Language, Sounds and Intelligent Design

[caballero reyes]

Laura said: Reply 20
I've been thinking lately that language - sounds - have something to do with geometry of information. After all, "In the beginning was the Word..."
--------------------
And the verb (word) is vibration and vibration is sound and the vibration of elastic bodies is Music.

 

[Chu]

The thing that is most glaringly missing from generic Wiki pages and most other stuff i've read on the subject is this;
An inquiry into what forms of language and perhaps just information transfer at large are possible without the frameworks we are very much conditioned to assume are 'the only way to do it'. Plants do not communicate by vocalizing yet they are clearly capable of interacting with the world through something we might dub language. Every consideration of the topic is very anthropocentric, yet it seems a little insane to me that language in its broadest sense did not exist before humans.

Yes. Although it's actually worse than that, I think. There ARE many researchers who point out that plants and animals also communicate, etc. (See for example Vyvyan Evans, "the Language Myth"). The problem is that then they use that to further their own biases: Darwinian evolution via random mutations, etc. etc.

Some talk about "the language capacity in the broad sense" (vs, the narrow sense, i.e human), and it is about the similarities, but like you pointed out, it's often quite anthropocentric. And they always swear that there is something physical/material in it all, yet they can't find it. I wonder why! Unfortunately, I don't expect things to change much, because they never even allow for the possibility of an Intelligent Design.

It seems rather more logical that there are alot of languages we can't speak anymore, then to assume they dont exist.

I would add: ...that we can't "speak" anymore, or that we never spoke, because we are designed differently.

 

[Chu]

I finally got around to making a new video, FWIW! Feedback and comments are welcome, if something was wrong, not clear, badly explained, etc. I'm just trying to cover all the basic information first, because I realized that most people don't know much about THE most believed theory of language.

DESCRIPTION:

One of the mysteries of language is whether, as Noam Chomsky and many others claim, language is a “module” residing in our brain, or not. This video summarizes the theory behind it, the conditions that would need to be fulfilled for the theory to be valid, and the problems we encounter with the latter. Is Language a module? Maybe! But probably not in the way that is presented.

References:
- (book) Vyvyan Evans, “The Language Myth”, Cambridge University Press (2014)
- (paper) Mark D. Hauser, Charles Yang, Robert C. Berwick, Ian Tattersall, Michael J. Ryan, Jeffrey Watumull, Noam Chomsky and Richard C. Lewontin, “The Mystery of language evolution”, Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 5, Article 401, (7 May 2014).

I don't have the transcript yet, but will post it here asap.

 

[truepositive]

Thank you very much for the new post! Very interesting :)
Sound quality is not great and needs a little help, have to be honest.

After some short consideration i've decided that this is the interview that goes along best with the topic at hand, involving Bernardo Kastrup and perhaps unsurprisingly Chris Langan:

I might have already posted this in here, but will deliberate a bit further this time;
At 10.53 Chris seems to state in a slightly haphazard way that 'discernment requires consciousness' - please excuse me if is this feels like a large stretch, i think i've learned to 'speak his language' a little better over time (pun fully intended). Key words used are 'cognitive identity operator' - which i assume to mean 'conscious entity capable of purposefully interacting with another' - consider that description in the broadest possible interpretation. Summarized somewhat at 11.55.

I gave up 'summarizing' further since this point, as i would actually fill several pages without adding much of 'substance'. It's a great interview going deep into several very interesting subjects, with a common theme present, while it does occassionally suffer from impossible definition issues, its brilliant, and serves as a study towards the difficulty of communication all the same.

It just became hard to 'translate' the conversation at some point which is either testament to my lacking conversational skills, or theirs, or both.

The key relating point however is that there seems to be a kind of agreement on language being far more likely to be an underpinning mechanism of reality at some level then a side-effect of 'humans getting smart'. Which i fully agree with of course.

 

[Chu]

Thank you, @truepositive.

Sound quality is not great and needs a little help, have to be honest.

Yes, apologies for that! Scottie is going to help me fix it. I thought I was recording with a tie mic, but it seems that instead, OBS picked up the sound from the webcam.

I gave up 'summarizing' further since this point, as i would actually fill several pages without adding much of 'substance'. It's a great interview going deep into several very interesting subjects, with a common theme present, while it does occassionally suffer from impossible definition issues, its brilliant, and serves as a study towards the difficulty of communication all the same.

It just became hard to 'translate' the conversation at some point which is either testament to my lacking conversational skills, or theirs, or both.

I lean towards it being theirs, or rather, just Langan's. As much as I've tried, I just don't understand half of what he says, and prefer the saying that "if you can't explain it to a 5 year old, you don't know what you are talking about". I take Bernardo Kastrup's take any time. He at least has this DID model which makes sense at multiple levels, and can distill his ideas for the layperson. As far as I know, he hasn't covered language in depth, but his theory of how the brain is a filter, and our perception the equivalent of a DID personality within consciousness gives us a good platform to theorize at least. I need to read/watch Kastrup more, but so far, I really like how he described the brain&mind problem. Well, his whole thesis, really. While in Langan's case, all I get is that his "language" is too abstract, and even heavily moralistic, and omits the possibility of "names of God" (as in Ibn-Al'Arabi), or the STO/STS dichotomy.

If I'm going to theorize (and I tell you, Philosophy can be quite hard to stomach for me sometimes!), I'd rather do it with relatable and more concrete terms, rather than coming up with a new terminology that the author even has a hard time providing a proper glossary for. He may have an extremely high IQ, but as it often happens with "savants", THEIR experience and theories can be colored by their "brain glitches", as much as they could be perceiving something we don't.

The key relating point however is that there seems to be a kind of agreement on language being far more likely to be an underpinning mechanism of reality at some level then a side-effect of 'humans getting smart'. Which i fully agree with of course.

Me too. I just feel like Langan is a waste of time at my level at least. If you want to figure it out, go for it! Maybe then you can translate it for us.

Btw, I only made it through the first hour so far.

 

[Novae]

Hi Chu, I just wanted to thank you for your series about language. It's very interesting and enlightening! I haven't watched all of your videos yet, but will soon do. Wishing you the best !

 

[Philippe]

Laura said: Reply 20
I've been thinking lately that language - sounds - have something to do with geometry of information. After all, "In the beginning was the Word..."
--------------------
And the verb (word) is vibration and vibration is sound and the vibration of elastic bodies is Music.

This. I’ve always seen music, sound , noise word , or wording composition, all of this and more as a vocabulary for architecture. The auditive world is a cognitive world.

 

[zak]

Thank you Chu for this new video.

Watching and listening to the interview with Jean Abitbol, an ENT doctor who describes himself as a phoniatrician, and your explanation of the cerebral language module, I thought of the famous principle of the transformists: "the function creates the organ", and its opposite: the organ creates the function.

This can quickly turn into a chicken-and-egg situation: who's first?

In both sentences, there is the verb "to create", for me in the sense of "to design", and the two sentences complement each other more, because indeed the function alone, or the organ alone is incomplete, I take the example of a person deaf from birth or not, the organ is damaged, but the function with the plasticity of the body and the brain will find a way so that the person "hears".

And another example, an individual who refuses to hear the truth, to see it, to touch it, his functioning will become biased, to the point of atrophy in this case metaphorically of his senses.

Once again, the subject seems simple, but just by hearing our own recorded voice, another world opens up to us.
So well done and good luck with your research and discoveries in this 'voice'!

Here's the link in French:
"Le monde du langage est lié au monde de l'écoute"

"There are two things that are absolutely fundamental.
The first is that there are eight billion people on the planet, and there are eight billion different voices.
Your voice can be heard in a taxi, on the radio, on the telephone (Speaking of Bercoff, the radio presenter)... You don't need to introduce yourself, we know it's you.
And the second thing is that the voice is an instrument. Like any instrument, it has a breath (the lungs), vibrations (the vocal chords) and the soundinf board above the vocal cords, which are in the throat, at the level of the Adam's apple, which will resonate", explained Jean Abitbol.

DeepL.

 

[Chu]

Thank you @zak! Very interesting, as usual! I mentioned the voice being like fingerprints in this one. It's fascinating, and very little known.

In both sentences, there is the verb "to create", for me in the sense of "to design", and the two sentences complement each other more, because indeed the function alone, or the organ alone is incomplete, I take the example of a person deaf from birth or not, the organ is damaged, but the function with the plasticity of the body and the brain will find a way so that the person "hears".

Funny, I'm thinking of mentioning something similar soon, based on the analogies given by Ernesto Kastrup about consciousness and each of us being like "alters". It's worth checking, IMO. Even if he doesn't have the whole banana (like other densities, STO&STS, etc.), I think it will be a good starting point for hypothesizing about where each part of language is, from sounds to words to sentences to language in context. Still thinking, I'm slow!

By the way, I also finally checked all your links about DNA being a language, and read a few papers that were linked to those. They make a good case for Intelligent Design, but I think that what is missing is a wider understanding of actual DNA, the shape of proteins, etc. I'll get to those eventually, and then see what you think.

 

[zak]

I mentioned the voice being like fingerprints in this one. It's fascinating, and very little known.

I just saw the video part 5 of your link, in the interview of Abitbol the phoniatrist, says that an experiment was done in the Lascaux style caves, and that the exact place where the painting was, it was the place where the sound/harmony was the best.
And likewise the central location in the cathedrals.
The best place to receive and concretize this vibrational visualization.

By the way, I also finally checked all your links about DNA being a language, and read a few papers that were linked to those. They make a good case for Intelligent Design, but I think that what is missing is a wider understanding of actual DNA, the shape of proteins, etc. I'll get to those eventually, and then see what you think.

Yes, I agree, it was quite ID oriented.

Funny, I'm thinking of mentioning something similar soon, based on the analogies given by Ernesto Kastrup about consciousness and each of us being like "alters". It's worth checking, IMO. Even if he doesn't have the whole banana (like other densities, STO&STS, etc.), I think it will be a good starting point for hypothesizing about where each part of language is, from sounds to words to sentences to language in context. Still thinking, I'm slow!

I must indeed take a look at Kastrup, and in the meantime I hope you find the best "cymatic" place to explore this topic!

 

[Chu]

in the interview of Abitbol the phoniatrist, says that an experiment was done in the Lascaux style caves, and that the exact place where the painting was, it was the place where the sound/harmony was the best.
And likewise the central location in the cathedrals.

Could you share that link, please? In the one you quoted earlier there is only a short excerpt, and I haven't found it on YT. Thanks!

 

[zak]

Normally the interview is at the end of the link page, but if not, here it is on YT and always in French:

 

[Channa]

Hello Chu and all of you

To get away from 'serious' books and articles for a while, I've just started reading a crime novel.
It's a genre I don't particularly like, but the author uses a murder as a pretext for his hero to do all sorts of research, and that's what makes it so exciting, because all the "information" is reported by scientists.
If I mention it in this forum, it's because this novel is about all the sounds, songs, words and speeches of animals. Extraordinary linguistics, with syntax and so on.
It talks about intelligence, emotions and the "consciousness of the animal kingdom".
For those who think that "man" is the most superior thing on Earth, there will be things to put right.
José Rodrigues. Dos Santos « Ames animales »

 

[caballero reyes]

Docteur Jean Abitbol: los misterios de la voz

Les pouvoirs de la voix

 

[truepositive]

Bernardo actually moved to the Netherlands i think but is natively Portuguese, i also recall seeing him presenting stuff for 'the hague theosophic society'. Perhaps not things he wants to tout all too publicly, but i dont mind one bit. He's not in on the full story perhaps but as far as 'publicly accepted philosophers' go it does not get much better. I dont agree with everything he says but would currently lack the energy, clarity and tenacity to deal with everything he's done lately. Chris Langan is working on a genuine TOE and the burden of that level of intelligence comes with communication issues somewhat ironically. I have experienced states where writing this whole post would feel somewhat tiresome and redundant taking the time that it did, and can vaguely relate.

The great gap is creativity, but that requires a link back to my own earlier post, and several pages if not libraries of references and clarification.