Pinker+and+Bloom


 * Natural Language and Natural Selection**

Summary:

Some researchers have argued that Darwinian natural selection is not an acceptable explanation for the development of language. Some have suggested that it exists as a result of a phenomenon not yet discovered or as a by-product of natural selection. Pinker and Bloom disagree, saying that Darwinian theory is an appropriate explanation for language development because language fits the necessary requirements for a trait to be explained by natural selection.

Because language is a universal trait of all human societies, because children know things about language that they are never taught, and because the human body is oriented towards language, sometimes at the expense of other things, human language should be studied in the context of biology rather than culture. Because it has a complex "design," Pinker and Bloom believe it can be explained by natural selection, like any other complex biological trait. However, important researchers such as linguist Noam Chomsky and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould believe that factors like an increase in brain size might have occurred, with language appearing simply as a side-effect.

Vocabulary:
 * Adaptive Complexity: "any system composed of many interacting parts where the details of the parts'structure and arrangement suggest design to fulfill some function" (p. 6)
 * Exaptation: "whereby new uses are made of parts that were originally adapted to some other function" (p. 5).
 * Punctuated Equilibrium: "most evolutionary change does not occur continuously within alineage, but is confined to bursts of change that are relatively brief on the geological timescale, generally corresponding to speciation events, followed by long periods of stasis" (p. 9). A theory proposed by Gould.
 * Naive Adaptationism: "the inappropriate use of adaptive theorizing to explain traits that have emerged for other reasons" (p. 4-5)

Notes/quotes:

"Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should be attributed to natural selection: complex design for some function, and the absence of alternative processes capable of explaining such complexity. Human language meets this criterion" (p. 1, under Abstract)

"All we argue is that language is no different from other complex abilities such as echolocation or stereopsis, and that the only way to explain the origin of such abilities is through the theory of natural selection" (p. 3).

Comments/connections:

"Noam Chomsky... and Stephen Jay Gould... have repeatedly suggested that language may not be the product of natural selection, but a side effect of other evolutionary forces such as an increase in overall brain size..." (p. 2, 3)

I find this quote interesting because Pinker and Bloom are disagreeing with Chomsky and Gould on the basis that language **is** a product of natural selection, whereas Bickerton would disagree with Chomsky and Gould not because of the conclusion that language isn't a product of natural selection, but because of the reasoning (bigger brain size made language). Which to me is evidence that everyone in linguistics and evolutionary biology wants to be right without ever agreeing with anyone.

"If findings coming out of the study of language forced biologists to such conclusions [that language was not a byproduct of natural selection], it would be big news. There is another reason to scrutinize the nonselectionist theory language. ..." (p. 4)

Maybe I am reading this incorrectly, but it seems that Pinker and Bloom are saying that one reason to "scrutinize the nonselectionist theory of language" is because it would be startling if it were true. That seems like a very silly reason to not believe something.

I found some Shakespeare in this article: "[names of various people], who are nonetheless **strange bedfellows**." (p. 4) "Misery acquaints a man with **strange bedfellows**." (Trinculo, The Tempest, Act II, Scene ii)

"Humans acquire a great deal of information during their lifetimes. Since this acquisition process occurs at a rate far exceeding that of biological evolution, it is invaluable in dealing with causal contingencies of the environment that change within a lifetime, and **provides a decisive advantage in competition with other species that can only defend themselves against new threats in evolutionary time.**" (p. 12)

I agree that because language allows humans to discuss things in the future and the past they are able to learn from their mistakes and plan for future hardships, but I am wary of this statement because it seems to say that language makes humans somehow superior to other animals. Language is just our niche, other animals have their own niches which are in no way better or worse than our language niche. We aren't able to run as fast as a cheetah or hide ourselves as well as some insects; we can't perform complex dance routines to let each other know where the food is (BEES!), but we can use complex structure and displacement to ask someone to go to the store tomorrow and buy a set list of items.

A man from Japan was raised in the Shinto religion which is inclusive by nature. While at the market he meets a Christian from America who begins to prosteletize the man. The man of the Shinto faith agrees with many things this Christian says and agrees to get baptized. The Christian fellow goes home feeling as though he has saved an infidel and brought him into his exclusive faith. The Shinto man happy he made a friend from far away went back to his temple to pray. I feel that many researchers and scientists are in this conundrum of wanting to be right, but when all is said and done they agree at the heart of the matter but in each of their own way says the other is missing part of the picture, where in all probability are just focusing on another aspect. This is indicative of the limits of our communication and where language proves to be an art. To truly "make" somebody understand what you are thinking by your language without forcing them to make presumptions Is undoubtedly a great biological feat. Of course, any biological lifeform has evolved its qualities from the biological process we call evolution. The question that remains is what was the path evolution took? Did our advanced learning technique trigger language development or did a revelation of advanced communication trigger a more complex thought process? Does our ability to empathize result from language or does the extent we empathize trigger a need to be understood ultimately resulting in language? Although all life and existence have their amazing niches our language capacities are the heart of these studies.Please forgive my "Naive Adaptationism" if applicable. It seems probable that there is an evolutionary missing link that had a larger brain and more advanced communication than our modern great apes. This implies that language and higher brain function are at the very least contemporaries in adaptations if not intrinsically linked.

Darwinian Theory... complex creatures evolve from more simplistic ancestors naturally over time. The genetic mutations that benefit survival are preserved.. Natural selection. After being passed on again and again, overtime the mutations result in a different organism... “Aspects of language skill can be linked to characteristic regions of the human brain. The human vocal tract is tailored to the demands of speech, compromising other functions such as breathing and swallowing” … Our body is made for speaking a language.

“Within societies, individual humans are proficient language users regardless of intelligence, social status, or level of education” … All children learn language, and beyond just what they hear.

Is language (like) an instinct or, an organ? In the article Pinker compares language to the evolutionary adaptation of the eye... The eye improves fitness, each improvement of the eye promotes survival and the gene carries on. It seems like language is always being compared to things that aren't comparable.

… Some aspects of language are due to species specific, task-specific biological abilities.

Biological specialization for grammar contradictory to Darwinian theory? (What is the selective advantage?)

In the end of section 4 a very objective view point is stated... "More plausibly, we might look to constraints on the possible neural basis for language and its epigenetic growth. But neural tissue is wired up by developmental processes that act in similar ways all over the cortex and to a lesser degree across the animal kingdom (Dodd and Jessell, 1988; Harrelson and Goodman, 1988). In different organisms it has evolved the ability to perform the computations necessary for pollen-source communication, celestial navigation, Doppler-shift echolocation, stereopsis, controlled flight, dam-building, sound mimicry, and face recognition. The space of physically possible neural systems thus can't be all that small, as far as specific computational abilities are concerned."...

Only to be followed with the subjective... "And it is most unlikely that laws acting at the level of substrate adhesion molecules and synaptic competition, when their effects are projected upward through many levels of scale and hierarchical organization, would automatically result in systems that accomplish interesting engineering tasks in a world of medium-sized objects." Why discount the obvious? The sum of the parts is more than the whole. Our existence is equally as unlikely yet here I am.

Pinker-Bloom argument: Darwinian natural selection explains the evolution of human language. It is a gradual process and non-selectionist theory is not developed and cannot properly refute the natural selection process by attributing the catalyst for human language to an unknown, sudden leap in evolution.

evolutionary theory: complex designs for some function (human grammar system)

Chompsky's view: the mind is composed of autonomous computational modules that combine to form language. Does this conflict with the theory of natural selection? No. Human language is due more to biological factors than cultural factors. Language is species-specific and task-specific, confirming our class consensus that our language pattern cannot be applied to other species languages, because they don't have much use for it.

Chompsky & Gould believe language may have been a side effect of other evolutionary forces (ex: increase in brain size). And this does not entirely refute Darwinian natural selection, but implies a sudden change as opposed to a more gradual one. Still does not entirely conform to the non-selectionist category, as both Gould and Chompsky do accept Darwinian natural selection but feel humans to be more of an 'exception'. The side-effect of a particular selected trait Gould calls exaptation, and he uses the metaphor of the spandrel in gothic architecture to explain the new uses of a trait that was meant to support another (the spandrel was an unintentional creation of the support system for a dome inside a church, and is not a paramount element to the beauty and creative function of gothic church features).

Pinker and Bloom argue that nonselectionist mechanisms of evolutionary change don't provide proper evidence for their alternative theory of 'genetic drift' and 'laws of growth and form'. Two big nonselectionist arguments are the direct contribution of brain size to complexity of thought and the extraordinarily complex optical system would be a useless evolutionary trait and not selected for if it wasn't immediately effective for vision (Gould: what would we do with 5 percent of an eye?). However, the selectionists argue that the gradual development of the eye fits into the same law of natural selection as their uses before complete vision could have been useful.

conclusion: human language evolved by the forces of natural selection 1) because the human language demonstrates complexity in its design for propositional structures and 2) no explanation other than natural selection can provide sufficient evidence for the evolution of human language.