Chemists identify water as H20 . Everyday people identify water by the use to which water is put. Artists idfentify water by the various looks of it. Musicians and sound technicians identify water by the sound of it. Cooks identify water by whether or not it is potable.All of those users may borrow from each other.

But it is impossible for two things to be identical: if they were identical they would not be two things but would be the same thing.

If someone claimed that some substance was water, and a chemist came along and said " no, it's not H2O" the chemist would have changed the language game, but only on condition that the chemist were heard and understood.In real life the chemist may have been dismissed as irrelevant to the topic of conversation. In other words, iff the universe of discourse is chemistry something that is not H2O is not water, but not every language game, let alone every person, has any notion of chemistry.You need to state the context before your claim makes sense.

It is a fact that I and most of us here are so familiar with H2O being the necessary condition for something's being water, that for us H2O is also a sufficient condition for something's being water. But this fact is not sufficient to prove that everybody would agree, nor that there is a heavenly definer of substances.

Any referent, even water and even the planet Venus, is both concept and reality. The ontological status of concepts and realities is the question.

Metaman wrote:

Belinda wrote:

Any referent, even water and even the planet Venus, is both concept and reality. The ontological status of concepts and realities is the question.

It is nothing to do with the "ontological status of concepts and realities," whatever the "ontological status of realities" means. We are talking about how words are used, and whether nouns are rigid designators (which I think not). The ontological status of anything is irrelevant in this case.

I suppose I should have explained further. The evening star and the morning star both of which are names for the planet Venus was mentioned.This is an example of how the same referent has alternative names and alternative sets of attributes. The example of the planet Venus demonstrates how the noun phrases 'evening star' and 'morning star' do not designate the same concept as 'the planet Venus' or even the same concept as each other.
'The ontological status' of a concept means how a conceptualisation correlates or corresponds with reality. Since individuals' concepts of reality differ we cannot proceed with evaluating any concept's or ots referent's ontological status(i.e. in what way the conceptualisation can be held to exist) unless we have a criterion for measuring such a status.

As for whether or not nouns are rigid designators, particular speech sounds have evolved along with the anatomy of the human head . The meanings of words in everyday language depends upon 1. the social context in which the word is used and 2. the user's neurophysiology.By 'user' I mean both transmitter and receiver.
In academic language the meanings of jargon words are artificially sequestered from everday usage by the use of Latin of Greek derived terminology, although in modern physics such words as 'quark' may be invented from other sources.

Antone wrote:

In a way, I think these two language sets are analogous to sculpter carving an image in a block of wood.
The I-language is like the block of wood. The E-language is like the carving tools. And the meaning is like the final image that we end up with. The [meaning/images] is not exclusively in either the [I-language/wood] or the [E-language/tools], but collectively in the union of both. If we have limited [E-language/tools] because we were raised by wolves (only have a butter knife instead of a sharp blade) then our final images (the sophistication of our language) will be crude. Conversely, if we have a good block of wood (a sharp, word oriented mind) then the tools that we use will also produce a
finer final product.

A useful analogy, which reminds me of Chomskyan deep structure (l-language plus e-language). I agree with the wolf language example to illustrate the sociolinguistic process.. However I think that e-language is indistinguishable from l-language, unless Antone is referring to langue(l-language) and parole(e-language).

Apologies to Metaman, it's me that is lazy not Antone. I have not yet understood parole and langue but Antone's explanation of E and L language reminds me of what I think I understand, although the two explanations do not entirely coincide.

Langue (French, meaning "language") and parole (meaning "speech") are linguistic terms used by Ferdinand de Saussure. Langue describes the social, impersonal phenomenon of language as a system of signs, while parole describes the individual, personal phenomenon of language as a series of speech acts made by a linguistic subject.[1] The distinction is similar to that made about language by Wilhelm von Humboldt, between energeia (active doing) and ergon (the product of that doing).[2]
Wikipedia

I am struggling to understand, Antone, BTW I like your avatar which injects some humility into our pride of reasoning.

Metaman wrote:

Antone wrote:

Metaman wrote: Speaking precisely, I don’t think we learn language. I think the proper way to describe what happens is that the language faculty grows.

I find this to be such a bizzarely irrational statement that I'm not sure how to address it without sounding insulting. lol.
If we don't "learn" langauage, then why not say that we don't learn MATH or PHILOSOPHY. Our brain simply grows to a more advance (or complicated) state... and the math is magically there.

If only this were true!

The reason is that maths and philosophy are not innate. Most likely, we have some kind of reasoning faculty, which we then use to do philosophy and maths. But maths and philosophy themselves have to be taught.

You have to remember that the I-Language is a biological module/organ. We don’t say that we learn to develop our arms; we say that our arms grow. We don’t say that we learn to develop eyes; we say that our eyes grow. The same is true of the I-Language. We don’t learn it—it is innate—and so it grows, like all other bodily organs.

Obviously, our I-Language needs social (environmental) input to get going. But this is true of all our bodily organs. For our eyes and arms to grow they need proteins, which we get from the environment (food). And so, just because the I-Language needs some environmental (social) input doesn’t mean that it is not internal, or innate.

Maths and philosophy and themselves special languages. I have forgotten the names for linguistic categories but I think that maths and philosophy are 'registers'. For instance the first concept that a small child learns is that of sameness. The concept is there, in the small child's brain but needs refining by social contacts usually in the early stages,through conversations with the parent. If you do conservation experiments(Piaget) with three four and five year old you can see how the learning process is developing from the basic concept of sameness.

Not necessarily. Suppose the chile knows the words "mama" and "get" and the father says, "Go to mama and get x and y." The child will toddle over to mama who will hand the child [x] and [y]. If the child starts to leave before being given [y] the "moma" will say, "Hold up you forgot y," and then give them [y]. In this way, the child not only learn what [and] is but they learn to distinguish between [x] and [y].

It's like when I said to my dog " take your bone into the kitchen" the dog did so not because he understood syntax or had a large vocabulary but because he understood that some immediate action was required of him, and he understood "bone" . This was sufficient for him to do what came naturally and transport his bone somewhere else.The social and psychological circumstances of the child are all important to his learning of language so that the gaps in the child's knowledge are filled with happy experiences and the signifiers that accompany them.

The dog learned the word bone by stimulus and response. Believe me it takes longer to to teach a dog chasing a squirrel to come back, because it has to receive an extra stimulus in the form of an edible treat so it takes longer for that penny to drop plus the actively chasing dog is in full sympathetic nervous system overdrive. It may be literally deaf to attempts to teach it at sucfh a time (Have you seen the 'Fenton' video? )
'Bone ' is easy to teach within the calm and cosy confines of the dog's own home.
The young child seems to have innate curiosity regarding symbols.Words are seldom onomatopoeic. The reward for the child in learning a new word is the kindness and fun in the learning situation plus the approval of the adult or other child when the child learns the symbol.Children can of course also be rewarded with sweets or pocket money but bribes have obvious disadvantages for the child .

There is also a maturational difference between the dog learning a word and the child learning a word. The child progresses through maturational stages within which there is an optimum period for language learning. The older dog can be taught new words almost as easily as the puppy, as long as the older dog is in good health.This is probably because the domesticated dog remains in a puppyish state of dependence all its life, plus because the dog learns by simple stimulus and response, the reward being approval from the human, or an edible treat. Some dogs also respond to sharp sounds of disapproval and thus learn by aversion stimuli.However most dogs respond in unwanted ways to strong aversion stimuli. Children don't learn properly by means of aversion stimuli, as children are more intelligent than dogs.

Metaman is right about language acquistion in the young child compared with an adult learning a second language. Those learning processes are not the same, becaue there is an unrepeatable maturational stage in young children and babies when the learning of native language is not only optimum but will fade and never return in later life.

By contrast, stimulus and response learning operates more when we learn a second language as adults or teenagers at which times we can predict our future rewards for the hard work.

There are however parallels between the dog's learning and the young child's or baby's learning of words. Both dogs and young children learn better in the absence of aversive stimuli,because both dogs and children want to belong to the family or pack.But in the case of dogs, only up to the point which is when an obstreporous dog who has previously learned to love antisocial activities better than his mistress has to be taught that antisocial activities are not such fun after all.This remains within stimulus and response learning largely even for very intelligent breeds.As with humans, stimulus and response learning can be done by dogs into old age as long as the dog is otherwise healthy especially in its brain.

As Metaman points out, human languaqge is different from dog 'language'. Young children not only learn to practise the infinite creativity of human language but also are not domesticated wolves. Although both dogs and children intrinsically need to belong the fact remains that dogs are a different species who, unlike babies and young children,in order to fit in dogs have to learn human cultures from scratch.But babies have this head start that they have the language 'instinct'.

I am not saying that SR learning is not possible and useful for children but that SR learning plays a comparatively minor role in the language learning that children are capable of.

Antone wrote:

First, there is ALMOST NO DIFFERENCE between [languagte use] and [language competence]. If we use the language in a certain way then we are competent. If not, then we are not. So I'm not sure what kind of distinction you're trying to make. Second, there is no such thing as language itself. That's like saying I want to study [Oak tree itself]. You can study individual Oak trees--which is like studying the mI-languages; or you can study what it is about some trees that make them part of the Oak tree family--which is like studying the mE-language.

I think that when we talk about language competence in the context of how language is acquired we mean potential for acquiring it. One of the potentialities for human language, for instance, is speech possibility in the shape of the anatomy of the human facial bones and soft tissues.Another of the potentialities is the developmental anatomy of the human brain that is the potential to learn a native language. Language use is impossible in the absence of a human social environment. In the latter case those children whose parents use the elaborated code rather than the restricted code tend to do better at school, although a practitioner of both codes is even better placed.

http://www.doceo.co.uk/background/language_codes.htm

Antone wrote:

experimental evidence shows that adults treat children differently depending on whether they think the baby is a boy or a girl. For example, the adult will coo and make bagy noises to the girl more often. The adult will smile more, and hold the baby more, etc.

My point is that from these very meager, empoverished inputs, the average child learns how to behave like a boy or a girl; including all the complex social interactions that we generally take for granted and never think about. Occasionally, this learning process goes ary and a girl grows up to be a Tomboy or a boy grows up with overtly effeminate mannerisms and so forth. But (generally speaking) the learning process is remarkably effective at creating gender appropriate behavior from a very minimal amount of data input.

Language is a little more complex, but the input isn't so subtle either. My point is that if we can learn gender roles from minimal input, we can also learn language--particularly when we already have a strong affinity for learning language, where presumably there is far less affinity for learning gender roles.

What Antone has omitted is that socialisation of the small child is fastest when the child is very young. Also language acquisition together with other social behaviours is subsumed under socialisation. The young child is inherently able to eat and her social environment directs how she learns to eat her food off a floor or off a plate. The young child is inherently able to speak a native language and her social environment directs whether she says dog or perro, or both. A major difference between language skill and eating skill is that human language is creative, and it deals with abstractions from the immediate situation. For the latter reason it is very hard work for an adult or teenager to learn a language to anything approaching the level of understanding that a small child attains within four or five years.

Gender roles are comparatively straightforward so can be competently learned e.g. by a trained actor with little difficulty during teenage or adulthood. Human body language similarly can be learned competently by e.g. a trained actor. Neither gender roles nor the whole of body language is as creatively complex as human language.

The voice tone and vocabulary etc. used to socialise into some gender role is a language register, not the whole of linguistic creative potential, which in the healthy baby starts out as all present and correct even although it may be moulded or even impaired by subsequent environmental experiences.

Antone replied to Metaman:

The environment somehow triggers something that isn't learning. It somehow sets parameters, without learning what those parameters are. It's a bit like saying that a swimmer doesn't really need water to swim... the water just triggers the innate ability to swim. It sets the parameters for where the swimmer can swim. But the swimmer doesn't actually need the water to swim.

The swimmer can also swim in asses' milk or beer. If it it true that young babies can swim instinctively, then that more mature people may be averse to swimming in beer is not evidence that the swim instinct of young babies does not exist, but it is evidence that by the time that a baby is socialised she may be socialised into aversion to swimming in any medium other than asses' milk. Or whatever medium. I do not know of any research but it is a reasonable assumption that only young babies, if those, are able to swim without being inducted into the proper swimming motions.

Antone wrote:

It's a lot more than being a parrot. The animals follow rules of grammar, initiate conversation; ask for things and even combine words in creatively unique and untaught ways to produce new (more complex) ideas and so forth... So by any rational definition it is a language. A fairly simple one, but still a language.

The chimp who was taught to use many symbols to make his wants known was unable to use those symbols creatively. A banana always meant a banana and he would not have understood any joke about phallic symbolism.

Antone wrote:

Belinda wrote: that socialisation of the small child is fastest when the child is very young. Also language acquisition together with other social behaviours is subsumed under socialisation.

Not a bad argument... Basically (I assume) you're saying that body language is a type of language... and so is controlled by the same mental function... so my argument is invalid. [/quote]

'Body language' is not on a par with verbal language in the creativity stakes. However well a child learns to express herself by that version of body langage peculiar to her culture, her body language will never suffice for her to compose a novel about life,love, hate and death.

Belinda wrote: The young child is inherently able to eat and her social environment directs how she learns to eat her food off a floor or off a plate.

Not entirely true. The child has an instinct to eat. But it doesn't know how to chew up a hamburger. Even thought the child is obviously hungry, sometimes, a child doesn't even realized that it needs to suck on the mother's tit, and needs to be coaxed into taking the nipple into its mouth and then sucking... On a more biological level, some children are alergic to mothers milk, or formula milk, or maybe they just don't like the taste of it as an infant. My Brother, for example, had to have whale milk when he was young--he couldn't handle mother's milk or cow milk. But now he can drink both just fine.

My point is that while there is an important and distinct role that instinct plays, it doesn't happen without learning. I suspect that a child has what might be called an "instinct to walk". A child who is born with one leg will learn to walk on one leg (if the adults in his life don't give off body language clues which tell the child he shouldn't be walking). A child born with NO leges will learn to walk, on his hands. But if you essentially restrain the child, by protecting it from dangerous things like toppling over onto its arms, it won't learn. Similarly, if you tie the child's legs together... it won't learn to walk.

And if there isn't anyone else to talk to, the child won't learn to talk.

Let us not confuse means of ingestion with the emotion of hunger. The baby mammal, human or not, who will not suckle may be unable to do so because it is moribund or very ill, or as you mention, allergic to most milk. Or it may be unable to suckle because the mother was unable to get it to the teat. A normal healthy baby possesses the emotion of hunger together with the instinct to take stuff into its mouth it will even suck on a hamburger or worse.

True, the baby has to learn a lot to put it mildly. The baby has to learn so much that it could not accomplish this enormous task without some basic instincts. Neither will the child learn without input from the social environment , which is my rendering of what Antone says, above.

Antone wrote:

I would argue that he still has an I-language. He knows inside his own mind the difference between a [tree[ and some [grass], for instance. unless he LEARNS to use a language, he won't be able to speak an E-language. He will still know what he himself means, when he communicates with himself, so to speak, but he won't be able to express himself to others clearly.

I doubt if he can distinguish between a tree and grass by looking at them.I think he has also to use the pressure nerve endings, and the kinaesthetic sensors in his joints.Probably smell too. However I take the point , if I understand Antone,that there are means of knowing which are independent of language. Those means of knowing are subconscious, and the subconscious of mind is vastly more huge than the linguistic, conscious part.



Antone wrote:

Belinda wrote: The young child is inherently able to speak a native language and her social environment directs whether she says dog or perro, or both.

So the social environment somehow directs what the child says, without the child ever learning the word [dog] or [perro]? Again, how is this magical feat accomplished?

It is accomplished through the inherent language instinct, plus the particular linguistic socialisation of the child.

Does anyone know about strokes and other brain pathologies that affect language abilities? I imagine that anatomical correlations if sufficiently extensive of language behaviour with brain lesions/wholeness would provide the definitive answer.

-- Updated Wed Apr 04, 2012 4:26 am to add the following --

I have though of a different approach to the original question 'Is water hydrogen hydroxide?' So-called qualia are as I have argued bits of knowledge which are difficult or more likely, impossible, to communicate.

But the attribute of water that it is hydrogen hydroxide is knowedge that can be publically demonstrated by a chemistry teacher. Now I come to the crunch! The contexts for individuals of this teaching event are not the same despite the best efforts of the chemistry teacher or the author nof the chemistry text book.One learner may have learned it from a book while cosy on a sofa in front of a warm fire with a fag and a beer ready to hand. Another may have learned it from an unpopular teacher with a bad cold while worrying that the class bully is ready to strike. Etc. Therefore that water is hydrogen hydroxide is not as pure a bit of knowledge as I first assumed but is intimately linked in the individual's memory with affect and other pieces of memories.

-- Updated Wed Apr 04, 2012 4:26 am to add the following --

Belinda wrote:Does anyone know about strokes and other brain pathologies that affect language abilities? I imagine that anatomical correlations if sufficiently extensive of language behaviour with brain lesions/wholeness would provide the definitive answer.

-- Updated Wed Apr 04, 2012 4:26 am to add the following --

I have thought of a different approach to the original question 'Is water hydrogen hydroxide?' So-called qualia are as I have argued bits of knowledge which are difficult or more likely, impossible, to communicate.

But the attribute of water that it is hydrogen hydroxide is knowedge that can be publically demonstrated by a chemistry teacher. Now I come to the crunch! The contexts for individuals of this teaching event are not the same despite the best efforts of the chemistry teacher or the author nof the chemistry text book.One learner may have learned it from a book while cosy on a sofa in front of a warm fire with a fag and a beer ready to hand. Another may have learned it from an unpopular teacher with a bad cold while worrying that the class bully is ready to strike. Etc. Therefore that water is hydrogen hydroxide is not as pure a bit of knowledge as I first assumed but is intimately linked in the individual's memory with affect and other pieces of memories.