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What role does language play in Daniel's explanation of a muscle-centric brain?
I am asking this out of pure curiosity and do not know enough about the subject matter to have any coherent ideas.
Muscle movements do seem to be the lowest common denominator for our brains. After all, it takes muscle movements to type this. If spoken, that would also take muscle movements. All communication is a function of muscle movements.
I've never thought about things through that lens before and am curious what other people think.
Zachary Allinson
Glen Yoshioka
Mike Monkowski
Reading, however, is another story. Reading and writing didn't evolve. They were invented. There are actually no parts of our brain that exist solely for reading, yet imaging studies show that the same areas in the brain are used by everyone, and reading difficulties, such as dyslexia, have neurological causes. Some of the recent research on brain research and reading presents an amazing example of how adaptable our brains are, how areas with certain specializations are recruited to this task that nature could not have foreseen.
Glen Yoshioka
I once listened to a lecture by Michael Drout on language, where he talked about the specific mouth movements (fricatives, glottal stops, etc) that go into making the sounds that we use to communicate. Super fascinating stuff.
For instance the reason all babies make the same simple sounds like "mama" is because those are simply the easiest to make. More complex sounds, like pronouncing the letter "L" actually require a lot more muscle control and thus takes more time to develop.I don't really have a point with any of this, by the way. I just find it fun to think about.
Have you ever heard of Ferdinand de Saussure? He formulated a language theory that is pretty much exactly what you described. He breaks down language into two parts - the "langue" and "parole". The langue is the common understanding of a particular language, and the parole is the act of that language. The idea is that the parole can take many forms (ie Jeet yet), yet still maintain understanding as long as it exists within the bounds of the langue. I think that's the case anyways, I'm a lay person so I might not be completely accurate in my description.
I find that funny because when I was a kid, I saw the movie "Meet Joe Black". That's how I heard it in my head. I'm by nature a fast speaker and I'd tell my friends, I saw this movie, Meet Joe Black, and it was great. No issues there. I told my mom and had to repeat myself several times because she had no idea what I was talking about. She heard "Mijoblack" and she still gives me guff over that.
Brice Luu
Whose complexity might've been allowed by the increasing abstraction ability of our ancestors learning to extend their bodies with more and more complex tools, which led to more and more complex motion possibilities which led to more and more possibilities to express things, and thus towards more possible abstraction.
And who allowed in return an explosive increase of this latter by providing even more ways to express things.