Walking back from the library today, BChester asked me to find the great blue heron which we saw on the way out and which lives in our neighborhood. We spotted it hunting voles along the path back to our apartment.
We stayed and watched long enough for the heron to get accustomed to our presence. BChester kept on saying "heron pretty!" and "heron cute!" as we watched it wander around looking for rodent holes to peer into. The heron apparently noticed a vole about 10 feet in front of us and decided to stalk it, ignoring us completely. He [it was a male] very slowly walked toward the vole in a heron's equivalent of a soldier crawl, with his neck folded up and so close to the ground that his neck plume was dragging in the dirt. When he was about a foot away from the vole he stopped and began adjusting his footing and angle to get the perfect strike. He further retracted his neck until it was wound up like a spring. BChester found this completely entrancing.
The heron soon struck. His neck sprung, propelling his head forward like a viper, and he used his hefty and razor-sharp bill as a spear. We could distinctly hear the sound of rodent bones being crushed [if you haven't heard this sound before, it actually is quite distinctive]. He immediately calipered the vole by the neck and lifted it off the ground.
But at this point, the heron was out of tricks. He had to wait for the vole to bleed to death since he had no built-in way to off rodents like most specialized rodent-killers do [watch a prairie falcon casually rip the spine out of a ground squirrel some day, it's easy for them]. After several minutes, the vole turned its head around and started to gnaw on the heron's beak. I imagine a bone saw would make a similar sound. Eventually the heron got tired of that and threw the vole back on the ground, wound his neck up, and piked it right through the skull. The vole didn't move much after that.
We then watched [BChester: "heron lunch"] the heron orient the vole nose-down and swallow it whole. At one point the vole got stuck in the bottom of the u-curve section of the heron's throat and we watched him contract his whole neck over and over again to try to get it down ["heron play"]. But then it was over. BChester didn't want to leave but once the vole was down it was obvious that the heron didn't want any more company.
Besides a thrilling up-close look at some serious natural carnage, this experience got me thinking about some pretty profound evolutionary messages hidden in this behavior.
The great blue heron is a fantastically well-adapted bird--for stalking fish in shallow water. The entire genetic code of herons is calculated for two things: fishing and sex [what a life, eh?]. The long legs keep the body elevated above water, the long neck helps them reach into the water without submerging the body, the long beak helps them catch fish, etc. Herons can catch a fish, toss it into the air, catch it when its head is oriented the right way, and swallow it in under a second and without rippling the water. They have extensive in-built hunting techniques which assist them in stalking fish, utilizing light and shadow and fish behavior. The cumulative effect of all of these features is that of a very refined and polished masterpiece of evolution.
Except...
Our bird was hunting on dry ground for voles. The stalking method, the attacking method, the killing method and the eating method that I witnessed are all completely different than the way they stalk, catch and eat fish. The special adaptations that herons have for hunting fish put them at a disadvantage when hunting voles. Their long legs and large body make them conspicuous and hard to hide, they have no way to kill prey quickly, and there are few voles swimming around in the shallow waters at the edge of bays, which is where herons should be programmed to try and find food.
The first observation is a simple one: animals are not stupid. The popular consciousness [such as it is] has held for a long time that genes control everything about an individual animal's behavior and capabilities. Besides being anthropocentric, blatantly contrary to common experience and logically ludicrous, this idea is also the foundation of a litany of corrupt philosophies about human nature. And most conscious biologists would find the idea appalling. If genes controlled all the behavior of every member of a species herons could never hunt voles. Somewhere at some time, this bird or one of its ancestors discovered a source of calories and through trial and error devised a hunting technique that would work for voles. This requires thought. Perhaps rudimentary thought, but thought nonetheless.
Now that that's out of the way, there are some more interesting things to talk about.
We're taught [if at all] that all traits are the result of millenia of selection events. The truth, as pointed out by Stephen Jay Gould, is that some features are "spandrels;" excess baggage created by genes which control other features which have been selected for. These features then have not been selected for even though they exist. Some features arrive through "exaptation;" adaptations co-opted for new beneficial uses. Think about our ability to wipe our butts, which was not the evolutionary impetus for hands but is a great use for them.
It appears that this heron has used some amount of general intelligence to co-opt their specific fish-catching adaptations [I'm thinking the lance-like beak] to catch voles, a perfect example of exaptation. This required, in the least:
1. Recognizing voles as a source of calories
2. Devising a strategy for stalking voles
3. Devising a strategy for catching voles
4. Learning not to swallow the voles until they die
Since I actually have seen two distinct herons in this area do this, I can add another one:
5. Teaching others steps 1-4
I'm not claiming herons are terribly bright. And I'm not claiming this is particularly new, it's actually rather old news as far as evolutionary biology is concerned. But what did impress me is that it took evolutionary biology until 1982 to recognize what was supremely evident in this heron; that adaptation and natural selection are only a portion of the whole evolutionary picture.
Suppose there is enough habitat in the bay area to support a couple hundred full-time vole-eating great blue herons for dozens of generations. Then we could see a subset of the population break off and eventually parapatrically speciate. That means that they could form a mostly isolated gene pool which will slowly acquire traits beneficial to vole hunting and thus diverge from main-stream herons and become its own species. The new niche is actually not new, it's just nearly infinite; there are not enough snakes, raptors, and coyotes in the area to make a dent in the vole population.
The heron I saw was so successful [killed in one attempt; 90% of the raptor attacks I see are failures and they all use lots of energy] that I can imagine it turning out that only one or two genes need to be changed to make the herons the most efficient vole-eaters on the planet; none of this wasteful hovering like kites and none of the slow dangerous slithering of snakes. Classic Darwinism pictures species arriving at an optimal form always from the bottom-up, arriving through branches of selective adaptations after millenia. The concepts of spandrels and exaptation allow hopping from limb to limb on the evolutionary tree in a way that creates species laterally. We're not talking about herons moving to enjoying crustaceans here-I'm talking about a change in almost every non-morphological phenotypical aspect of a species in one shift occuring over only a few generations. And these behavioral and environmental changes will surely lead to accelerated genotypical shifts due to the extreme "distance" between the niche evolved in and the niche moved into. This strikes me as a much more efficient way of generating diversity than classical adaptation, even if the conditions for exaptation have to be just right. The catalyst for using exaptation this way is general intelligence. In that way I'd expect the diversity of life on this planet to be much smaller if animals were thoughtless robots as popularly assumed.
This, in a nutshell, was half of what I was thinking when I saw the heron, beak sheathed in dripping blood, saunter away from the killing site. The other half was this:
Holy son of beelzebub!
Friday, November 30, 2007
Friday, November 16, 2007
A Logical Approach to Global Warming, part II : The Outline
Here is the logical structure and links to data for our GW guide. The structure is organized into topics [arabic numerals; 1, etc.], sub-topics [capital letters; A, etc.], bullets [small roman numerals; i, etc.], and sub-bullets [lower-case letters; a, etc]. In order to prove each topic, each sub-topic and each bullet under it must be shown first. After a bullet is completed, its result will be compressed into FALSE, UNCERTAIN, or TRUE markers, sometimes dependent on sub-bullets. Only when/if each sub-topic is full of bullets with TRUE markers will the sub-topic be marked TRUE and the next sub-topic addressed. The analogous process will be used for proving the topics. Feel free to contribute.
[NOTE: as the structure is being refined, some of the category names might not match the outline. This will be remedied whenever the structure becomes stable.]
1. The earth is warming
[NOTE: as the structure is being refined, some of the category names might not match the outline. This will be remedied whenever the structure becomes stable.]
1. The earth is warming
A. There is a clear trend of warming
i. direct temperature measurements
a. atmosphere [satellite, balloons]
b. surface [stations]
c. ocean [buoys, satellites]
ii. proxy temperature records
d. ice cores [antarctica, greenland]
e. tree rings
f. other [tree rings, sediment, ice cores]
iii. ice sheet behavior INCOMPLETE
g. Greenland TRUE
h. Antarctica TRUE
i. continental glaciers
j. sea level
k. permafrost and lake and river ice
iv. life TRUE
v. other [coastal wind speed, sea ice]
B. The warming is "special"
vi. rate [historically; accelerating]
vii. scale [historically]
viii. solar system [recent trends]
2. The warming is significantly anthropogenicC. Natural explainations for the warming are not sufficient
ix. solar [spots, flux, cosmic rays]
x. ice age departure
D. Anthropogenic sources can explain non-natural contribution to the warming
xi. greenhouse gases
a. Are atmospheric GH gases increasing in concentration?
b. Are people responsible for the increase?
c. Can GH gases cause the GH effect?
xii. is the proportion of warming due to anthropogenic causes dominant?
3. Something should be done about itE. it is possible to solve
F. it is worthwhile to solve
Logically, we can say: AWG if and only if A and B and D. AWG mitigation action is required if and only if 3 [contingent on E and F] and D. Additionally, the hierarchy of the logic is top-down, meaning that questions v through xi are irrelevent until questions i through iv have been established, and so on. I hope that you can all help me flesh out these categories to include more crucial steps in the logic, particularly in part 3.
A complete proof of AWG would flow like this [using ^ for the logical operator AND and => for "IF...THEN" and <=> for "IF AND ONLY IF" and semicolons to seperate clauses]:
(i ^ ii ^ iii ^ iv) => A; (v ^ vi ^ viii) => B; (A ^ B) => 1; (viii ^ ix) => C; (((a ^ b ^ c) => x) ^ xi) => D; C ^ D=> 2; (1 ^ 2 ^ E ^ F) <=> 3.
3, of course, is the only thing that matters.
This will be the logical structure we will follow once it is set in stone. Of course, it is possible to remove a bullet later on by arguments such as "the scale of the warming is irrelevent because..." but we will treat those instances as proven bullets to simplify the process. Help me out with this now so we won't have issues with it later!
The Atoms of Language
The Atoms of Language
Mark C. Baker
I must admit to a lifelong predilection to the aesthetic of reductionism [maybe that's why I ended up in particle physics; the ultimate end-of-the-road for reductionism]. Right or wrong, I find a certain beauty in the reduction of a messy, complicated and fundamentally unexplainable system down into an elegant set of constituent parts and rules.
I guess I'm not alone. Mendeleev, Mendel, Gell-Mann, Linnaeus, Schoenberg, and Chomsky all made their considerable fame through discovery of reductionist principles in their fields. I can't profess much aesthetic interest in the product of Schoenberg's reductions of music, but I spend almost all of my free time these days studying those of Gell-Mann, Mendel, Linnaeus, and Chomsky. There is no doubt that the principles of understanding given to us by these men are powerful.
This fascination of mine is probably why I ended up getting hooked on The Atoms of Language after casually flipping through it a couple weeks ago. It was intended as a supplemental book for an advanced linguistics course my wife took as a student in college. It's very dry, quite dense, and particularly narrowly focused. But it is a thorough reduction of human language in the Chomskyan style and as such really appealed to me.
Gell-Mann's discovery that all visible [and much of the invisible] material in the universe is composed of a very small handful of fundamental particles is the reductionist heritage of Mendeleev's periodic table. This reduction is clean, precise, and demonstrably true. The reduction of all life into species, genera, families, etc. as initiated by Linnaeus is, on the other hand, completely messy, controversial, and even arbitrary. Species are not a fundamental building block of ecosystems in the way quarks and leptons make up the entirety of any atom, molecule, or star. There are compelling practical uses for species and genera, but they exist more on paper than in reality because of the inherent messiness of ecosystems.
Chomsky's reduction of language falls somewhere between the intractable reduction of ecosystems and the neat and tidy reduction of matter. Although messy and strewn with exceptions, language is surprisingly reducible, lending itself shockingly well to a hierarchy of constituents and rules. This concept strikes me as terrifically profound. Whereas the species concept is mostly a construct created for practical purposes, the "atoms of language" are quite real and tell us a great deal about human nature and, importantly for me, what's going on in the head of my babies when they hear me talk.
In this way, Mark Baker's incessant use of an analogy between the periodic table and the reduction of language is apt. When he speaks of the "atoms" of language, he is not referring to the words we speak, which are in a sense the fundamental constituents of the language that we can hear when others speak [or morphemes, which are even more fundamental]. This language--what Chomsky calls "E-language" or external language--is mostly culturally transmitted. The atoms of the language that are really interesting are the parameters that set the rules for syntax within our "I-language" or internal language. What appeared, until Chomsky, to be a potentially infinite set of possible languages with a continuum of possible properties turned out to be the result of a nearly ludicrously small set of "parameters" which come pre-loaded in our brain and are set by experience with our native language as babies.
This is a powerful concept, and the book fulfils its role as an explicator of the known parameters extremely well. The details get tiresome for somebody reading it from my angle, just wanting to learn about human nature, but the big picture is presented well too. Here's a recap of my greatest insights from this book [since you probably won't read it]:
1. Based on surveys of known world languages, it is clear that not every syntactic structure possible is used. In fact, there are only a few syntactic systems humans use out of potentially thousands or millions. This is a clear indication, in the very least, that humans share an innate knowledge pertaining to syntax.
2. Chomsky likes to talk about the "poverty of the stimulus," which points out that children do not have enough language presented to them to learn every rule for every possible sentence in their native tongue. In fact, there are exactly infinite possible sentences. We would then never learn to speak if parameters didn't exist. This is not new to me, but through reading this book I realized that the evolutionary purpose [so to speak] of parameters is language acquisition. Acquisition is a two-fold task: (a) acquiring a lexicon and (b) setting a few parameters. This is an infinitely simpler proposition than memorizing every legal sentence configuration in the native tongue.
3. One of the most interesting new revelations I had from this book is that parameters are hierarchical. Some parameters take presendence over others, and some manifest themselves in obvious ways better than others. Baker constructs the rudiments of a parameter tree that will presumably at some point have every language on earth on its branches.
4. The lack of geographic inhomogeneity in syntax speaks volumes for the hypothesis of parameters. The fact that Indonesian, for example, has syntax essentially identical to English, yet German is quite different is completely incompatible with a fluid, infinite, culturally-transmitted grammar. Suppose language A diverged from language B a couple hundred years ago, and now has a completely distinct grammar. Also suppose that there exists a language C which is thousands of miles away and historically completely socially isolated from language A, but which has identical syntax to language A. The only explaination for this occurrence--which, by the way, is very common--is that language A swapped a parameter from its original form and since there is a finite number of parameter configurations now matches another isolated language by lucky accident.
5. It actually turns out that not every syntactic property is parametrically controlled. For example, the fact that English has reflexive pronouns [like himself and themselves] allows us to use the construction Bob said that Joe should buy himself a car. It is clear that it is Joe that should be buying the car because the pronoun himself attaches itself to the secondary subject Joe. If English didn't have reflexive pronouns, the sentence Bob said that Joe should buy him a car would be ambiguous at best and thus not possible. The lexicon of a language can influence the possible syntax without the involvement of parameters, but it requires special situations.
We have to be cautious with this, though. The evolutionist Daniel Dennett aptly described a very useful concept called "greedy reductionism." It refers to the compulsion to take reductionism well past its practical limitations. Describing the behavior of a bird in terms of the quantum mechanical interactions of its constituent electrons and nucleons, for example, is greedy reductionism. However, Baker doesn't fall into this trap. He aspires to, I think, but the field is so new and fresh that every reductive step is sound and useful up to this point. That's not to say that there is no controversy on the issue of the existence of parameters though.
Philip Lieberman is the modern anti-Chomsky whose ideas shaped a large portion of Christine Kenneally's The First Word, which I reviewed a few weeks back. In his 1984 book Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language, Lieberman argues that one simple result of evolutionary biology sinks every language innateness theory. The argument is this: single random genetic mutations are common from one generation to the next. If all human grammar was pre-programmed in our genes, then some people with random mutations should be expected to display an inability to form certain syntactical structures or learn language at all. Such people do not exist, and thus, Lieberman says, the sum of human syntax is not encoded in our genes.
I have what I consider to be a simple refutation of this idea, but it requires a small retreat from a strictly Chomskyan theory. Chomsky views language as being a single entity which is whole, complete, and perfect. In his view parameters come as a bundled package; each is as necessary to language acquisition as every line of code is to a computer program [often removing one line at random will render the entire program useless]. Not only does this idea make it impossible to manufacture language through selective evolution, but it creates the exact problem that Lieberman takes advantage of in his attacks against the entire theory.
I however see parameters strictly as a learning tool; their biological purpose is to assist babies in learning language. If human language is limited to a certain subset of possible grammars, and if each child comes already knowing the settings that contribute to each possible grammar, then learning language becomes tractable. This allows an evolutionary theory of language since each built-in parameter increases a child's ability to learn language and presumably increases their reproductive viability. Additionally, Lieberman's complaint becomes moot: genetic mutation is likely to only effect a single parameter. Remove one parameter and all it does is make learning language harder for that one individual. One of the "startling" revelations in the post-Chomsky days is that human brains are very powerful. Not only are we pre-programmed with some things, but we can also figure things out other things for ourselves very well [like where the breaks between words occur, which is terrifically difficult and requires tremendous computation power]. General cognition can cover the holes in parameter space left by random genetic mutation.
Of course, parameters are studied from the perspective of systematics. That means that the parameter hierarchy describes [most of; see point 5] the differences between the syntaxes of languages, not how parameters can help children learn the bulk of the syntax of their native language. A meaningful parametric theory should have as its final goal a map of the innate choices in grammar each child is born with which teaches them their native syntax based on setting parameters through experience. This map is complete only when it contains every parameter a child must have in order to learn any possible human language. Baker's ultimate goal is a systematic description of the systematic relationship between the grammars of all languages. His parameter hierarchy is complete when it describes all of the observed differences between languages. This is actually a huge distinction and a potentially schema-breaking one for me. Baker's hierarchy shows only two parameters necessary to explain every observed difference between Mohawk and any other language. But I guarantee that a child learning Mohawk will have to flip more than two mental switches before being able to create every valid sentence in that language.
I don't see any evolutionary force in Baker's method; the diversity of languages is just a byproduct of the existence of parameters, and thus any description is akin to the reduction of life into species and genera; it is a useful description tool but doesn't hint at much that is more more profound [in that species per se are not the goal of evolution but survivability is]. I see Baker's method as analogous to the species method of description, and this acquisition-oriented method as analogous to a genetic description. I think his approach will break down at some point, or get mired in greedy reductionism. Shifting focus to discovering which parameters a child much identify and set to properly learn his native grammar is surely the path to follow.
I don't suggest reading this book for everyone. It does requires a small amount of introductory linguistics knowledge [for me, one introductory class and a few books, including most Pinker]. But beyond that, it's really intended as the definitive source on the workings of each parameter. There is little indulgent philosophizing about the implications of parameters; for that, go to Pinker. But if you, like I, enjoy the beauty of reductionism then you will enjoy Baker's relentless systematic destruction of the apparent infinite variability of language in this book. His brutally clean logical structure and impeccable analysis leaves analyticians like me very satisfied, even if in the end he strays off in a tangential direction.
Mark C. Baker
I must admit to a lifelong predilection to the aesthetic of reductionism [maybe that's why I ended up in particle physics; the ultimate end-of-the-road for reductionism]. Right or wrong, I find a certain beauty in the reduction of a messy, complicated and fundamentally unexplainable system down into an elegant set of constituent parts and rules.
I guess I'm not alone. Mendeleev, Mendel, Gell-Mann, Linnaeus, Schoenberg, and Chomsky all made their considerable fame through discovery of reductionist principles in their fields. I can't profess much aesthetic interest in the product of Schoenberg's reductions of music, but I spend almost all of my free time these days studying those of Gell-Mann, Mendel, Linnaeus, and Chomsky. There is no doubt that the principles of understanding given to us by these men are powerful.
This fascination of mine is probably why I ended up getting hooked on The Atoms of Language after casually flipping through it a couple weeks ago. It was intended as a supplemental book for an advanced linguistics course my wife took as a student in college. It's very dry, quite dense, and particularly narrowly focused. But it is a thorough reduction of human language in the Chomskyan style and as such really appealed to me.
Gell-Mann's discovery that all visible [and much of the invisible] material in the universe is composed of a very small handful of fundamental particles is the reductionist heritage of Mendeleev's periodic table. This reduction is clean, precise, and demonstrably true. The reduction of all life into species, genera, families, etc. as initiated by Linnaeus is, on the other hand, completely messy, controversial, and even arbitrary. Species are not a fundamental building block of ecosystems in the way quarks and leptons make up the entirety of any atom, molecule, or star. There are compelling practical uses for species and genera, but they exist more on paper than in reality because of the inherent messiness of ecosystems.
Chomsky's reduction of language falls somewhere between the intractable reduction of ecosystems and the neat and tidy reduction of matter. Although messy and strewn with exceptions, language is surprisingly reducible, lending itself shockingly well to a hierarchy of constituents and rules. This concept strikes me as terrifically profound. Whereas the species concept is mostly a construct created for practical purposes, the "atoms of language" are quite real and tell us a great deal about human nature and, importantly for me, what's going on in the head of my babies when they hear me talk.
In this way, Mark Baker's incessant use of an analogy between the periodic table and the reduction of language is apt. When he speaks of the "atoms" of language, he is not referring to the words we speak, which are in a sense the fundamental constituents of the language that we can hear when others speak [or morphemes, which are even more fundamental]. This language--what Chomsky calls "E-language" or external language--is mostly culturally transmitted. The atoms of the language that are really interesting are the parameters that set the rules for syntax within our "I-language" or internal language. What appeared, until Chomsky, to be a potentially infinite set of possible languages with a continuum of possible properties turned out to be the result of a nearly ludicrously small set of "parameters" which come pre-loaded in our brain and are set by experience with our native language as babies.
This is a powerful concept, and the book fulfils its role as an explicator of the known parameters extremely well. The details get tiresome for somebody reading it from my angle, just wanting to learn about human nature, but the big picture is presented well too. Here's a recap of my greatest insights from this book [since you probably won't read it]:
1. Based on surveys of known world languages, it is clear that not every syntactic structure possible is used. In fact, there are only a few syntactic systems humans use out of potentially thousands or millions. This is a clear indication, in the very least, that humans share an innate knowledge pertaining to syntax.
2. Chomsky likes to talk about the "poverty of the stimulus," which points out that children do not have enough language presented to them to learn every rule for every possible sentence in their native tongue. In fact, there are exactly infinite possible sentences. We would then never learn to speak if parameters didn't exist. This is not new to me, but through reading this book I realized that the evolutionary purpose [so to speak] of parameters is language acquisition. Acquisition is a two-fold task: (a) acquiring a lexicon and (b) setting a few parameters. This is an infinitely simpler proposition than memorizing every legal sentence configuration in the native tongue.
3. One of the most interesting new revelations I had from this book is that parameters are hierarchical. Some parameters take presendence over others, and some manifest themselves in obvious ways better than others. Baker constructs the rudiments of a parameter tree that will presumably at some point have every language on earth on its branches.
4. The lack of geographic inhomogeneity in syntax speaks volumes for the hypothesis of parameters. The fact that Indonesian, for example, has syntax essentially identical to English, yet German is quite different is completely incompatible with a fluid, infinite, culturally-transmitted grammar. Suppose language A diverged from language B a couple hundred years ago, and now has a completely distinct grammar. Also suppose that there exists a language C which is thousands of miles away and historically completely socially isolated from language A, but which has identical syntax to language A. The only explaination for this occurrence--which, by the way, is very common--is that language A swapped a parameter from its original form and since there is a finite number of parameter configurations now matches another isolated language by lucky accident.
5. It actually turns out that not every syntactic property is parametrically controlled. For example, the fact that English has reflexive pronouns [like himself and themselves] allows us to use the construction Bob said that Joe should buy himself a car. It is clear that it is Joe that should be buying the car because the pronoun himself attaches itself to the secondary subject Joe. If English didn't have reflexive pronouns, the sentence Bob said that Joe should buy him a car would be ambiguous at best and thus not possible. The lexicon of a language can influence the possible syntax without the involvement of parameters, but it requires special situations.
We have to be cautious with this, though. The evolutionist Daniel Dennett aptly described a very useful concept called "greedy reductionism." It refers to the compulsion to take reductionism well past its practical limitations. Describing the behavior of a bird in terms of the quantum mechanical interactions of its constituent electrons and nucleons, for example, is greedy reductionism. However, Baker doesn't fall into this trap. He aspires to, I think, but the field is so new and fresh that every reductive step is sound and useful up to this point. That's not to say that there is no controversy on the issue of the existence of parameters though.
Philip Lieberman is the modern anti-Chomsky whose ideas shaped a large portion of Christine Kenneally's The First Word, which I reviewed a few weeks back. In his 1984 book Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language, Lieberman argues that one simple result of evolutionary biology sinks every language innateness theory. The argument is this: single random genetic mutations are common from one generation to the next. If all human grammar was pre-programmed in our genes, then some people with random mutations should be expected to display an inability to form certain syntactical structures or learn language at all. Such people do not exist, and thus, Lieberman says, the sum of human syntax is not encoded in our genes.
I have what I consider to be a simple refutation of this idea, but it requires a small retreat from a strictly Chomskyan theory. Chomsky views language as being a single entity which is whole, complete, and perfect. In his view parameters come as a bundled package; each is as necessary to language acquisition as every line of code is to a computer program [often removing one line at random will render the entire program useless]. Not only does this idea make it impossible to manufacture language through selective evolution, but it creates the exact problem that Lieberman takes advantage of in his attacks against the entire theory.
I however see parameters strictly as a learning tool; their biological purpose is to assist babies in learning language. If human language is limited to a certain subset of possible grammars, and if each child comes already knowing the settings that contribute to each possible grammar, then learning language becomes tractable. This allows an evolutionary theory of language since each built-in parameter increases a child's ability to learn language and presumably increases their reproductive viability. Additionally, Lieberman's complaint becomes moot: genetic mutation is likely to only effect a single parameter. Remove one parameter and all it does is make learning language harder for that one individual. One of the "startling" revelations in the post-Chomsky days is that human brains are very powerful. Not only are we pre-programmed with some things, but we can also figure things out other things for ourselves very well [like where the breaks between words occur, which is terrifically difficult and requires tremendous computation power]. General cognition can cover the holes in parameter space left by random genetic mutation.
Of course, parameters are studied from the perspective of systematics. That means that the parameter hierarchy describes [most of; see point 5] the differences between the syntaxes of languages, not how parameters can help children learn the bulk of the syntax of their native language. A meaningful parametric theory should have as its final goal a map of the innate choices in grammar each child is born with which teaches them their native syntax based on setting parameters through experience. This map is complete only when it contains every parameter a child must have in order to learn any possible human language. Baker's ultimate goal is a systematic description of the systematic relationship between the grammars of all languages. His parameter hierarchy is complete when it describes all of the observed differences between languages. This is actually a huge distinction and a potentially schema-breaking one for me. Baker's hierarchy shows only two parameters necessary to explain every observed difference between Mohawk and any other language. But I guarantee that a child learning Mohawk will have to flip more than two mental switches before being able to create every valid sentence in that language.
I don't see any evolutionary force in Baker's method; the diversity of languages is just a byproduct of the existence of parameters, and thus any description is akin to the reduction of life into species and genera; it is a useful description tool but doesn't hint at much that is more more profound [in that species per se are not the goal of evolution but survivability is]. I see Baker's method as analogous to the species method of description, and this acquisition-oriented method as analogous to a genetic description. I think his approach will break down at some point, or get mired in greedy reductionism. Shifting focus to discovering which parameters a child much identify and set to properly learn his native grammar is surely the path to follow.
I don't suggest reading this book for everyone. It does requires a small amount of introductory linguistics knowledge [for me, one introductory class and a few books, including most Pinker]. But beyond that, it's really intended as the definitive source on the workings of each parameter. There is little indulgent philosophizing about the implications of parameters; for that, go to Pinker. But if you, like I, enjoy the beauty of reductionism then you will enjoy Baker's relentless systematic destruction of the apparent infinite variability of language in this book. His brutally clean logical structure and impeccable analysis leaves analyticians like me very satisfied, even if in the end he strays off in a tangential direction.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
A Logical Approach to Global Warming, part I: The Wind-Up
I've been planning on doing this for a while, but it will take a lot of work so I put it off as long as I could.
What I have in mind is a simple, 4-part guide to the science behind the Global Warming debate. Here's the outline:
What I have in mind is a simple, 4-part guide to the science behind the Global Warming debate. Here's the outline:
- 1. The Wind-Up. A description of the ground rules and structure of the guide.
- 2. The Outline. A structured outline of all issues pertinent to the subject of GW, to be addressed in part 3.
- 3. The Data. References and discussion of peer-reviewed data addressing each bullet from the Outline, linked to and thus indistinguishable after completion from the Outline.
- 4. The Synthesis. Drawing logical conclusions from the data.
Given that there is an infinite supply of any possible opinion on the matter online, you might wonder why I bother with this. The reason is simply because I have never run across a resource that goes about it the way I think it should be done: pure science mounted on a bullet-proof logical framework. I have a great faith in this logical framework [coming in Part II] because my observation is that a vast majority of the debate is essentially meaningless; it doesn't touch on any of the main pillars that support the theory. Without an explicit logical structure, I believe that any of the conclusions drawn from these debates are inherently flawed, in that any simple statement of "since X then GW is T/F" ignores the logical structure surrounding X which is required in its entirety to prove/disprove the theory.
As far as working rules for this guide, I only have two. You must believe these before you participate:
- Data is the only thing that matters. A vast majority of the current debate seems to revolve around issues like Al Gore's hypocrisy or Jim Inhofe's conflicts of interest. These issues are completely irrelevant and I won't ever mention them again.
- Nothing is simple. Anybody who claims to know for absolute surety one way or the other is claiming a mystical knowledge that science can't begin to reproduce. The issue is complex and each item has multiple potential causes.
I will run this in a semi-wiki fashion. I will post an initial draft and leave it on the site for a couple weeks. Any additions should be left in the comments and I will add those which are appropriate.
A note on my motivations for doing this: After spending an embarrassing portion of my life watching both sides [shouldn't there be more than two? As in: the neutral, objective view so dear to science?] of the debate, I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with the nature of the debate. Every resource which touches the general public is so steeped in rhetoric, slander, and fustian grandiloquence that the underlying science has no chance to escape. Even the few sources that try to present the science do so in a haphazard and illogical way, discarding contradicting evidence and making logical mistakes that shouldn't make it past the simplest jury. The audience is just as bad: we watch/read/hear and agree or disagree based on what we believe. Personal belief has nothing to do with GW, it just gets in the way. I fear that the public is getting manipulated by our lack of critical thinking and the absence of motivation to challenge previously held notions. Political predelictions are motivating people's acceptance or not of the thoery without reference to the science involved. This is a disasterously bad state of affairs. Even though the audience of this blog is about a dozen at best, I hope even a couple of you will find use for this guide.
[As a disclaimer, I believe in anthropogenic global warming. But I am extremely skeptical of the vast majority of the claims made in the popular media pertaining to it. I hope through this exercise to disprove the theory because I feel that its presence critically distracts from other extremely pressing environmental issues, like species conservation and habitat protection. So maybe I'm not entirely neutral, but you can be sure that I won't suppress any data or distort any findings to meet some agenda of mine, because any agendas I have are at war with eachother.]
Enjoy! And please contribute! Participation is the point of this exercize.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Self Revelation
Here, according to Chuckwalla, is a picture of me:
No, seriously. This is from Dr. Seuss' One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. Every time MChes reads it to her she says "Dad!" and points to it. When I read it to her she says "Dad!" and looks back and forth between me and the picture over and over again.
MChes, in all seriousness, says that she can "see the resemblance." What else are wives for?
Thursday, November 1, 2007
The First Word
The First Word
Christine Kenneally
Christine Kenneally brings a unique perspective to popular science writing; she's a freelance journalist but also has a PhD in linguistics from Oxford. The First Word is therefore primarily a piece of journalism, secondarily a scientific look at the evolution of language. It is the anti-Pinker; very straightforward, unchatty, and more distanced from concrete conclusions. But it's probably the only way available to get a good glimpse of the complexity and contention surrounding the very new field of the evolution of language.
Kenneally's main thesis is that the strictly old-style Chomskyan model of a pre-programmed syntax is not consistent with modern experimentation and therefore is false [in fact, a simple statistical argument would have sufficed for me: the probability that the number of genetic mutations required to construct all of Chomsky's Universal Grammar could arise in one generation, as the theory demands, is much smaller than your average zero]. Her conclusion is that language does require some innate and specialized genetic code [descended larynx, fine motor control of mouth and tongue, some built-in language-specific cognitive structure, etc.]. However, this coding arose over thousands of generations for other purposes than language itself; language is a pastiche of adaptations which were beneficial in more ways than just verbal communication. Language is not a thing as much as it is a set of communication and cognition capabilities developed and boot-strapped together into a coherent ability. This is evident by the fact that many of the traits which are recognized as essential to human language production are homologues we share with our genetic cousins, and even those less related to us.
Kenneally goes a bit too far. The structure of her book is very balanced and journalistic; she gives several rounds of the debate to various sides, often giving way to broadside blows and rhetoric that would make Nancy Pelosi proud. However, the last word is given to those who oppose UG, despite the fact that a majority of them are not actually linguists, but ape researchers. This sells the very successful and still useful old model quite short. It should be customary for the old theory to get the final chance to defend itself, especially one as deeply entrenched and successful as UG.
Very little of the book deals with linguistics itself, but rather ape language study and evolutionary biology. Despite a truly epic amount of research, I feel that Kenneally didn't completely understand the evolutionary biology she was reporting on. Here's an example:
Evolution is the process by which genetic mutation influences the reproductive viability of individuals and propagates genetically across the species according to the reproductive advantage the mutation gives the individual over the other members of its species. Evolution proceeds by two paths: natural selection, in which the mutation influences survivability; and sexual selection, in which the mutation influences the likelihood that an individual will actually reproduce. Natural selection gets all the attention because it is the real driver of the creation of species. Sexual selection is traditionally associated with creating sexual dimorphism--males and females having different appearances--and mostly superficial traits. So sexual selection changes mostly details within a species [this is a vast overgeneralization, but it's mostly accurate].
This is very important for the study of the evolution of language. The human species has basically stopped evolving by natural selection; people in modern society live or die according to geographic and socioeconomic conditions and not, generally, as a result of personal genetics. However, sexual selection has taken its place as a vastly powerful means of shaping the species. The caution with which most humans choose who to create children with ensures that there is at least the potential for major genetic trends to be introduced to the species by sexual selection alone [more on this in a subsequent post].
So, what am I driving at? Christine Kenneally has completely ignored the effect of sexual selection in language evolution, and I think it is potentially the most important driver of recent hominid evolution. In fact, she only devotes one paragraph to sexual selection and dismisses it promptly with an analogy from Tecumseh Fitch, one of the scientists she interviewed for the book. The analogy goes something like this:
Peacocks have strong sexual dimorphism from sexual selection. The selection pressure forced the sexes apart, instead of brought them forward together to new traits. Since human language is balanced between the sexes, it cannot be the result of sexual selection.
Besides being a faulty analogy, this is one fabulously impoverished piece of logic. First off, a peahen doesn't need a gaudy tail in order to be attracted to a male's gaudy tail. But a female human must have somewhat comparable language to the male who is courting her in order for her to even observe the trait. It is fairly easy to imagine that the only male in a band of early hominids who can communicate with a particular female at her capacity is more likely to be the father of her children. Secondly, the whole notion of sexual selection becomes infinitely messy and unpredictable with very social species, which we and our recent ancestors are. So comparing us to peacocks is completely disingenuous. It is clear that sexual selection is a potentially powerful force in human evolution, so why ignore it? I think the problem lies in the fact that traditional evolutionary biology focuses on the creation of species, for which sexual selection is impotent compared to natural selection. The language evolution people have inherited this inappropriate bias. [note that I don't claim to possess a model for how sexual selection influenced the genesis of language; how the female and the male came to the same mutation is difficult to understand without invoking widespread incest. But it should at least be obvious that the potential power of sexual selection demands that it be part of the discussion].
Not to get too tied up in this point, here's the rub: The First Word is a great and important book. The question of the origin of language is at least as vexing as the properties of dark matter, and the prospects of conquering the problem significantly less so. Christine Kenneally does a fabulous job of crystallizing and enlightening the debate, and presenting the most recent research. The fact that I disagree with her to a degree is not surprising; out of many dozens of researchers she interviewed for this book, no two agree on the subject either. The issue of language evolution is crucial for understanding our species and ourselves, and this book does a nearly perfect job of drawing the borders over which the wars of human nature will be fought for the next decades.
[Washoe, the first non-human trained for human communication, died two days ago. She was a significant character in the book.]
Christine Kenneally
Christine Kenneally brings a unique perspective to popular science writing; she's a freelance journalist but also has a PhD in linguistics from Oxford. The First Word is therefore primarily a piece of journalism, secondarily a scientific look at the evolution of language. It is the anti-Pinker; very straightforward, unchatty, and more distanced from concrete conclusions. But it's probably the only way available to get a good glimpse of the complexity and contention surrounding the very new field of the evolution of language.
Kenneally's main thesis is that the strictly old-style Chomskyan model of a pre-programmed syntax is not consistent with modern experimentation and therefore is false [in fact, a simple statistical argument would have sufficed for me: the probability that the number of genetic mutations required to construct all of Chomsky's Universal Grammar could arise in one generation, as the theory demands, is much smaller than your average zero]. Her conclusion is that language does require some innate and specialized genetic code [descended larynx, fine motor control of mouth and tongue, some built-in language-specific cognitive structure, etc.]. However, this coding arose over thousands of generations for other purposes than language itself; language is a pastiche of adaptations which were beneficial in more ways than just verbal communication. Language is not a thing as much as it is a set of communication and cognition capabilities developed and boot-strapped together into a coherent ability. This is evident by the fact that many of the traits which are recognized as essential to human language production are homologues we share with our genetic cousins, and even those less related to us.
Kenneally goes a bit too far. The structure of her book is very balanced and journalistic; she gives several rounds of the debate to various sides, often giving way to broadside blows and rhetoric that would make Nancy Pelosi proud. However, the last word is given to those who oppose UG, despite the fact that a majority of them are not actually linguists, but ape researchers. This sells the very successful and still useful old model quite short. It should be customary for the old theory to get the final chance to defend itself, especially one as deeply entrenched and successful as UG.
Very little of the book deals with linguistics itself, but rather ape language study and evolutionary biology. Despite a truly epic amount of research, I feel that Kenneally didn't completely understand the evolutionary biology she was reporting on. Here's an example:
Evolution is the process by which genetic mutation influences the reproductive viability of individuals and propagates genetically across the species according to the reproductive advantage the mutation gives the individual over the other members of its species. Evolution proceeds by two paths: natural selection, in which the mutation influences survivability; and sexual selection, in which the mutation influences the likelihood that an individual will actually reproduce. Natural selection gets all the attention because it is the real driver of the creation of species. Sexual selection is traditionally associated with creating sexual dimorphism--males and females having different appearances--and mostly superficial traits. So sexual selection changes mostly details within a species [this is a vast overgeneralization, but it's mostly accurate].
This is very important for the study of the evolution of language. The human species has basically stopped evolving by natural selection; people in modern society live or die according to geographic and socioeconomic conditions and not, generally, as a result of personal genetics. However, sexual selection has taken its place as a vastly powerful means of shaping the species. The caution with which most humans choose who to create children with ensures that there is at least the potential for major genetic trends to be introduced to the species by sexual selection alone [more on this in a subsequent post].
So, what am I driving at? Christine Kenneally has completely ignored the effect of sexual selection in language evolution, and I think it is potentially the most important driver of recent hominid evolution. In fact, she only devotes one paragraph to sexual selection and dismisses it promptly with an analogy from Tecumseh Fitch, one of the scientists she interviewed for the book. The analogy goes something like this:
Peacocks have strong sexual dimorphism from sexual selection. The selection pressure forced the sexes apart, instead of brought them forward together to new traits. Since human language is balanced between the sexes, it cannot be the result of sexual selection.
Besides being a faulty analogy, this is one fabulously impoverished piece of logic. First off, a peahen doesn't need a gaudy tail in order to be attracted to a male's gaudy tail. But a female human must have somewhat comparable language to the male who is courting her in order for her to even observe the trait. It is fairly easy to imagine that the only male in a band of early hominids who can communicate with a particular female at her capacity is more likely to be the father of her children. Secondly, the whole notion of sexual selection becomes infinitely messy and unpredictable with very social species, which we and our recent ancestors are. So comparing us to peacocks is completely disingenuous. It is clear that sexual selection is a potentially powerful force in human evolution, so why ignore it? I think the problem lies in the fact that traditional evolutionary biology focuses on the creation of species, for which sexual selection is impotent compared to natural selection. The language evolution people have inherited this inappropriate bias. [note that I don't claim to possess a model for how sexual selection influenced the genesis of language; how the female and the male came to the same mutation is difficult to understand without invoking widespread incest. But it should at least be obvious that the potential power of sexual selection demands that it be part of the discussion].
Not to get too tied up in this point, here's the rub: The First Word is a great and important book. The question of the origin of language is at least as vexing as the properties of dark matter, and the prospects of conquering the problem significantly less so. Christine Kenneally does a fabulous job of crystallizing and enlightening the debate, and presenting the most recent research. The fact that I disagree with her to a degree is not surprising; out of many dozens of researchers she interviewed for this book, no two agree on the subject either. The issue of language evolution is crucial for understanding our species and ourselves, and this book does a nearly perfect job of drawing the borders over which the wars of human nature will be fought for the next decades.
[Washoe, the first non-human trained for human communication, died two days ago. She was a significant character in the book.]
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