
The origins of language are not what inherited disorders seemed to suggest - caffeinewriter
http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/the-family-that-couldnt-say-hippopotamus?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication
======
hyp0
Nicaraguan Sign Language, spontaneously developed by deaf children
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language)
This was a community; whereas individually isolated children have not
developed language independently.

A module can be functional, in that it behaves as a module even if not
implemented as one (and certainly need not an isomorphism between genes and
anatomical or behavioural features).

Chomsky argues for theories that make sense; whereas Norvig accepts
impenetrable machine learning model as theories.
[http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/06/norvig-vs-chomsky-and-
the-f...](http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/06/norvig-vs-chomsky-and-the-fight-
for-the-future-of-ai)

Unfortunately, biology is messy. But I think we should at least _try_ to
decompose it into what it is _trying_ to do.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I was with you up until that last phrase - _what it is trying to do_

You're going to get yourself into hot water with that "trying" word in there.
It's a mistake to look at this as a designed feature with a goal, when in fact
what's going one is emergent, just doing whatever the heck it does, in concert
with other features of the organism, in such a way that its chances of having
successful offspring is increased.

~~~
lkrubner
If I am eating dinner, and I want to add salt to the meal, then I try to reach
the salt container, using my shoulder and arm and hand, and using my muscles
and tendons and nervous system. How much of my body is involved in bringing
food to my mouth? You can define this in slightly different ways, but you end
up with the same result: some parts of my body allow me to bring food to my
mouth. In those moments, it is entirely appropriate to say that the system is
trying to bring food to my mouth. And yes, that increases my chances of having
children. It is possible that something else, unknown to me, is also
happening, emergent, and in 2 million years that emergent quality will be more
obvious. But in the short term, it is altogether reasonable to say that parts
of my body were working as a system to bring food to my mouth.

~~~
delecti
There's a difference between what you are trying to do (eat), and what
evolution is "trying" to do. It's really just a lot of throwing things at the
wall to see what sticks. We happen to have bodies with arms that can move food
to our mouths, but there was no agency in evolution doing that.

~~~
wpietri
I agree completely on a philosophical level. But evolution has equipped us
with a substantial ability to think in terms of agents with intentions. So I
think talking about what evolution "wants" is in practice a very useful
framing. The same is true in talking about what a company or a country
"wants".

As George Box put it, "All models are wrong, but some are useful".

~~~
chenelson
But I think that's the point: when we attempt to "frame" nature in terms of
agency, our dialectic often drifts toward "I" and bias. It's all rather
circular.

Perhaps Aristotle and George would have been good friends?

~~~
wpietri
Sure, but all of our cognition is biased. We're made out of meat.

I agree that using our agency-processing abilities can easily lead to wrong
answers. But that's true of any of our abilities. We have a lot of hardware
for visual processing, so we make graphs. Sometimes graphs mislead. But that
doesn't mean we should stop using them. Instead, I think it means we should be
aware of the limits of any particular cognitive mode and be energetic in
cross-checking.

~~~
chenelson
Right, in science, bias is what we are attempting to isolate and eliminate
from the experiment. Thus, regardless of what type of meat I am, causation and
will exist predictably...regardless of social ontology.

I think of it in terms of bias vs bias bias, and getting caught up in my own
reflection; or, it's turtles all the way down (rationalism).

~~~
wpietri
Sure, but what goes on in an experiment is a small part of science. Hypothesis
generation is looser. As is public understanding. If I can take people who
don't get evolution and talking to them in terms of what evolution "wants"
pushes them over the edge, I still see that as a step forward.

~~~
chenelson
Well, I'll be patiently waiting for the day when a sophist moves the ball for
us and not for their scheme.

------
why-el
A biological module need not be pointed at to be functional. You can reason
about a module given its properties _while_ simultaneously continue to look
for what constitutes that module.

Chomsky has argued that this module could be standing alone, or it could be
something that actively recruits from other mental faculties. There is nothing
in his writings that suggest that this module can _only_ be separate one, or
that language as a whole must be reduced to one gene. In fact, Chomsky and few
others are strong believers that whatever gave rise to language _did_ give
rise to a whole set of other mental capabilities, and this is exactly what
research into complex tooling is confirming.

This article does not contradict the ideas that originated with Chomsky in the
slightest, despite some paragraphs claiming otherwise.

~~~
gmarx
It's a strange thing you see in many popular press science stories; It's not
enough to report the findings. They want some kind of human conflict. So
contradicting a person like Chomsky gets the reader more involved.

------
ggambetta
_The mutation was subtle—only one nucleotide removed from the typical FOXP2
sequence—but the resulting language impairment was substantial._

I wonder what kind of superpower-like abilities we're just one nucleotide away
from.

OK, maybe "superpower" is too much. What I mean is this: what if the "normal"
version of FOXP2 was the one _without_ the nucleotide? People _with_ that
extra nucleotide would be seen as geniuses.

~~~
unhammer
Well, as they wrote, the mice have this slightly-different FOXP2:

> just three amino acids distinguish the human version of the FOXP2 protein
> from that of mice. When he engineered the FOXP2 genes of mice to produce
> proteins with the two human FOXP2 amino acids, it resulted in functional
> differences in brain areas critical for carrying out fine motor tasks and
> controlling muscle movements, as well as altered function in regions
> involved in sending and receiving reward signals. […] mice with human FOXP2
> learned faster than regular mice.

I found it quite funny that there's been all these news reports on FOXP2 being
"the language gene", and then someone goes ahead and makes mice with human
FOXP2. Unfortunately the mice did not learn to speak :-)

~~~
catenate
Was this a permanent or temporary effect on Algernon the mouse? If we continue
the amino-acid mutation along the line of the difference between the mouse and
human FOXP2, can we expect great things from Charlie?

------
kapnobatairza
How do nautil.us posts seem to hit the front page so frequently and
effectively? I know others have brought it up before....

I'm not complaining about the quality of the content, but many of them don't
seem like "hacker news". I'm a little suspicious....

~~~
hyp0
Surely good content being upvoted is what should happen? From
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

    
    
      anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity

------
hawleyal
The article completely dismisses persistent culture and only searches for a
biological capability for language in each individual.

The cultural argument contends that complex behavior (including communication)
is merely the result of consistent sharing and learning throughout a
population over time. Basically, familiarity allows mutual understanding and
eventually communication, verbal or otherwise.

~~~
coldtea
> _The article completely dismisses persistent culture and only searches for a
> biological capability for language in each individual._

Did you even read TFA? It actually does the contrary... the whole last part is
about the cultural development of language...

