How was this process affected by natural and social selection pressures? — Enrique

We have to extrapolate backwards given that our existence as a species precedes our records, or available tools of science, by one to three hundred thousand years.

At some point in our evolutionary history our vocal musculature came under operant control. This eventually allowed us to ask questions about what we were doing, what we were going to do, and why we were doing it. Our social communities taught us how to answer these types of questions. But what in our available nervous systems (e.g., interoceptive, exteroceptive, proprioceptive) is evolved to provide information on one's intentions or desires?

What impact did language have on the character of human behavior as well as our rationality and irrationality? — Enrique

I think rationality cannot exist without language. In the absence of language I think all that is left is the unconscious.

Replace the ‘why’ with ‘how’.

To focus in on a particular area I suggest this for reading:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/linguistics/

You’re asking too many big questions - meaning each require more than a brief response.

I think rationality cannot exist without language. In the absence of language I think all that is left is the unconscious. — CeleRate

And the unconscious is entirely rational. Why wouldn't it be?

And the unconscious is entirely rational. Why wouldn't it be? — A Seagull

Well that is an interesting question. Do you suppose there might be, or must be, a reason for being irrational? I'm not sure that is a rational position whether it is is conscious or not.

what is the relationship between language and logical thinking? — Enrique

'Logos' is the Greek word for ... well, the word, the language and something more like rationality. So the logic we know of is a formalism of language close to a grammar. "In the beginning was the word. and the word was with God, and the word was God."

But consider a cat, sitting in front of a mouse hole waiting to see if a mouse will come out. One does not call the cat irrational, but neither does the cat articulate its reasons.

So we might say that cats are sensible, they negotiate the world of their senses in an appropriate manner.
But cats say no such thing, they say 'meow'. They behave in a reasonable manner without reasoning.

And the unconscious is entirely rational. Why wouldn't it be? — A Seagull

I relate rationality to reasons, reasons to arguments, arguments to language, and language to consciousness.

However, I'm amenable to considering other usages of the term.

Cortical homunculus (look it up)

Language has something to do with the hands :chin: Amazingly the emoji :chin: which I assume means thinking speaks volumes: the hand and the mouth come together when we think and, let's not forget, when we eat. I suspect there's a link between finding food in the most efficient way possible and language. :rofl:

I'll play the role of Don Quixote for the hell of it. This is my basic theory, tell me if you think its a valid starting point or totally bogus.


To begin with, we can say that mind as such functions by catalyzing experiential states during which a multiplicity of perceptual phenomena are simultaneously held in particular orientations, as a qualitative contexture. This is memory’s essence: coordination of various cognitive processes into a more or less holistic, prolonged representation of the environment, modulated by sensitization and habituation, ultimately serving to enhance discharge of behavior by integration of the body with a plurality of situational stimuli, allowing the organism to grow bigger without maladaptive sacrificing of speed, and better anticipate the most mercurial causes and effects. Observing squirrels in action provides a perfect example, as they instantly abandon their rooting around, raise up and intensely scrutinize environments at the slightest hint of an unfamiliar sound, usually with no idea yet of what they are hearing. The squirrel’s mind repeatedly primes it for rapid fight or flight response by inducing undivided attention, startling the animal into complete devotion of its physiological resources towards a phenomenal representation of the relationship between body position and surroundings, which probably increases reaction time such that not a few squirrel lives have been saved.

The associational rudiments of an inferencing mentality essentially consist in further cognitively and more or less imaginatively aligning perceptual phenomena of experiential states such that predictive behaviors requiring integrated awareness can be discharged with high degrees of coordination. This happens in conjunction with mental mapping of the environment/mind complex, orienting an organism to its circumstances. Consider a frog catching insects with its tongue: it sees the bug, feels its body, matches up these phenomena within a positional substrate, and lashes out in a rapid burst of hybridized behavior, garnering a meal before its prey even knows what happened. If a squirrel spots a tasty nut, it associates this object with its bodily emplacement and whatever memory concepts it has of food and more, all inhering in a holistic matrix of orientation, then coordinates the act of approaching and picking up the nut with its mouth. Squirrels have a strong urge to stow their prizes, perhaps we could call this an aesthetic of nuts, but are not particularly good at remembering the location. At any rate, their mental map allows them to at least accurately hone in on particular tracts of land where they should be looking some months later.

This environment/mind experiential complex evolves in three general domains. More cognitively advanced organisms such as adult mammals and birds sense their own body as the most salient aspect of the environment. If this is not quite humanlike identity in most cases, it is clearly a foundational self-awareness analogous to the sustained feeling we have of our own physiological states. Thousands of species also have awareness of others’ intentions as a foremost environmental cause, helping them judge what all kinds of animals are likely to do in myriad situations, and often what other animals are expecting them to do as well. Many organisms also attribute a kind of selflike concept to nonintentional bodies, frequently as a possessive extension of their own intentionality.

Perception and conception, awareness of oneself, awareness of other intentional selves, and awareness of nonintentional selves function for mind/body/environment interfacing, and as this combination of reasoning and discrimination evolved, the thinking, motive, and concepts of phenomena they are addressed to somehow transitioned into the precursor of human logic, a cognitive process of assembling mental content as frameworks of more associational complexity, with categorically greater resemblance to the emergent structures generated by what we define as formal inferencing from evidence to conclusion. This is an extremely flexible architecturing that imaginatively fits perceptions together in a wider range of orientations, demonstrated most objectively by human language and birdsong, how they can organize the mind's qualitative states as conceptual patterning manifest in expression, within generalized forms that are much more than reflexively intuitive.


I'm thinking that the many components of this template can fluctuate via heredity and brain plasticity, complex combinations of vestigialization, accentuation and relative stasis, so each species has a somewhat unique cognitive trait profile as variations on the basic theme. Language more or less accesses this foundation while thought occurs.

I did some reading as you suggested, and gather that the origin of human language is one of the most speculative topics in science and philosophy, so I won't figure it out exactly. But maybe the following is a basic explanatory framework that doesn't neglect any of the many existing theoretical ideas. Do you notice I've lacked to account for some important possible cause with these generalizations?

Emergence of human language participated in loosening up social constraints upon the self, disjuncting acts arising out of introspective conceptualization from brute negative or positive feedback that is exacted in relationships between individuals based around exteroceptive, proprioceptive, affective and interoceptive states (thanks for the terminology CeleRate!). This gave the species’ already functionally essential and quite advanced facility with structural association-making and abstract meaning, its ability to mentally organize phenomena within inferential frameworks of the symbolic, liberation to grow at a rapid pace. More schematized thinking coincided with improved technological prowess, and generally heightened cognitive flexibility made the mind capable of molding human nature via thought and the construction of culture. Behavior entered the domain of meme manipulation, sublimating the species into greater reliance on pure intellectuality, more complex intentionality in general, and making subtle personal insights readily transmissible to the wider community. Memetically-boosted degrees of freedom for motivation, cognitive behavior and communication allowed individuals to actualize themselves in psychically deeper ways through both personally and socially innovative meaning, which incidentally granted human collectives a surplus of proficiency at adjusting to novel conditions, with an increasing endowment of brain plasticity sufficient for expeditious adaptation to every environment on earth.

Not sure I've grasped the relationship between language, symbolic thinking and technical problem-solving.

Inference essentially consists in further cognitively aligning the perceptual phenomena of experiential states such that predictive behaviors requiring integrated awareness can be discharged with high degrees of coordination. — Enrique

I think the problem you're going to always have with this kinds of arguments is with the nature of meaning. Being able to discern meaning is fundamental to abstract thought; abstract thought and language codify meaning in terms of sounds and symbols, which are ideas that stand for relationships, objects, qualities, and so on.

So the problem with seeking an evolutionary account of these faculties is mainly that the underlying rationale in evolutionary biology is what can be seen to facilitate survival, or the proliferation of the genome. It is fundamentally a theory of how species survive, adapt and ultimately mutate to form new species.

But when it comes to such questions as the nature of language and abstract thought, then trying to understand these through comparisons with animal behaviour is inevitably reductionist. From the evolutionary point of view, 'the brain’s purpose is to direct our internal organs and our external behavior in a way that maximizes our evolutionary success' (Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature, David Barash.) Of course, taking this perspective allows you to 'make sense' of a huge range of puzzles - everything falls into place, as it were, as being in service to Dawkins' 'selfish gene'. But no matter how far this principle is extended, it is always ultimately tethered to a single end, which is procreation and the survival of the species.

Accordingly, I'm very suspicious of attempts to 'explain reason' (//edit// which is foundational to language//). Just to use that term already suggests a vicious circularity, I would hope - that in so doing, we're attempting to explain the very faculty which is the source of explanation.

Have a read of this review of a Why Only Us: Language and Evolution by Robert C Berwick and Noam Chomsky.

All animals communicate, but only humans are rational; and for Berwick and Chomsky, human language is primarily an instrument of rationality.

A sentiment with which I'm in full agreement.

You’re just talking about what language does. We know what it does. Rather than having ‘knowledge’ embedded in our genes it allowed us to pass on information more quickly.

You really don’t need that many words to say something ‘generalised’.

Why did human language evolve? How was this process affected by natural and social selection pressures? What was the sequence and combination of mutations/cognitive features that produced its modern forms? What impact did language have on the character of human behavior as well as our rationality and irrationality? Along more philosophical lines, what is the relationship between language and logical thinking? — Enrique

To sum up ...

1) Our capacity for language evolved because there was an evolutionary benefit in communicating internal ideas.
2) It wasn’t effected by social pressures any more than legs or eyes are.
3) That is a question that neuroscience has shed light on. Other animals share communicable capacities with us. None have them all in the combination we do though. The ‘sequence’ they evolve in may not matter at all.
4) Without the capacity for language we wouldn’t be ‘human’ so that question doesn’t work. If you’re talking in broader terms with the term ‘language’ - extended into communication (as in shared capacities we have have that are present in other species) - then you should say so.
5) That is like asking the relationship between science and language. Again, language allows for knowledge to be passed on more quickly than genetic evolution (something you may be confusing with Dawkins’ ‘memes’?).

When it comes to looking at logic and language in combination with consciousness I’d recommend Husserl’s “Logical Investigations”. Another recommendation, if you’ve not read it already, would be Wittgenstein’s “Philosophical Investigations”.

Note: I really think you need to be more frugal with your words in places. I suffer the same disposition often enough when I write ... see ;)

I've had a few threads on the evolution and origin of language. There are so many various theories and many of them start from different starting points.

Terrence Deacon starts at physics, and how semiotics comes from constraints in physical processes like entropy and thermodynamics. Chomsky starts at linguistics itself, positing a UG that came about from a "leap" from a very brief genetic change that allowed for the mental function of "Merge". Others start at the neuroscience. Even others start at anthropology. Others start at comparative animal studies in communication. It's almost like you get different conclusions based on where you are starting.

I think rationality cannot exist without language. In the absence of language I think all that is left is the unconscious. — CeleRate

Animals are quite rational about many things. They can even figure things out, like how to open doors, how to work across species to get prey (https://mymodernmet.com/badger-coyote-mutualism/). use alliances to take on a powerful bad leader, solve all sorts of problems including novel ones and more. If they weren't rational, they'd fare poorly. Of course, they are not always rational, but then who is?

From what I read, dozens of theories exist as to how human language developed, and it seems to me that all of them contain a kernel of the truth. We may never know which causes were the most influential or preconditional, but looking at the many proposed explanations surely gives a strong impression of why the origin of human language was inevitable. It has an important relationship to nearly everything we intuit that humans are and do.

The idea of semiotics arising from thermodynamics and entropy is wild. I suppose whenever causality gets translated into a different form, such as with cell membrane surface proteins, genetic coding, perception, or even physical changes in general, the substance of that process basically amounts to "information". Distinctly human semiotics must be a product of combining informational translation as the essence of action/response with complex intentionality.



I agree that animals reason. Seems to me that human rationality does not differ from the rest of nature simply as cognitive function, but it has been elevated to the status of value system in many cultural settings, an intellectual discipline, which seems to be unique.



I also think natural selection as traditionally construed along with reproductive success had minimal impact on the evolution of human meaning and rationality. Once we acknowledge that most evolutionary causes are almost entirely unrelated to survival of a species, the theory seems to become much more explanatory.



I'll have to look into Husserl, phenomenology sounds interesting!

I agree that animals reason. Seems to me that human rationality does not differ from the rest of nature simply as cognitive function, but it has been elevated to the status of value system in many cultural settings, an intellectual discipline, which seems to be unique. — Enrique

Sure. I am not saying all animals are the same. Just that animals are rational, often. And language is an incredible tool. We can do things with it animals can literally not imagine. And lucky us, we do not have to choose between reasoning as animals do and reasoning we can do with words. Though often humans do choose to at least try to only reason with words. It's like tying one hand behind are backs. Though these last few sentences are but a tangent in this thread. My main point was that animals are generally rational.

Animals are quite rational about many things. They can even figure things out, like how to open doors, how to work across species to get prey — Coben

Animals can learn to do many things. However, if you call the things they do, rational, how do you contrast what they do with irrational behavior?

It was probably created by a woman as some ancient vocalizations for "Do you want sex?" She and her mate both knew instinctively what "unga bunga?" meant.

It wasn't necessarily an evolutionary leap. It was just a fun noise for her to make when she got horny. And he was mystified by her prowess.

Then he turned around and started doing it, too, assuming that if his fellow cavemen weren't dumb, they'd know what "ngh" meant.

I also think natural selection as traditionally construed along with reproductive success had minimal impact on the evolution of human meaning and rationality. — Enrique

That seems to be at odds with your OP:

Why did human language evolve? — Enrique

The way your OP is set out, you seem to be asking human language evolved, yet you're saying now that natural selection 'as traditionally construed' had minimal impact. So that's confusing.

Animals are quite rational about many things — Coben

I don't agree that demonstrating learned behaviours or being able to solve behavioural problems demonstrates rationality. Maybe it demonstrates the antecedents of rationality.

The way your OP is set out, you seem to be asking human language evolved, yet you're saying now that natural selection 'as traditionally construed' had minimal impact. So that's confusing. — Wayfarer

I doubt human rationality evolves primarily as either ecological or social function, but more from an individual mind, language modules etc., selecting its own arrangement on the scale of a single lifespan. The cognitive components of rationality were naturally as well as socially selected, and cultural environments sometimes further rationality while also being molded by it, but its emergence is more like what Carl Jung called "individuation", a complex psyche making itself by what we experience as willpower rather than adaptation. Its a very different kind of evolution, maybe some wouldn't even call it that.

Its a very different kind of evolution, maybe some wouldn't even call it that. — Enrique

Ah! That clears up a lot, thanks.

I don't agree that demonstrating learned behaviours or being able to solve behavioural problems demonstrates rationality. Maybe it demonstrates the antecedents of rationality. — Wayfarer

The animal sees the human fiddle with a metal thing and then manages to get through a gate keeping the animal in. The animal decides to fiddle in different ways with the metal thing until it finds the way one needs to fiddle with it and gets out. I think that's rational behavior. Animals can learn to use tools, engage in cross species cooperation. There are other examples. .
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171101151206.htm

Animals can also be irrational. They can repeatedy think something is a threat despite experience that it is harmless and not alive. My dog had that with certain objects. Given that many things they do are guided by imprinting or built in programs, the moment then run into new things, there is a strong chance they will be irrational, especially if they do not adapt and learn that though ti triggers their habits it is not what they think it is. Animals have personalities and some are risk takers and don't learn from the consequences of this and then die, despite getting repeated warnings that their tendencies are too risky.

best answer. and the noble prize goes to you ( for now ) and we will distribute them like food to everyone.

The animal decides... — Coben

It's a tendentious article in my opinion. In my view, rationality depends on the ability to abstract and to impute meaning. Most forms of animal behaviour can be understood in terms of stimulus and response, so that some forms of behaviour can be imputed to exhibit a kind of rationality, but in my view it's a kind of projection.

what the Empiricist speaks of and describes as sense-knowledge is not exactly sense-knowledge, but sense-knowledge plus unconsciously introduced intellective ingredients, -- sense-knowledge in which he has made room for reason without recognizing it. A confusion which comes about all the more easily as, on the one hand, the senses are, in actual fact, more or less permeated with reason in man, and, on the other, the merely sensory psychology of animals, especially of the higher vertebrates, goes very far in its own realm and imitates intellectual knowledge to a considerable extent. — Jacques Maritain, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism

It's a tendentious article in my opinion. In my view, rationality depends on the ability to abstract and to impute meaning. Most forms of animal behaviour can be understood in terms of stimulus and response, so that some forms of behaviour can be imputed to exhibit a kind of rationality, but in my view it's a kind of projection. — Wayfarer

Could you tell me why the examples I have given in the posts I responded to and in the articles should not be considered examples of animals being rational? I understand you disagree and your definition pretty much defines rationality as language based. Why should we rule out problem solving via non-linguistic processes as rational?

All forms of animal behavior (humans also being animals) can be understood in terms of stimulus and response. The human gets a set of stimulations, and this set of neurons fire, and then.......just like the physicalists view everything. The phrase 'can be understood' with its passive contruction and easy to fit criterion means very little to me.

All forms of animal behavior (humans also being animals) can be understood in terms of stimulus and response. — Coben

But, mathematics and so on can't be understood in those terms. There's simply no way of doing it. If you were engaged in mental arithmetic, there's no response involved - there's no behavioral indicators involved.

Reasoning involves 'if this, then that', at the very least. It involves the relationship of ideas. The review of the Chomsky book I mentioned above goes into some detail about it, so forgive the long quote:

The starting point [of Chomsky's analysis] is a radical dissimilarity between all animal communication systems and human language. The former are based entirely on “linear order,” whereas the latter is based on hierarchical syntax. In particular, human language involves the capacity to generate, by a recursive procedure, an unlimited number of hierarchically structured sentences. A trivial example of such a sentence is this: “How many cars did you tell your friends that they should tell their friends . . . that they should tell the mechanics to fix?” (The ellipses indicate that the number of levels in the hierarchy can be extended without limit.) Notice that the word “fix” goes with “cars,” rather than with “friends” or “mechanics,” even though “cars” is farther apart from “fix” in linear distance. The mind recognizes the connection, because “cars” and “fix” are at the same level in the sentence’s hierarchy...

Animal communication can be quite intricate. For example, some species of “vocal-learning” songbirds, notably Bengalese finches and European starlings, compose songs that are long and complex. But in every case, animal communication has been found to be based on rules of linear order. Attempts to teach Bengalese finches songs with hierarchical syntax have failed. The same is true of attempts to teach sign language to apes. Though the famous chimp Nim Chimpsky was able to learn 125 signs of American Sign Language, careful study of the data has shown that his “language” was purely associative and never got beyond memorized two-word combinations with no hierarchical structure.

So, what it takes to form a rational idea seems to me to be inextricably linked with language and abstraction. At best what animals demonstrate is a kind of 'proto-rationality', a rudimentary ability to identify actions and results, but calling it 'rationality' is drawing a long bow. (And I also think there's something of an ulterior motive in doing that. )

So, what it takes to form a rational idea seems to me to be inextricably linked with language and abstraction. At best what animals demonstrate is a kind of 'proto-rationality', a rudimentary ability to identify actions and results, but calling it 'rationality' is drawing a long bow. (And I also think there's something of an ulterior motive in doing that. ) — Wayfarer

Well, one can attribute motives in all directions on an issue like this. Even 50 years ago, in science it was professionally risky to even view in professional contexts as having motivations, emotions, intentions, etc. Any researcher who found in her research that an animal had cognitive functions has me with dismissal and extreme resistance: whether the animal is a primate, bird, squid whatever. There is a huge bias to keep a huge gap between humans and other animals in how we are conceived. As in thought of, not birthed.

That said, if we define rationality as needing language, well, there you do.

I think it makes sense to say that problem solving in animals and the use of tools, which can be passed on to children, as a couple of examples are rational and required working stuff out.

But, mathematics and so on can't be understood in those terms. There's simply no way of doing it. If you were engaged in mental arithmetic, there's no response involved - there's no behavioral indicators involved. — Wayfarer

Of course there was. Something go you interested in math books that set up specific neuronal pathways in your mind that you returned to which lead to you studying math more and reading more which led to changing the neuronal pathways. Once this is all in motion of course one set of neuronal pathways can get set off by other neuronal pathways. I am not saying that causation is only external, just that it is all determined, atoms bashing into atoms, chemical machine type stuff as the physicalists conceive of it. Just because it is complex and once in motion, stays in motion doesn't make it any less stimulus and response, it's just a very very complicated version of stimulus and response.

There is a huge bias to keep a huge gap between humans and other animals in how we are conceived. — Coben

I don't see that at all. One of the main points of evolutionary biology is to insist that humans are on a continuum with other species. It was the religious who wanted to insist on the differentiation of h. sapiens.

Once this is all in motion of course one set of neuronal pathways can get set off by other neuronal pathways. I am not saying that causation is only external, just that it is all determined, atoms bashing into atoms, chemical machine type stuff as the physicalists conceive of it. Just because it is complex and once in motion, stays in motion doesn't make it any less stimulus and response, it's just a very very complicated version of stimulus and response. — Coben

Sigh. That's just schoolyard materialism. I've argued about this up hill and down dale, but I will leave it with a simple point: reason is the relation between ideas, not between things. Reason transcends physicality.

Ah! That clears up a lot, thanks. — Wayfarer

Perhaps it could be called educational holism lol

Given that many things they do are guided by imprinting or built in programs, the moment then run into new things, there is a strong chance they will be irrational, especially if they do not adapt and learn that though ti triggers their habits it is not what they think it is. — Coben

I'm interested in how you contrast rational from irrational. You replied by saying there's a strong chance they will be irrational when confronting something new. You added, "adaptation" and "habits", but none of what you wrote explains the question asked. Your descriptions anthropomorphize the animals you're describing (e.g. risk takers), but you haven't established that animals engage in a kind of Bayesian analysis or other kind of decision-making.

You also said something about what animals think. Do you know what animals think? How do you know? I can only observe how animals behave and the conditions under which the behavior occurs. Are you able to do something else?

All forms of animal behavior (humans also being animals) can be understood in terms of stimulus and response. — Coben

This is a very limited description of behavioural understanding as it is only a description of reflexes. Instinctual behaviour and instrumental conditioning account for much of what animals do.