
The Galilean Challenge - kercker
http://inference-review.com/article/the-galilean-challenge
======
mannykannot
Much of what is written here is reasonable, but there seems to be places where
the argument is overstated - for example, this statement is repeatedly used as
a justification for the claim that the so-called Basic Property must be
simple:

"That leads us to expect that the faculty of language emerged along with
modern humans or not long after, a very brief moment in evolutionary time. It
follows, then, that the Basic Property should indeed be very simple."

This argument does not take into account the possibility (a very strong one,
IMHO, FWIW) that the facility for language is an emergent property of the
human brain, in which case language may have become possible as a result of
one or more factors crossing a threshold, in a manner analogous to how a
smoothly varying physical property can lead to discontinuous phase changes in
matter. While there might have been one last change that took us across that
threshold, it does not follow that language would be explained by that last
step. In fact, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the final step
was not directly related to language: for example, that an improvement in
nutrition alone had the side-effect that properties already present became
powerful enough for language to emerge.

I feel that Chomsky is arguing for the necessity of some basic properties,
while seemingly suggesting that the reasonableness of these arguments extends
to the proposition that these properties alone will provide a full explanation
of language, once the details have been worked out.

~~~
secstate
These comments are why I love HNews. Thank you for your reasoned refutation of
Noam Chomsky :)

I especially appreciate your example of phase changes in matter which I think
perfectly illuminates the limits of Chomsky's logic.

~~~
sqeaky
His arguments are generally not hard to refute, they are infrequently grounded
in empiricism. But when they are he is usually correct and insightful.

~~~
secstate
That's fair. I wasn't attempting to discredit Chomsky, just appreciating the
quality of comments here. </meta>

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derriz
The use of a bow and arrows is also unique to humans (as far as I know) but I
don't see that as a compelling argument that humans have an innate, unique and
specific bow n' arrow faculty.

Neither is the complexity of human language alone an argument for a specific
and innate human faculty to support language - no more than the complexity of
the human body is enough to support the theory of intelligent design.

In fact the whole debate reminds of the intelligent design argument. The
theory itself is hardly falsifiable (or at least it keeps getting modified to
avoid new found inconvenient facts - compare the original strong claims of a
universal grammar with the vagueness of the current version of Chomsky's
theory of language). It provides little or no predictive value as a theory;
for example, you'd imagine it would explain the patterns of language
acquisition in children but it doesn't[1]. And it seems it's difficult to
debate the subject without the discussion becoming heated and politically
charged.

[1] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-
rebuts-c...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-
chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/)

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nerdponx
_The capacity for language is species specific, something shared by humans and
unique to them._

As far as I'm aware, this is not necessarily true. We know that dolphins have
rich vocal patterns for communicating, and I recall recently seeing an article
hear about lexical structure in bird calls.

~~~
learc83
There are properties completely unique to human language, recursion for
example. It's more than just a difference in scale.

~~~
iamcurious
What is the evidence that recursion is unique to human language?

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sqeaky
There isn't any, because its one of those evidence of absence things.

Until we understand Dolphins, parrots Uncommon ants and other communicators as
well as we understand common ants we won't know if they do or do not grok
recursion.

~~~
learc83
We very strongly believe they don't grok recursion because they don't use it.

We have countless hours of recordings of dolphins, parrots, whales etc...
communicating and none of the vocal patterns are complex enough to indicate
recursion.

Recursion implies the ability to create infinitely complex language constructs
--if animals have this capability they are communicating via some method that
we aren't capable of recording, or they've just decided not to do it when
we're listening.

You might as well say that mice are more intelligent than humans, they just do
a good job of hiding--sure I can't prove that you're wrong, but I wouldn't bet
much money on it.

~~~
posterboy
That's not how it works. "is not" is a stronger proposition than might or
not", thus the onus of proof is on the grand parent comment arguing for
uniquenes of recursion.

