Boy without words.
Suppose there was a boy who was born and raised in a secluded family in which they used no form of language both spoken and written to communicate. How would that boy think?? In my meditations much of my thoughts come in the form of words and usually speaking them to myself with my own voice. Perhaps that boy would think in terms of images?
An example would be "I like to eat doughnuts" rather than the boy thinking of those words associated to that statement he would think of an image of himself enjoying his doughnut. Answer these questions below.
An example would be "I like to eat doughnuts" rather than the boy thinking of those words associated to that statement he would think of an image of himself enjoying his doughnut. Answer these questions below.
Comments (50)
Of course I can't prove it to you. I can only appeal to you that I have nothing to gain by lying about it.
I think in concepts. No thouhts come to me in language.
If I want to, I can verbalize my thoughts, even just to myself, unuttered.
When I was 22, a man told me why meditation would relax me: because, he said, it would stop the constant conversation in my brain.
I was surprised, because there was no conversation in my head.
In fact I thouht he spake metaphorically.
It took me a goodly amount of time (I don't know how long, precisly or approximately) to realize others think in language.
And no, i was not raised in an environment of no language.
Do you think in images, then? Or is there just no internal conversation? Do you have to always use an external medium? I tend to work with people who need visuals to understand. It drives me a little bit insane, as I'm not a very visual person.
But I think the relationship between language and thought is one that is frequently discussed. Think Orwell's 1984 - the idea that language can constraint thought. I think this Wikipedia article does a better job than I will be able to: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_and_thought
Well, the first question would be, how would they communicate? The human organism is structured in a way that relies on communication to balance its resource requirements. A parent would need to communicate with their child to know when the boy is hungry, thirsty, tired or in pain, and when he has enough or too much. If not words, then any expression of movement and sound would soon form its own ‘language’, and the boy would ‘think’ in terms of these conceptual or predictive patterns.
With regard to your example, the boy’s thoughts might gravitate toward any patterns in his relation to the environment that relate to past experiences of eating doughnuts, such as a packet of cinnamon from the cupboard, a thick circular shape, or the action of licking sugar off his fingers.
As an aside, in your meditation it seems like you’re still processing your thoughts if they’re coming to you verbally, and in your own voice. You’re still clinging to a sense of ‘self’. Remember, you are not your thoughts.
How do you ever decide what to say or write?
I think in spoken words, but generally not in written words. I can think in written symbols to an extent, like numerals, but isn't this just a way of thinking in images? Come to think of it, isn't thinking in spoken words just a way of thinking in aural images?
I absolutely agree that It would be cumbersome to think of the individual written words. I go back and forth between thinking in spoken word and images mostly when I think of concepts that are hard for myself to put into words. However without that spoken word thinking I would imagine you would only think in images.
I dream in images, but don't think in images. In my dreams, the characters do communicate: it is UNDERSTOOD that someone said something, and it is UNDERSTOOD that another character replied in merit, and so on.
When my mind is at rest, so to speak, I don't have images. No images, no language, only meaning, and concepts. One concept bears another. I often try to pin myself down on catching myself what I am thinking of at the moment -- impossible. There is no dialogue in my head, in my mind... just one concept morphing into another. A linear monologue, with tons of lateral jumps, of course.
I can visualize three-D objects easily, but no longer as easily as in my teens. In my highschool years I amazed my math teacher with my ability to visualize all kinds of complex three-d structures... but we did not get marked on those, we got marked on two-d descriptive geometry, which I aced, and often challenged the teacher that there is an easier solution to a particular problem or another, than what she taught. I was in a school of exceptionally gifted chilren, and my talents were richly rewarded. Unfortunately it was hard for me to read text, and to memorize rote facts, trivial. I was just this tiny layer away from always failing foreign languages, histroy and geography. I was super in physics, as long as it was intuitive. To the mind of a person under 18 years of age.
Do I always have to use and external medium? I don't quite understand the question. You mean a vehicle for my thoughts, such as language or pictures? If that's what you meant, then never HAVE to, but can. Obviously I can speak and write in language.
Is there no internal conversation? There is no internal conversation. I think in a straight line monologue, in which concepts morph from one into another, very quickly.
I am not the only one I know who is like this. I met others, who also claimed surprise in their past, when they discovered that most people think in language.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's not a matter of decision... it's a matter of translation. From conceptual thougths into language. So far, so good. Although in spoken language I am not as fluent and eloquent as in writing. I use the same words, all right, but I make TONS, literally tons of grammar mistakes. You see, I can't edit my spoken words; in writing, I edit as I write, which does not mean at all going back and correcting the mistakes, but what it means is that the speed of translation is much faster than my speed of writing, so I have plenty of extra time to figure out how to comply to the rules and flow of the language. Not to say that I constantly refer to a set of rules; rules are automatic, but when I speak, the automation lags behind the speech, and when I write, the automation precedes the typing.
We all think in images, or sensory impressions.
Words are scribbles and sounds. To say that you think in words is to say that you think in scribbles and sounds.
This does not give credit to humans' ability to conceptualize things. I believe that when someone says he thinks in words, he thinks in words. Early thoughts may have formed as images or imprints of sensory perceptions. But constant use of them and constant associating them to concepts and words made the associtations automatic, and eventually the associations squeezed out, so to speak, the purely sensory impressions.
If indeed humans could only think in terms of images and sensory impressions, there would be no higher math, there would be no philosophy, there would not be even words in the language such as patriotism, infinity, conjugation, promotion, sales analysis.
That is step one.
Step two is that images can't convey verbs. Images are strictly nouns, or adjectivized nouns. You can't imagine to think (what image is that?), to conceptualize, to proselytize, to abandon, to retrofit. You can imagine these things being performed; yes, very easily, or not so easily. But the language uses verbs, not the descriptions of verbs. "George DIGS a whole", not "George is depicted digging a hole". Visuals do not do verbs, but the language does. "Adorian thinks he is a fool" is not the same as "Adorian is depicted as thining he is a fool." Yet a picture can only be visualized in the second sense.
It is actually correct: humans (most of them) think in scribbles and sounds. The part that you glide over is that the scribbles and sounds have meanings attached to them. Some people, such as I, drop the extra load of scribbles and sounds, and we think purely in meaning.
The color isn't the ripeness. The sound isn't your knowledge. The smell isn't the coffee. They are all about these things.
Let's say you are correct.
If strings of scribbles or sounds can't represent thughts, then uttering or writing them also would not represent thoughts; therefore they would be useless as communicative devices. Yet they perfectly well are capable to communicate thoughts. Therefore the initial proposition is false.
Here you demonstrated perfectly what you need ot deny: that words (scribbled or uttered) have meaning.
You, yourself, explained what the red of the apple is, without presenting an apple. You presented to me no sensory idea of "red", only verbal idea of "red". Therefore words have meanings, and we think in words.
I am saying much more than that. If you did not read those parts, or refuse to comprehend what I wrote, that's not my fault in presenting my opinion.
I never denied scribbles have meaning. I said scribbles are images and images have meaning.
Quoting god must be atheist
Would you have understood anything I said if you never experienced the visual of the redness of an apple?
If you want to point to where you said more than that, I'd be happy to address it, but it seems to me that you are the one not reading posts, and just providing knee-jerk comments to things you think I said, but didnt.
As I said, I think that spoken words in the mind are just images, aural images. So thinking in words, and thinking in images is essentially the same thing. What has happened, is that in modern human evolution we have come to use vision as a very useful tool. In some philosophy of science, "observation" is employed as equivalent to watching, because seeing has become so useful to science. However, we often neglect the fact that our ears have evolved to be extremely sensitive tools, and so we also neglect the role that aural images play in thinking.
The actual content of thinking, the act of thinking, is much more difficult to describe, because it might be pretty much restricted to subconscious habits. It appears like actual thinking is some sort of process which establishes relations between the images. You can see that from this perspective, the type of image is not important, because the images are like symbols, each having meaning dependent on the relations which have been established. The act of thinking is what establishes the relations and commits them to memory. So there is a whole lot of previously established meaning, which the act of thinking is continuously drawing on, mostly in a subconscious way, but the thinking is also continuously establishing new relations between the images (symbols) and committing them to memory.
You would think that there ought to be some sort of truth at the bottom of this structure of relations. The act of thinking cannot simply be a relating of symbols to each other, there must be something apprehended as reality, to ground belief in some sort of truth as correspondence. Something must support the thinking mind's faith in the meaning behind the images or symbols, the previously established relations, which the conscious mind allows to be processed subconsciously. I supposed there is some sort of principle having to do with the success of repetition.
Quoting god must be atheist
Can you explain to me what you mean by "conceptual thoughts", translate this into language for me? I'm not trying to be overly critical, just trying to understand your way of thinking. For me, thinking is as I described above, relating images or symbols, but the actual thinking process, which is the act of establishing these relations is almost completely hidden from me, subconscious.
Quoting god must be atheist
What I'm asking is to take your use of "concept" in this paragraph, and explain to me, or describe, what a "concept" appears like within your mind. You are saying that you can free you mind from words and other images to have "only meaning, and concepts" present within your mind. So I am asking how does this meaning and concepts appear to your mind, can you translate it into words, describe it for me so that I might be able to understand what type of form this subject matter has. If it has no form whatsoever, how could you apprehend it as concepts? So I am hoping that you can describe some sort of form which constitutes the existence of a concept within your mind.
Quoting god must be atheist
Exactly what I think. The words are associated to a certain image, and so are an overextended way of thinking rather than in the images themselves. If you knew only sign language you could associate a baby(noun) with the act of rocking something in your arms. If you had nothing to associate with what is spoken or written then you would come to the base layer of images (purer conceptualized thinking). If you could not think of the subject in any sort of image than it couldn't be conceptualized
Please feel free to filter my messages in this thread, and re-read them if you have any questions. You will find an answer to them, or not. If you don't find a question to your answer, I can't answer it, that's why.
I incredibly don't like to repeat myself. It is a my ineptitude, not yours. It's a joy to express myself, and an even greater joy to come to new insights. It's a chore to repeat myself, and slavery to explain my thougts on levels that I can't aspire myself to be on.
Verbal Language is an artifact. Even animals who can communicate ideas, orally or gesturally, must translate their internal flow of non-verbal feelings into forms that can be expressed symbolically. When your dog or cat paws at you to get your attention, they are expressing a feeling common to mammals. Feelings (emotional urges) are the common proto-language among higher animals. Even dreams must be translated from abstract subjective feelings into concrete objective words or gestures. But we are so used to it, that we are barely aware of the mental work required for communication. Except of course, when we try to express our vague personal feelings in someone else's language, or in precise philosophical terms. :nerd:
Feelings : Feelings are also known as a state of consciousness, such as that resulting from emotions, sentiments or desires. Feelings are only felt and are abstract in nature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeling
The first name to pop into my head is Ivan Pavlov and his dog experiment in which he trained dogs to expect food when a bell was rung and the evidence that his training was successful was the dogs' oral response - salivation/drooling. It's clear or at least it's highly likely that Pavlov's dogs had learned to associate the bell's ring with food but what's intriguing is what is, quite obviously, the gut-reaction or visceral response of the dogs. Dogs salivating under normal circumstances occurs when they're actually feeding but Pavlov's experiment food was offered only after a certain amount of time had elapsed after the bell was rung. Is it beyond the limits of reasonableness to come to the conclusion that the dogs had, for lack of a better word, internalized the ringing of the bell and associated it with not only a picture of the food but also the smell, and taste of it? In short, Pavlov's dogs had linked the bell's sound to the complete experience - all senses are a go - of feeding on dog treats. For the dogs, the bell's sound = eating dog treats.
Coming to the boy without word, he too may be able to, provided there's some level of consistency in his experiences, associate certain sights/sounds/tastes/touches/smells with other events/objects in his life just like Pavlov's dogs. These associations once firmly established could become a means of communication between the boy and an interested second party.
This leads us to what is, for me, a fascinating phenomenon, synesthesia. A little off-topic but I'm sure there'll be some useful conclusions pertinent to the OP we can draw. Synesthesia describes the experience of activation of our sensory system (smell/taste/sight/touch/hearing), either in part or as a whole, with recall (of memories). We could say, in some sense, that Pavlov's dogs were experiencing synesthesia (activation of their digestive responses) when they heard the bell, the sound of the bell triggering a memory of a previous happy encounter with food.
If you notice, ordinary language, though capable of inducing visceral reactions e.g. I recall my mouth watering in anticipation when someone offered me a helping of my favorite dish, usually fails to evoke such responses. For instance the word "theory" or the word "language" only elicit thoughts - no drooling, no sweet odors, no bright colors, no tastes, absolutely nothing in terms of sensory stimulation takes place.
To sum up, the boy without words, because he lacks sophisticated language, will experience "language" in a more immediate, direct, visceral sense. Each association that forms in his mind, like the one in Pavlov's dogs, will, when accessed, evoke a complete experience. So, for example, if he's learned to associate a certain pretty waitress with food, seeing her will make his mouth water, he'll begin to smell his favorite meal, he'll hear the sound it makes when the food is in his mouth, he'll feel the food's texture in his mouth, he'll smell the aroma, and so on - like Pavolv's dogs
When people acquire language skills of the kind we're employing in this discussion, we lose out on what I've described as the complete experience of communication. Yes, we might flush and our hearts might beat faster when we hear the word "sex" but nobody, to my knowledge, ever has had an orgasm just hearing/reading the word "sex".
I'm just curious about how language, the so-called sophisticated version we use in ordinary and also specialized discourse an example of which is your posts, has, in a way, failed at capturing the complete experience - the whole enchilda of the accompanying sense-data naturally associated with words - of words. I've enjoyed chocolate, too much to be honest, but when I encounter the word "chocoloate", I don't, nobody does, experience the sweetness, the crunchiness, the aroma, etc. which I do when I'm actually munching on a chocolate bar.
It's as if "chocolate" refers to something other than the sensations I described of biting down on one and, at some level, these very sensations are what chocolate means to us and that's what I find odd.
Truth be told, there are many times when people can access the complete experience of words albeit in a fragmented manner. However, these occasions are few and far between and what usually happens is words are stripped of their associations (sensory or otherwise), associations that are part of their natural environment and also are essential features that go into their definitions. The aftermath of such processing, done automatically probably due to neurological constraints, is words whose meanings are, for this reason, incomplete. That's what I suspect is the downside. The upside is we'll be spared sensory overload and confusion - our senses have other more important chores and what happens if you see a bar of chocolate floating around with poop in your toilet?
My hunch is that it all boils down to patterns. Words, if you look at what they really are - their definitions - are basically patterns extracted from the world and its contents. Patterns are abstractions and while sensory patterns do exist, what our minds are really interested in are the motifs that go towards creating categories, a necessary step for words to have meaning. Patterns/motifs don't have smells/colors/sounds/flavors/texture.
One language is symbolic, the other is an inborn (previously mutated) language.
Human lingual communication is fully (save for onomatopoeias) symbolic. Dogs pawing cats and deer nodging horses or lions with their nuzzles are pervasive across the mammallian branch of living things. So I would venture to say that mammal language excluding human verbal languages are all inborn, non-symbolic. They are the most basic form of translating impulses into non-symbolic language. A bird's cry over her nest form which her eggs have been tossed or stolen is heart-wrenching. This is not symbolic language, it is a language that is first level tranlation. If you step on the toes of a lion, he'll roar in pain.
A boy who has never learned to speak human language will nevertheless a lot fo human-only concepts developed all by himself. He'll have an idea for the difference between red and green. Heavy and light. Up and down. Pain and pleasure. Hunger and fulness, joy and sadness.
Once you introduce him to a language, he'll learn amazingly fast those concepts which live in his world, and he can overcome the threshold eventually that separates his world form the world of those ideas, which only society can instill in humans. These society-only induced ideas are not present ever in his pre-language state.
Yes. Human verbal language uses abstract symbols & vocalizations, while most animal non-verbal communication uses more concrete (physical) signs & symbols, including body language such as wagging tails. Human babies tend to use "inborn" gestures and sounds before they learn how to use the abstract symbols of adult language. Both body language and verbal language are symbolic, in that they imply some meaning beyond the obvious body movements. So, the boy without language should still be able to communicate feelings and ideas in symbolic gestures, until he learns the conventional meanings of abstractions like spoken words and marks on paper. :smile:
Body Language : Gestures in language acquisition are a form of non-verbal communication involving movements of the hands, arms, and/or other parts of the body. Children can use gesture to communicate before they have the ability to use spoken words and phrases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestures_in_language_acquisition
Symbol :
2. a thing that represents or stands for something else,
I totally agree with what you say. I just wish to add that some symbols that are means of communication and their understanding and or / transmission is inborn. A dog will wag its tail without learning, and another dog will understand it without learning. That's, for the lack of a better word, level 1 symbolism.
Level 2 symbolism is not inborn; it is learned, and culturally driven. In Indian they show "come here" with the same hand gestrue that they use in Hungary to mean "go farther away".
In Hungarian "yes" is said as "igen".
There is no rhyme or reason in level 2 symbols that can be reeingineered to reality, to impulses. It is not inborm, only the CAPACITY to use a level 2 symbolic language is inborn.
In my highschool years I figured that learning a new language is level 2/a symbolic communication, and math is level 3. Pure math, where number manipulation is divorced from quantities. (A quantity is a number combined with a unit of measure. 1 Km, 34.3 miles, 4 hours, 33 minutes, etc.)
Say you say: Im fine, but you have a sadness in your face. Would I consider you being fine or would I think that you are you are not. How I interact with someone is much more related with bodylanguage than linguistic communication. The linguistic comprehension however refine what is on someones mind besides affective cues. If I am angry its helful if I can explain why Im angry so the issue can be adressed for example. But I think bodylanguage, and this involves voice properties aswell, is a hard wired part of natural communication between people.
I really recommend the book Peoplewatching: The Desmond Morris Guide to Body Language as a fantastic book in how to understand this interactive part of human communication.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Manwatching-Field-Guide-Human-Behaviour/dp/B000PSAITU
I would say that communication exists in all causal relations. Effects communicate their causes and vice versa. Behaviors communicate intent. Behaviors inform us of intent.
The G protein coupled receptors is very cool! :)
"GPCRs are involved in a wide variety of physiological processes. Some examples of their physiological roles include:
The visual sense: The opsins use a photoisomerization reaction to translate electromagnetic radiation into cellular signals. Rhodopsin, for example, uses the conversion of 11-cis-retinal to all-trans-retinal for this purpose.
The gustatory sense (taste): GPCRs in taste cells mediate release of gustducin in response to bitter-, umami- and sweet-tasting substances.
The sense of smell: Receptors of the olfactory epithelium bind odorants (olfactory receptors) and pheromones (vomeronasal receptors)
Behavioral and mood regulation: Receptors in the mammalian brain bind several different neurotransmitters, including serotonin, dopamine, histamine, GABA, and glutamate
Regulation of immune system activity and inflammation: chemokine receptors bind ligands that mediate intercellular communication between cells of the immune system; receptors such as histamine receptors bind inflammatory mediators and engage target cell types in the inflammatory response. GPCRs are also involved in immune-modulation, e. g. regulating interleukin induction[21] or suppressing TLR-induced immune responses from T cells.[22]
Autonomic nervous system transmission: Both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are regulated by GPCR pathways, responsible for control of many automatic functions of the body such as blood pressure, heart rate, and digestive processes
Cell density sensing: A novel GPCR role in regulating cell density sensing.
Homeostasis modulation (e.g., water balance).[23]
Involved in growth and metastasis of some types of tumors.[24]
Used in the endocrine system for peptide and amino-acid derivative hormones that bind to GCPRs on the cell membrane of a target cell. This activates cAMP, which in turn activates several kinases, allowing for a cellular response, such as transcription."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_protein-coupled_receptor
Biologically aswell in terms of "communicative properties" we find neuropeptides:
"Neuropeptides are little proteins produced by neurons that act on G protein-coupled receptors and are responsible for slow-onset, long-lasting modulation of synaptic transmission. Neuropeptides often coexist with each other or with other neurotransmitters in single neurons. "
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuropeptide
You represent and store concepts, that are not visible or in any way sensory, but the outcome of complex computations in the brain, in your mind in forms of words. I represent and store these things in my mind without words... I simply conceptualize the concept.
When you think of it: words are mere identifiers attached to the concepts. There is no longer a logical connection to call the concept "accident" than to call it anything else as long as it is unique.
I store concepts without an identifier, I store them in their essential forms (as I understand them).
Some people asked me how I verbalize my thoughts. There is a lot of translation going on, constantly. My reading speed, my comprehension speed is slower than those of those people who think in words. I also get exhausted listening to lectures, literally mentally drained. And I believe this is the real reason why I can't read. The reading speed is not in sync with the comprehension speed, due to the translation I constantly need to perform.
I am not szitting you, guys. This is real, I am not making this up, although I do admit that my insights about my own way of thinking do get perfected, and therefore changed over the time as I mature and am more aware of feature of it.
Can we say that level 3 is an operation of symbols, logic, which is totally divorced from the meaning of the symbols? The operations are universal, and the meaning which is involved with the operation appears to be a completely different type of meaning from the meaning which is involved with having the symbol represent something. In this case, the case of logical operations, the meaning is involved with the way that relations between symbols can be manipulated. So some instances of moving symbols around are valid, meaningful, and others are not. Therefore we appear to have two distinct types of meaning, the meaning involved with what a particular symbol represents, and the meaning involved with how a symbol is related to other symbols.
So at the other end, is level 1, where a symbol is automatically related to something particular. But isn't that thing which the symbol is related to, really just another symbol? The dog understands another dog's wagging tail by relating it to something else, like a memory, but this thing is just another symbol of something else. So the "inborn" "symbolism" you refer to here is just a fixed form of relating one symbol to another. The higher level, logic, allows symbols to be moved around freely, and one symbol to replace another by stipulating specific valid relationships, but it is really just a more free form of the lower level. The second level is somewhere in between, the relations are to an extent fixed, but fixed by cultural practices which change over time, so there is some degree of freedom.
Can you explain to me how you view level 1? How do you get beyond the idea that meaning is just a relation of one symbol to another. Do you see the symbol as relating directly to an activity? What else could the symbol relate to, which is not essentially just another symbol? How can we get out of the infinite regress of symbols, to understand the concept directly as you do? What is a concept if it is not just a structure of symbols related to each other in specific way?
level one (this is the main thrust of your questioning, as I see it) is not a worked-out or acquired or experiencially-learned or a priori learned process. It is simply a biochemically driven reaction that was precipitated by DNA functionality.
One dog happened to be born with wagging its tail when it felt good. The other dogs did not get it.
Until another dog dog got born who but for a DNA change understood the signal.
And a third dog got born who both acted and understood the significance of tail wagging. It was not taught to him; he just did it because his DNA was so shaped that within his system this became the modus operandi.
The offspring of this third dog had a much better chance of survival for several reason. So those dogs that wagged but not understood, or understood but not wagged, or did neither, all lost the future generations (eventually) to the dog that was the third kind in this description / tale.
You are a very smart person, so I shan't go farther in this explanation. You just have to put yourself in my shoes, sort of pretend-wise, and this will become obvious to you.
I don't mean to convince you; I just mean to make you see how I see the whole thing unfold to Level 1.
You don't think I believe in evolution? Do you know that there is more than one evolutionary theory? So I think that reducing to "the evolutionary theory" is a mistake.
Quoting god must be atheist
OK, let's say that it is caused by DNA. Don't you think that the DNA must have acquired it somehow? I believe that that sort of proposition leads to a dead end. You are saying that there is some sort of underlying cause which is innate, but then you get to DNA as that underlying cause, and we are left with the question of what caused the DNA.
Quoting god must be atheist
I can see what you are saying, but I find it unacceptable, because when I proceed through the unfolding and get to level 1, it's unsupported. This tells me that it must be wrong, because if I follow the steps down to the bottom step, and find that there is nothing underneath that bottom step, I see the whole ladder as fundamentally wrong, imaginary.
To make judgement who is right and who is wrong would be similar to decide who is more ethical: a horse or a bumblebee. Or who is more intelligent: a table or a large avalanche falling down a mountain side.
But you're right, there are more than one of those. I can make five such right now in front of your nose, to prove your point.
1. Evolution: the animals get bigger and bigger until they become man.
2. Evoluiton: god gives changes to animals to become bigger and better.
3. Evolution: the environment changes to accommodate the changes in animals.
4. Evolution: the strong protect the weak, thus the weak will survive.
5. Evolution: all offspring are the mathematical middle in every aspect between the parents that brought the individual to life.
There you have it.
I don't think we should discuss this any further, MetaUnder. It's not going to end happily. Let's pull out while we can.
Well, ending the discussion right now would be an unhappy ending, so if an unhappy ending is what you're afraid of then don't end it. But I really do not understand your refusal to explain or discuss these points. You put forward some thoughts and ideas, then you simply refuse to justify or even elucidate those ideas. It's as if you are afraid, or incapable, of elucidating what you are trying to say.
Quoting god must be atheist
OK, so there are actions which "are precipitated by DNA". I don't think evolutionary theory explains to you how DNA learned how to cause these actions. So I'll repeat, " don't you think that the DNA must have acquired it somehow?" If DNA acquired this ability through evolution, then maybe I am as ignorant about evolution as you think, and you might enlighten me with some principles here.
Listen, you person: chemical compounds don't acquire knowledge. I am running out of patience with you. If you only listened to your grade 11 chemistry teacher, you wouldn't ask increibly stupid questions like this.
Please leave me alone, I beg you. While the going is bad, but not horrible.
I did not use the word "knowledge".
You spoke of "level 1 symbolism", for lack of better words, as "a biochemically driven reaction that was precipitated by DNA functionality".
Now, DNA are highly complex molecules, consisting of huge numbers of atoms. If DNA has the capacity to precipitate level 1 symbolism, don't you think that they must have acquired this capacity somehow. Or are you thinking that level 1 symbolism just magically appeared? Why would it be that other levels of symbol use must be learnt, while level 1 magically appeared?
OK, please do not reply. This conversation is finished. Thank you.