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CF has always been a site that welcomes people from different backgrounds and beliefs to participate in discussion and even debate. That is the nature of its ministry. In view of recent events emotions are running very high. We need to remind people of some basic principles in debating on this site. We need to be civil when we express differences in opinion. No personal attacks. Avoid you, your statements. Don't characterize an entire political party with comparisons to Fascism or Communism or other extreme movements that committed atrocities. CF is not the place for broad brush or blanket statements about groups and political parties. Put the broad brushes and blankets away when you come to CF, better yet, put them in the incinerator. Debate had no place for them. We need to remember that people that commit acts of violence represent themselves or a small extreme faction.
mzungu
INVICTUS
In a very loose sense one could see it as an instruction code that may resemble the structure of language. No it is not a language since it does not meet the requirements for communication but is an instruction code for the manufacture of an organism rather than as a communications media.
But first we have to agree on the definition of What we mean by language. Shall we start here?
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SithDoughnut
The Agnostic, Ignostic, Apatheistic Atheist
I would say that a language is a means of transmitting information. That's a pretty loose term, but it works.
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DNA is more a code than a language I believe.
1. The pattern in DNA is a code.
2. All codes we know the origin of are designed.
3. Therefore we have 100% inference that DNA is designed and 0% inference that it is not.
Perry Marshall
You can argue this point here if you want, but its been a number of years to no avail yet.
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Wiccan_Child
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The argument is invalid due to a hidden premise: it is simply asserted that the 'code' defined in (1) is the same 'code' as defined in (2), yet one need only reject that assertion to reject the conclusion.
In other words, the hidden assumption ("All observed codes are designed, therefore all codes are designed", or "DNA constitutes a 'code' in the sense that is used in (2)"), is unsubstantiated.
Moreover, the sheer fact that we have a mechanic by which DNA can arise wholly naturally - i.e., without being designed - soundly disproves the hidden assumption.
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mzungu
INVICTUS
That is flawed logic. You are basically saying:
The heart, intestines, kidneys, etc are all organs therefore the church musical organ is biological and alive!
You are not well versed in the Atomic theory and chemistry (bio, molecular, etc.) If you were then you would not have made the false statement as you did in #3.
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Wiccan_Child
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If they can communicate information between each other, why shouldn't that count as a language?
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vaguelyhumanoid
Daoish weirdo
Because a language has a very specific set of characteristics, such as arbitrariness of signs, syntax, words composed of phonemes, and the ability to speak of things distant in spacetime from one's present location and time.
I study linguistics as a hobby, and I can assure you that the fossil record is not a language. It's not even a form of communication, how could it be a language? You can say it's metaphorically a language, but saying it's literally one is like saying love is a form of quantum mechanics.
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Nathan Poe
Well-Known Member
I study linguistics as part of my career, and I can assure you that the fossil record is not a language.
Charles Hockett is pretty much the go-to man when it comes to language features: The Features of Human Language - Hockett
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Wiccan_Child
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Why must a language consist of phonemes? Why wouldn't a language composed purely of graphemes suffice (e.g., a mute person writing on a board)? Or one that is purely body movements (sign language, a bee's dance, etc)? Why must a language be able to 'speak' of particular concepts (i.e., "things distant in spacetime from one's present location and time")? Your 'specific set of characteristics' seem to do nothing but restrict what constitutes a 'language' without providing anything useful.
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lucaspa
Legend
No. DNA is a polymer of nucleotide bases. What you are referring to is the genetic "code", not DNA itself. We often loosely speak of the different bases as "letters" in a 3 letter code for particular amino acids. But it isn't really a language. It's a mapping of triplet bases to amino acids so that you can convert one polymer (of nucleotides) into another polymer consisting of amino acids.
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lucaspa
Legend
As has been noted, you are simply changing selection criteria. Instead of having "nature" do the selecting, you are having humans do it. You are substituting artificial selection for natural selection. The result is still evolution: descent with modification.
Neither. What you are doing is committing the Naturalistic Fallacy: that what happens in nature is what ought to happen in human society.
Both examples are artificial selection. Neither is particularly moral. What's more, both are dumb. The problem is that natural selection is a lot smarter than we are. Where humans focus in on just a few traits that are "good" and ignore the costs of those traits, natural selection balances the costs/benefits of thousands of traits at once. Just leave it alone.
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lucaspa
Legend
Both laws and theories are statements about the physical universe. Laws tend to be very well supported theories. And yes, theories can also be things we know to be true through repeated observation: take heliocentrism theory and cell theory.
I have a cartoon I show when I give my Philosophy of Science lecture. It has a man suspended upside down unsupported with his wrist handcuffed to a cop. The cop is calling in on his radio: "Defying the law of gravity, Sarge".
If you have noticed, there have been no new "laws" discovered. We don't call Special Relativity a law even tho it fits how you described a law. That is partly because we recognize that laws are really well supported theories and that, like theories, it's possible that someday they may be shown to be wrong.
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vaguelyhumanoid
Daoish weirdo
Phonemes aren't necessarily spoken, if they fill the same role they are considered phonemes under this definition. As for the other things I spoke of, I recommend you look up linguistic universals. Certain features are held in common by all languages around the world, and things such as ant communication and the fossil record(!) do not have these features.
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Wiccan_Child
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I'm curious as to how you can have a non-sonic phoneme. Would the fundamental chemical bases of a formicidic language count as a phoneme?
That confuses descriptive and prescriptive qualities: just because all known languages are, say, learn-able to the human mind, doesn't mean all languages must be learn-able to the human mind. I don't doubt that there are traits common to all languages, but it's possible that some of these are garnered from the small sample size - we only have human languages to analyse.
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