Comment by toasterlovin
8 years ago
This is dead wrong. We have instincts for extremely complex behavior (like acquiring language, navigating reciprocal relationships, acquiring mates, etc.).
8 years ago
This is dead wrong. We have instincts for extremely complex behavior (like acquiring language, navigating reciprocal relationships, acquiring mates, etc.).
Just because we have evolved the neurological substrates that can be applied to those behaviours doesn't mean those behaviours themselves are instinctive. If navigating reciprocal relationships and acquiring mates are instinctive behaviours, why are so many humans so terrible at those things?
In contrast, something like breastfeeding really is an instinctive behaviour that infants can do automatically without being taught.
Rather than engage on the behaviors that require more writing, I'll just go for the easy kill:
Are you really arguing that we don't have an instinct for acquiring language?
That's a matter of much scientific debate, in fact: https://www.grsampson.net/BLID.html
> My book assesses the many arguments used to justify the language-instinct claim, and it shows that every one of those arguments is wrong. Either the logic is fallacious, or the factual data are incorrect (or, sometimes, both). The evidence points the other way. Children are good at learning languages, because people are good at learning _anything_ that life throws at us — not because we have fixed structures of knowledge built-in.
> A new chapter in this edition analyses a database of English as actually used by a cross-section of the population in everyday conversation. The patterns of real-life usage contradict the claims made by believers in a “language instinct”.
> The new edition includes many further changes and additions, responding to critics and taking account of recent research. It has a preface by Paul M. Postal of New York University.
> The ‘Language Instinct’ Debate ends by posing the question “How could such poor arguments have passed muster for so long?”
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