Confronting Friends and Family

[Aractus]

Now, to address your assertion that language develops outside of humans... I'm not really sure what that even means. Language develops when humans interact. It can't not. In an environment where language does not exist between two regularly interacting groups, language will develop. It is very much a part of us. There are no laws or rules to human interaction, but there are consistent and somewhat predictable patterns of interaction. Language most certainly does not develop as its own entity apart from humans. That doesn't even make sense.

I'll address this point first. If you didn't have humans at all as a species - but you had some other species as intelligent as we are with the same 5 senses we have, language would still develop in exactly the same way. Thus it's not truly "derived from humans", it can be created by any population which meets the correct criteria. And you would expect the same language itself to develop (not literally of course, but expressively).

The very fact that we've successfully taught American Sign Language to gorillas pretty much proves the preceding point.

I apply the same question to other things in physics. Do the laws of chemistry depend on the laws of quantum mechanics (to assume QM is correct for the purpose of this argument); or could we still get the laws of chemistry from some other micro-structure of the universe?

Language is just a great example of something that shares pretty much nothing in common with the underlying DNA that makes us "human".

Language is a system that arises out of interaction between individuals within a cultural group, first of all.

Agreed.

Secondly, things like figures of speech, double meanings, implied meanings and the like fall under an entire sub-field within linguistics called pragmatics. I suggest you read into it. Pragmatics has quite a lot of literature about these phenomena, and all of them are pretty well understood. I'm not sure what you mean by saying that these phenomena are not clear in the design of language. Taking the example of figures of speech, are you referring to the fact that the meaning of a figure of speech isn't extant in its structure and semantics? The meaning of a figure of speech is found in what's called a conversational implicature, basically what is meant by a speaker's utterance and not what is explicitly stated. Implicature is very well documented. I suggest you specifically look into the work of Paul Grice and conversational maxims.

I look at it as any other theory of physics. All I mean is that if we didn't know about pragmatics we would have no way to predict their existence, because no one has come up with a theory of physics that makes it implicit. Like the fact that before we knew what fractals were we were unable to have a theory that predicts them, even though we could see and appreciate them.

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Why? If some genes are not expressed, they are not detrimental to survival and reproduction.

But of course they are. Why are two parents with brown eyes able to produce a child with blue eyes? If their genes have the "evolutionary advantage", how come the blue-eye gene is simply not passed on genetically to their children? That would make more evolutionary sense.

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Right, you -need- a male and a female, which means that 100% of the gender pie is engaged in reproduction, not 50%.

Why make a straw man argument? I'm not making up my own argument on this matter, I'm using what is well understood and largely agreed upon. Only 50% of the population can bare children and give birth, thus no matter what the males do, their raw reproduction remains 50% of the asexuals. Asexual reproduction - every creature in the species is capable of reproducing. You can make arguments as to survivability rates, etc, but the fact remains that an sexual reproduction has the cost to the species of a 50% reduction in the rate of reproduction. We know some species literally produce thousands of offspring to give them the "best chance" of survival.

Perhaps it's time to remind you that the reproductive cycle as seen from the viewpoint of natural selection doesn't give two shits about how many organisms are -born-, but how many complete the cycle (reaching sexual maturity and successfully reproducing).

Oh really??

Those "robust genes" that you don't feel warrant the cost of sexual reproduction (whatever you think that is...but more on that in a minute....) go a hell of a long way in that regard.

Let me put it this way then. No one has successfully demonstrated that robust genes cover the full cost of the price of sexual reproduction. It may go some way, it may go a long way, but it can't cover the cost - let alone end up into benefit on its own.

What exactly -is- the cost anyway? All sexually reproducing organisms on this rock share a common single-celled eukaryotic ancestor.

So bdelloid rotifers share this ancestor too, but haven't used sexual reproduction for 80 million years. Doesn't that mean that sexual reproduction can be beneficial, but that it isn't always beneficial? The idea of a creature "loosing something of great benefit" is nonsensical to evolution. It could only loose it if it wasn't beneficial.

Sexual reproduction has benefits, obviously, but it also has a cost that comes along with it. Something you've failed to recognize, even with clear scientific observable evidence!