If you observe animal behavior outside a laboratory setup, its obvious they experience affection, recognize purpose, understand the world logically and even have a sense of humor, all with similarity to humans. I think the idea that animals, including humans, are "governed" in some sense by inborn instinct or behaviorist stimulus/response is a historical relic. The question is how a concept of conditioning that is clearly false for most mammals and birds at the very least became so mainstream.

If you observe animal behavior outside a laboratory setup, its obvious they experience affection, recognize purpose, understand the world logically and even have a sense of humor, all with similarity to humans. — Enrique

This is partly bald assertion and partly non-sequitur. "It's obvious" is also a dubious claim. I could agree, for example, that it would be fine to describe some interactions as affection, but I would have to acknowledge that I couldn't be certain what the intentions of the organisms were. It would just be short-hand. As for the other examples, I'd say that it is far from obvious that one would be justified to characterize their behaviours in that manner.

I think the idea that animals, including humans, are "governed" in some sense by inborn instinct or behaviorist stimulus/response is a historical relic. — Enrique

I would be curious about what could have led you to arrive at this conclusion. If not instinct, what mechanism is at work for a spider spinning its web? How about the imprinting of geese on what is present shortly after birth? What about nest building and other maternal activities, migration patterns, animal courtship behaviors, etc?

Again, stimulus/response describes reflexive behavior, which accounts for a relatively small amount of why a given response occurs, and a small amount of what an organism learns to do vis-a-vis classical conditioning.

The question is how a concept of conditioning that is clearly false for most mammals and birds at the very least became so mainstream. — Enrique

Well, the question was, how do you distinguish irrational from rational behavior? But given that it appeared flawed from the start (for the reasons already stated), I'm not holding out hope that there is a coherent account of such a thing as it applies to non-human animals.

Whether or not a squirrel licking nuts means affection or in the case of a human for that matter is probably a judgement call, but I think we can agree that a newt licking nuts is closer to a human subjective mental state than Newtonian mechanics lol

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? — Enrique

Nobody knows. We have a lot of linguists working on it. A lot of what you're asking sort of assumes Neo-Darwinism. I would personally bet that language evolution was unrelated to genetics. Maybe not totally, but more or less.

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

Now that has been a subject to quite a debate. The strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, namely linguistic determinism, has been debunked. That hypothesis holds that different languages are so vastly different that it's basically like totally different worlds of reality. Now, obviously anybody who knows more than one language (comme moi) knows that there is some degree of maneuverability from one language to the other. It's not totally different. But most people do subscribe to a weak Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, linguistic relativism, which says that your language does have an impact on how you understand and perceive the world. I subscribe to the weak version.

A hypothetical scenario for how human language evolved, tell me whether or not you think its plausible.


Hominins and humans started to use objects more and more technologically from a combination of causes such as need, accommodating physique, convenience, preference and insightful reasoning. Technological behavior exerted selection pressure on utterance to assume a more object-oriented form, as proliferation of nounlike expressions.

Expression became slightly more structurally complex so as to better conceptually orient the noun represented objects of increasingly complex technological contexts by verbalization, probably in consort with usefulness of describing experiences remotely.

Prehistoric hominins or humans grasped the idea that utterance can be used as a technology for organizing experiences, memories, facts and behaviors, so rudimentary description became a deliberately invented system applied to practical and eventually recreational purposes.

Innovation of this utterance technology progressed for functionality, artistry, and status-attainment. Some selection pressure was exerted towards cognitive ease of acquisition, ultimately leading to unusually advanced grammatical prowess, with the origins of this innate biology in a long tradition of purposefully inventing verbal ability as technology, art form and status symbolism having been largely forgotten.

Lots of selection pressure existed for expansion of linguistic content and meaning, coevolving with the cognitive facility to imagine and manipulate novel object and concept arrangements as well as conceive and project self-meanings, our complex social identities.

Essentially, language wasn't merely expression of technological concepts, it WAS one of the first technologies, also probably the most popular and lasting, so that human intentionality self-evolved/instills a massive synesthesia of imaginative reasoning, motivation and language in its own brain, producing our ridiculously bizarre but extremely potent psyches.


Am I putting too much emphasis on free will in this equation?

Nicaragua and death children. Research that. There are instances that show how a new language can develop.

Something that is interesting is how ‘tense’ is used. There is very little evidence to work with though.

Centrality of linguistic evolution to the hominin and human mind might explain why we spend so much time insulting each other with symbolic meaning. Maybe some kind of innate predisposition exists to impulsively incite communicators to keep up. Also explains the human obsession with humor and our unique characteristic of formulating statements as questions, a more passive tone mitigating tension that arises from inborn inclination to conceptually interpret differences of perspective, ability, and general inequality into a posture of conflict, why we spend so much time laughing our asses off? Could account for negative thought patterns and critical thinking, a kind of sublimated insulting. Deeply rooted synesthesia of imaginative reasoning, motivation and language makes sense of psychoanalytic results, how patients evince sometimes bizarre unconscious complexes, infantile wishes and general nonsense while their psyches are being prodded in detail using communication. With civilized society, perhaps the drive to insult runs amok, as categories of psychopathology assailing what we fail to recognize as simple human nature, laws structured such that a niche for flagrant nonphysical offenses is created, and more. Lots of avenues for consideration.

Along more philosophical lines, what is the relationship between language and logical thinking? — Enrique

That all depends upon what counts as language and what counts as logical thinking.

Language less creatures can correctly attribute/recognize causality. If that counts as logical thinking, then language has no relationship with logical thinking in this example.

If logical thinking requires deliberately attempting to follow the 'rules of correct inference', then language is of course required for logical thinking, or the rules do not require language. The latter seems untenable.

Centrality of linguistic evolution to the hominin and human mind might explain why we spend so much time insulting each other... — Enrique

Deliberately insulting another is quite a different matter than merely being insulted by another's words.

To make it plain up front, the reason I post this comment is to relate it to (self-promote) a free group conversation possibility I started awhile back called Initial Curiosity on meetup.com/Initial-Curiosity . On a couple of my no topic (no pre-selected topic) group dates, an attendee gave an idea to talk about language and it's implications, which became the goal of our conversation.