Also, are you familiar with the tadoma method for there deafblind? People can get a complex understanding of language from this. It's never been shown to work for those who lost sight and hearing before the age of about 18 months. Indirect evidence like this is persuasive.

To add, there are many myths about learning languages that pervade. — I like sushi

And many dogmas too, yes.

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

I just had a brief look, but I can tell already that it's not rigorous enough. Studying human beings without language is very interesting, but we have to be very careful before we throw out a widely held idea (for good reasons). One case study doesn't doesn't quite cut it. But I'll take a look at it. Maybe it does show that there's no critical period -- I'm not married to the idea, just very cautious, as it tends to make good sense.

Some criticism just from a Wikipedia search: "The process of Ildefonso's language acquisition and his lingusitic skills are described unsystematically and anecdotally, if at all. Instead of data, [Schaller] presents many emotional intuitions and wild guesses about Ildefonso's 'languageless' mental word. Thus the claims made by the author in relation to language (acquisition) in Ildefonso do not have a sound empirical basis. [...] given the poor documentation of Ildefonso's language skills and the contradictory information on his linguistic, social, and communicative background, there is no other choice than to treat [Schaller's] book with a maximum of caution." Language Vol. 68, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 664-665

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So language as a system of thought is only used rarely because it’s only required on those rare occasions when needed — Brett

Language, as a system of thought, is used all the time. We're always talking to ourselves, as I mentioned.

What I trying to establish is whether language as a system of thought is used rarely because it has a specific role among other systems, or it’s used rarely because it’s inadequate for communication? Or it appears to be used rarely because it’s not communication? — Brett

When did I say it's "used rarely"? Communication is used rarely, yes. In my view, language and communication are not the same thing.

What is non-being if it is not being dead? You can't be dead really because you aren't anything when dead . There is nothing that it is like to be dead. There is only what it is like to be alive. Where there is life, presumably there is being. — Nils Loc

What is a dreamless sleep like? Is that non-being? In that case, you're interpreting "being" again in relation to a human being with a life, with perceptions and feelings etc., which come to an end in death. That's one particular entity (being) that ends, yes. That doesn't tell you much about being in general.

In many ways, what's considered non-being (as not being presently before you) is actually more common than being (as presence, which is what the philosophers have always interpreted it from the Greeks onward). What if, instead, being is considered something concealed, absent? A kind of "nothing" in a sense? We do seem to live most of our lives in a kind of "unconscious" (or in Heideggerian terms, "ready-to-hand") relation to the world--like when we're involved and engaged in the world, in a skill or with other people, or when totally absorbed in an activity.

Sure. But you’re feeling is that thought is communicated very rarely, and language is doing something else, except on those rare occasions. — Brett

I'm saying language is a system of thought. Not the only system. So in that sense, yes, this system of thought gets communicated very rarely.

What thoughts get expressed through the language faculty is almost always expressed to ourselves, internally. Just introspect for a while: you're constantly talking to yourself. How much of that gets communicated to others--through speech, or sign, or writing, or whatever-- is very rare indeed -- maybe 1%?

If talking to yourself isn't considered part of thinking, then I have no idea what thinking is. However, I wouldn't say language is synonymous with thought. I can imagine a scene without a verbal commentary, for example. But again, I've had friends who argue that language is thinking. Although I've never been fully convinced.

Do you mean thought is communicated very rarely? And very rarely, does that mean not very often or not very accurately? — Brett

I wouldn't say language is thought. But it does seem to be related to thinking. This is up for debate, of course, and an interesting question.

By "very rarely" I mean not very often, yes.

Didn't seem it. You referred to "non-being" as death or sleep. One wouldn't say that's non-being. Maybe a kind of nullity. The world goes on when you're dead or asleep, however.

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.

It's not necessarily true that being ends in death. Human beings end in death. The light analogy is a good one, but WE'RE the light, not being.

A lot of people are afraid of hell. That's where the fear stems from. Hence the need for certainty about being after death. But it's a fear that's cultural, particular to the countries that take seriously the Christian dogma. It's hard to shake if you've grown up around people who do take it seriously. There's no intellectual or logical remedy for it.

Being and time seem to be interrelated. To say being is finite (or infinite) is a mistake. We need to know what being is before we assert a property to it. It does not seem as though being is a being--an object or entity. Thus it makes it difficult to talk about.

Heidegger has some different things to say about being, if you're interested.

I think it's more the fact that, much like Nixon, he went too far in attacking the Democrats, who have the power to fight back when they're the victims of his corruption. He could have just as easily, and more rightfully, been impeached for about 20 other things in the last three years.

To say the Democrats are doing this because they're afraid they can't win head-on is kind of a joke. Trump's victory was not a landslide. In fact it was rather narrow and a 1 in 4 shot. He lost the popular voted handedly. His approval ratings have been consistently low for three years. True, it's the democrats' election to lose -- again -- but I'd hardly say they're afraid they can't beat him. A much better case can be made about Republicans -- hence the attempts at voter suppression and extreme gerrymandering.

"God" is a meaningless term, essentially. If one defines it as a human-like invisible spirit somewhere "up there" in a different dimension, there's not the slightest reason to believe that, especially when you now have history and exposure to a wide range of world belief systems.

If "God" means something greater than human beings -- OK, fine. Why we call it "God" and not something less historically charged is another question. Why not call it "Brahman" or the "Apeiron," etc.? And who cares at that point, anyway?

The fact that people are even arguing about it is interesting. I wonder if in India they're arguing whether Shiva exists. Probably.

I really wish the Democrats wouldn't put so much energy into impeachment, knowing it's not going anywhere. The polls seem split on this issue, and not moving much, so that's not an argument. It being the "right thing" is nonsense, too. There were a thousand things to impeach Trump about - why this one, especially? Ask yourselves that question.