A Dog Named Syntax
The origins of language start before the dawn of man, before the emergence of apes, before the emergence of primates. Some lucky ape didn't just wake up one day and know what a sentence was. Language had to evolve to get where it is today. Evolution, were it a cognizant and sapient being, would say that the more widespread a trait is among
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1. about bee dances - i was just reading the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who has some really interesting ideas, although i disagree with him on a lot of them. at one point he claimed that species like ants and bees live happily in societies without having any way to communicate with each other, and i was like "WHAT?!?!" if the guy hadn't been dead for five hundred years or however long, i would totally write him an angry letter about bees communicating through their dances and ants with their feelers.
2. just recently i've become obsessed with octopuses and how awesome they are. seriously, you can easily fritter away an afternoon on youtube, just looking at octopus videos - octopuses changing colors, swimming insanely fast, climbing out of boxes through tiny holes, killing sharks much bigger than them, etc. amazing. if their lifespan wasn't so short, and if they weren't so difficult to take care of, i would totally get an octopus as a pet.
3. in my opinion, animals like dogs and birds don't really "understand" human language, but are very good are recognizing separate sounds, remembering them, and reacting to them. cool story: my family has a poodle (which is one of the smartest dog breeds). whenever we talk about giving him lunch, he recognizes the word "lunch" and gets really excited. so, to make sure he didn't jump about so wildly, we started spelling it out among ourselves: "l-u-n-c-h." unfortunately, the poodle very quickly learned to recognize the sound of us spelling "l-u-n-c-h," and got just as excited as he ever did. :)
4. "...important things, such as its address or the expression, 'Fuck Hitler! Fuck the Nazis!'" i LOVE this. :) win!
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ok, so i'll have to take a couple of swipes at this - and apologies in advance for lack of resources to hand:
questions - dolphins. Some theorists have stated that whales communication by frequency is actually visual - the sound is a transmission of image. and indeed mathematically it has been possible to create visual analogs, the usual (fractal type stuff) with these. however - the purpose of these transmissions - which would give us the structure has (as far i know) not been decoded. Elsewhere the idea of correlation between sound and action has proved difficult to determine - ahh remember Phase Iv? "We can talk to the Ants!" ha ha:)
my info is memory driven, please correct me if things have moved forward.
again - mathematically, structure is in the eye of the beholder IF certain reasonings are allowed.
I mean - the underlying unification of structure in nature can be revealed quite quickly since the models are fairly simple, and if language snot an invention then structure probably follows the easy routes of nature. However - rules governing structure are now seen to break down at the quantum level where condition is uncertain. So - what of language? What of our ability to understand genuine structure - are we not still simply the victim of our own perceptions, can we ever understand the dancing of bees??
or even if - does language actually serve as a model for thought? By attempting to understand the language of animals - are we confusing language with thought? Perhaps the two are indeed one and the same (As you have argued here and elsewhere) and in a binary sense this has to be the case - but can we not evolve beyond this? Is our binary disposed nature really shared by non-human sentience??? If not - hen structure is bound to be different.
Then again - what if life itself (all existence) is simply the language of the universe?
The structure of existence follows a very close model to language.
I am tempted to believe this.
If this is true then analysing the parts of the whole may be possible - but and there may be correlation - but it may take intelligence beyond ours to see the greater design of which our language, the language of a other elements, etc are merely fragments.
That's enough random from me for now:)
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts - really good to read:)
oh - except to note that canines seem to fail in the area of transmission, felines seem more highly developed.
or, for example; I may be able to get my dog to recognise "stick" but only my cat seems able to tell me to Fuck off - or, without prompting, come up to me and yell "Tuna! I want Tuna!"
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the joys of dyslexia!
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