exquisite adaptive specialization like language is the result of emergence alone, without subsequent elaboration by natural selection. It is much more reasonable to adopt the traditional adaptive Darwinian explanation, which is that recruiting an existing system (such as the computational capacity of FLN) into a new functional framework (locomotion or communication) is followed by its gradual evolutionary refinement and adjustment within this new framework. One would expect the properties of FLN to become more adapted to the conceptual system, which would mean they would not be abstract and meaning-blind, as Chomsky’s UG theory says they are". (J&L, Evolution in Four Dimensions)

Like I said. Anyone who is takes science and evolution seriously simply cannot in the same breath take Chomsky seriously. That's the stark choice to be made - either Chomsky, or evolutionary science. To quote Dor once again: "After fifty years of research, all that is left is the original assumption of infinite generativity... This is a philosophical assumption, actually a religious assumption, that goes against the very idea of science. In this sense, the series of articles by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch might be more favorably read as joint statements of resignation: we have tried to find common ground between linguistics and evolutionary science; as far as the periphery of language is concerned, we believe there is no real problem; at its core, however, language still seems to defy the mode of explanation that is at the core of evolutionary theory; maybe, only maybe, what we believe about the core of language might be reconciled with something at the periphery of evolutionary theory; but beyond that, we really have nothing to offer."

This is bizarre. You’re seriously putting forward that Chomsky has moved the field of linguistics backward? I can only encourage others here to ignore such a strange notion.

Less vitriol may help back up your position. I’m extremely suspicious when someone wholeheartedly dismisses an extremely prominent figure in any field. Anyway, I’ll read the papers when I have time.

In terms of genetics what I’ve stated is true. That is not ‘evidence’ merely a possibility. Many people laughed at and mocked McClintock, then several decades later handed her a Nobel Prize for precisely what her colleagues refused to take seriously.

I’m not denying that many assumptions based on Chomsky’s ideas have been brought into serious question. It is not the case that his ideas haven’t profited the field of linguistics though - that isn’t something I can get my head around. He wasn’t doing alchemy.

From Chomsky on the Piraha:

“The language is “unique” because of the publicity it has received and the extravagant claims that have been made about it. Apart from that, it is very much like many other languages, as has been shown by careful scholarship. As a matter of simple logic, it would be impossible for the language to contradict any theory of mine, even if the claims about the language were true. The reason is simple: these theories have to do with the faculty of language, the basis for acquiring and using individual languages. That has always been clear, explicit, and unambiguous. The speakers of Pirahã share the common human language faculty; they are fluent speakers of Portuguese. That ends the discussion.

The primary claim of “uniqueness” is that Pirahã lacks recursion, which is, plainly, a core property of the human faculty of language. Suppose that the claim about Pirahã were true (apparently not). That would be a curiosity, but nothing more. Similarly, if some tribe were found in which people wear a patch over one eye and hence do not use binocular vision, it would tell us nothing at all about the human faculty of vision.”

https://www.lavocedinewyork.com/en/2016/10/04/chomsky-we-are-not-apes-our-language-faculty-is-innate/

For anyone curious.

Agree or not, there are plenty of linguistics quite happy to call it language. It is precisely these kinds of disagreements over the term ‘language’ and ‘recursive’ that lead to all sorts of false accusations and strawmen arguments.

You’re seriously putting forward that Chomsky has moved the field of linguistics backward? — I like sushi

Yes. He took one step forward beyond Skinner's rightly pilloried behaviorist approach and rather immediately 50 steps backwards by devising a pseudo-solution (UG) so incredulous that it's a mark of shame on anyone who takes it seriously. A cognitive (asocial), ahistorical, and evolutionarily incompatible theory of language? Like, it's basically UFOlogy.

Yes, but then people take this as a steadfast claim rather than a statement of fact. A lot of this likely has to do with neuroscience wrestling these kinds of questions away from philosophers in part.

I’ll read those papers carefully. If you have any other suggestions I’d appreciate any other links you’d care to provide - if you’re so adamant about this I’m intrigued.

Between the work of Vyvyan Evans (The Language Myth), Daniel Everett (How Language Began/Language: The Cultural Tool), and Daniel Dor (The Instruction of the Imagination), I'm basically convinced that Chomskyian linguistics is the entirely wrong approach to anything regarding language.

You misunderstand - Chomsky et. al. effectively say that the FLN ('faculty of language in the narrow sense', which includes only recursion and nothing else) should not be considered to be adaptive. They want instead to insist that it is exaptive - it evolved for some other, entirely unspecified, entirely speculative, and entirely theoretically unsubstantiated purpose. — StreetlightX

Of course it was adaptive. Who's arguing the FLN isn't adaptive? How else would we be here speaking right now?

But that's just the first ridiculous line of non-argument. — StreetlightX

Which they're not making. Chomsky has never claimed the FLN is not adaptive. There were obvious evolutionary benefits, hence why it spread in the population. What you're arguing against is the fact that neither Chomsky nor myself believes the current property we have, the language faculty, evolved gradually. True, that is a dogma in evolutionary biology. But there's little evidence to suggest it happened with language, and it's hard to see how.

The next utterly incredulous step they make is to say that having evolved for something else (who knows what or why?), this adaptation (which was decidedly not for language) became harnessed by humans for the purposes of language. How and why? Not. a. single. attempt. at. an. answer. — StreetlightX

True, but that's because the premise is so incoherent as to be embarrassing. It's also, of course, a figment of your imagination. Please cite some passages - you have not earned the benefit of the doubt as interpreter.

Instead we get this shit: "During evolution, the modular and highly domain-specific system of recursion may have become penetrable and domain-general. This opened the way for humans, perhaps uniquely, to apply the power of recursion to other problems. This change from domain-specific to domain-general may have been guided by particular selective pressures, unique to our evolutionary past, or as a consequence (by-product) of other kinds of neural reorganization." (Quotes from "The Faculty of Language", Chomsky et. al.). — StreetlightX

Which is, not surprisingly, completely out of context. What Chomsky attributes to the "FLN" is Merge, in his most recent work, and that's what is being claimed here as well in the "Faculty of Language" Science article. I quote the abstract:

"We hypothesize that FLN only includes recursion and is the only uniquely human component of the faculty of language. We further argue that FLN may have evolved for reasons other than language, hence comparative studies might look for evidence of such computations outside of the domain of communication (for example, number, navigation, and social relations)."

Notice the "may have evolved" part. Yes, that's a proposal for further hypothesizing and research. They go on for a number of pages explaining just what is meant. You seem to have ignored that.

I'm not sure where your hostility towards Chomsky's ideas comes from, but regardless, it's unfortunately clouding your judgment. Even if he's completely wrong, so what? Then show it and move on. To say he's kept the field back is a complete joke. His views on how language evolved -- which is what seems to be especially troubling you--are, by his own admission, minority views in the field of linguistics and evolutionary biology.

Who's arguing the FLN isn't adaptive? — Xtrix

Er, Chomsky: "If FLN is indeed this restricted, this hypothesis has the interesting effect of nullifying the argument from design, and thus rendering the status of FLN as an adaptation open to question. Proponents of the idea that FLN is an adaptation would thus need to supply additional data or arguments to support this viewpoint.” Direct quote from the FoL paper, accessable here. [pdf]

If the only operation in FLN is the operation that appears in every computational system ["Merge"], and if it's a fact at some point in evolutionary history humans got the capacity for unbounded computation, then at the very least they had to have this minimal computational operation (Merge), and if they only have this (and the general principle of keeping computation efficient), then the story of acquisition is already over.

Also, this paper by Ibbotson and Tomasello is also worth reading if entire books are hard to acquire: http://lefft.xyz/psycholingAU16/readings/ibbotson-tomasello-2016-scientific-american.pdf

Between the work of Vyvyan Evans (The Language Myth), Daniel Everett (How Language Began), and Daniel Dor (The Instruction of the Imagination), I'm basically convinced that Chomskyian linguistics is the entirely wrong approach to anything regarding language. — StreetlightX

I would argue those are certainly outliers and use rather thoroughly debunked arguments.

If the only operation in FLN is the operation that appears in every computational system ["Merge"], and if it's a fact at some point in evolutionary history humans got the capacity for unbounded computation, then at the very least they had to have this minimal computational operation (Merge), and if they only have this (and the general principle of keeping computation efficient), then the story of acquisition is already over. — Xtrix

Paraphrased: "FLN must have been evolutionarily acquired because FLN must have been evolutionarily acquired".

Adaptation in the sense of a property that's gradually evolved through natural selection, yes. But that's different from the claim this property isn't adaptive in the sense that it provides an evolutionary advantage, which seems to be what you were saying.

Paraphrased: "FLN must have been evolutionarily acquired because FLN must have been evolutionarily acquired:. — StreetlightX

Not at all. We already have this property. You would agree, I think, that it did come from somewhere, correct?

Notice the "if" in my statement. What part is controversial? We have language, language has x property, and thus at some point in time we acquired x. That's not tautological.

To quote the article in question:

"All approaches agree that a core property of FLN is recursion, attributed to narrow syntax in the conception just outlined. FLN takes a finite set of elements and yields a potentially infinite array of discrete expressions. This capacity of FLN yields discrete infinity (a property that also characterizes the natural numbers)."

Is this where the problem lies? I don't see anything unclear or slippery about this proposal.

Chomsky: "As a matter of simple logic, it would be impossible for the language to contradict any theory of mine, even if the claims about the language were true. The reason is simple: these theories have to do with the faculty of language, the basis for acquiring and using individual languages ... ". — Xtrix

It's worth noting that Chomsky's response here is a straightforward admission of unfalsifiability. Quite literally, not a single piece of empirical evidence - of language-as-actually-spoken - would be able to contradict his theories. Insofar as he's dealing with the 'faculty' and hence potential for language, no actual use of language could, even in principle, bring the theory into question. This is the very definition of unscientific. The choice again remains: either Chomsky, or science.

The problem is agreeing want x property makes ‘language’ a ‘language’. The general consensus is that it is at least partly syntax and grammar.

I understand that you’re saying we’re able to pick up language and that is ‘proof’ enough. I guess the counter argument is that ‘language’ isn’t as much an item as we assume it to be and that overtime we ‘created’ language via other innate capacities (yet such capacities are apparently not ‘language’ merely innate capacities - which takes me back to legs and walking).

This takes me back to an item that seems to have been willfully ignored. How is it that a 27 year old man with no ‘language’ managed to acquire language? He lived in human society, had a job and functioned without a language. He was deaf and his friends would play out stories physically - miming - and each would take turns and add a little more on to the previous performance. They had no language but they could exchange snippets of memories and information.

Another thing to consider is how language affects our sense of time. People in Sicily were considered more ‘childish’ due to living more or less for the day - lack of long term planning. A linguist noted that the dialect of Sicilians made sparse use of future tense. Does planned action create more complex grammar or does some ‘innate grammar’ create the ability for more planned action? Is they any real distinction here or are we asking the wrong kind of questions?

It's worth noting that Chomsky's response here is a straightforward admission of unfalsifiability. Quite literally, not a single piece of emperical evidence - of language-as-actually-spoken - would be able to contradict his theories. Insofar as he's dealing with the 'faculty' and hence potential for language, no actual use of language could bring the theory into question. This is the very definition of unscientific. — StreetlightX

Nonsense. It's a matter, as he points out, of logic. Let's read it again in its entirety (italics mine):

“The [Piraha] language is “unique” because of the publicity it has received and the extravagant claims that have been made about it. Apart from that, it is very much like many other languages, as has been shown by careful scholarship. As a matter of simple logic, it would be impossible for the language to contradict any theory of mine, even if the claims about the language were true. The reason is simple: these theories have to do with the faculty of language, the basis for acquiring and using individual languages. That has always been clear, explicit, and unambiguous. The speakers of Pirahã share the common human language faculty; they are fluent speakers of Portuguese. That ends the discussion."

So "not a single piece of empirical evidence of language-as-actually-spoken" already assumes a language. Furthermore, it doesn't have to be "spoken" at all. Wherever there's language, then theories about language applies. Where there isn't language -- like say the how trees "communicate" to one another, or about plate tectonics, then Chomsky's ideas don't apply. Or to make it more concrete: theories of the visual systems don't apply to creatures lacking such a system (in this case, eyes). That's a simple matter of logic, not an empirical claim that's "unfalsifiable." If you can find a human being, or any other animal, that can do what we're doing right now -- that would falsify the claim that language is uniquely human, which is indeed an empirical claim and one Chomsky has made for 70 years.

Lastly:

"The primary claim of “uniqueness” is that Pirahã lacks recursion, which is, plainly, a core property of the human faculty of language. Suppose that the claim about Pirahã were true (apparently not). That would be a curiosity, but nothing more. Similarly, if some tribe were found in which people wear a patch over one eye and hence do not use binocular vision, it would tell us nothing at all about the human faculty of vision."

That doesn’t follow. The point is to narrow down the fuel for the system. As an analogy we could say liquid makes an engine run and fill our cars with coffee - that doesn’t mean engines don’t function.

We have the ability to either create language from some faculty or we’re born with a faculty to create language - what’s the difference? If we’re to define language as necessarily requiring ‘syntax and grammar’ then we have our answer (or rather, the question then becomes ‘what is syntax and grammar’?)

Maybe we just need to rethink how we define ‘language’?

The problem is agreeing want x property makes ‘language’ a ‘language’. The general consensus is that it is at least partly syntax and grammar. — I like sushi

Agreed.

I guess the counter argument is that ‘language’ isn’t as much an item as we assume it to be and that overtime we ‘created’ language via other innate capacities — I like sushi

What do you mean by "isn't as much an item"?

This takes me back to an item that seems to have been willfully ignored. How is it that a 27 year old man with no ‘language’ managed to acquire language? He lived in human society, had a job and functioned without a language. He was deaf and his friends would play out stories physically - miming - and each would take turns and add a little more on to the previous performance. They had no language but they could exchange snippets of memories and information. — I like sushi

Of course he had language. Who's saying he had "no language" and then, at 27, acquired it? That's in fact extremely rare, if not impossible. There does seem to be a certain formative period for language acquisition in early development.

To say people that sign, or mime, don't have language is just misguided.

Another thing to consider is how language affects our sense of time. People in Sicily were considered more ‘childish’ due to living more or less for the day - lack of long term planning. A linguist noted that the dialect of Sicilians made sparse use of future tense. Does planned action create more complex grammar or does some ‘innate grammar’ create the ability for more planned action? Is they any real distinction here or are we asking the wrong kind of questions? — I like sushi

How language effects thought and our views of the world is, of course, a well known area of discussion. I don't think the questions are wrong, but the answers so far have been trivial.

Of course he had language. Who's saying he had "no language" and then, at 27, acquired it? That's in fact extremely rare, if not impossible. There does seem to be a certain formative period for language acquisition in early development. — Xtrix

It blew my mind when I heard about this too. It’s no joke. Have a look, just search The Man with no Language.