Does the emergence of language count as "intelligent design"?

Question

Suppose language evolved through some kind of natural, iterative process... pre-linguistic humans or their ancestors developed over time. Does this count as "intelligent design" ? So would intelligent design advocates agree that a process like this could have created the universe? Or does this not fall under intelligent design?

Answer 1

kind of natural, iterative process...

So in other words: "evolution"? Afaik intelligent design is arguing that that what is, was planned like this and so it is too complex to have originated from randomness. Like take a sequence of 1000 dice throws and try to recreate them and it's really really hard.

Now proponents of evolution would argue, that it's not planned and that you're not trying to "recreate" you're just throwing dices and they could have landed any way they wanted what is is just the result there is no plan.

So unless they could show how the iterative process must have let to the result that we have, that's more of a prove for evolution than intelligent design.

Not to mention that the evolution of any sort of language seems natural as any sort of interaction between agents could be perceived as language or as a precursor to one.

Answer 2

Does the emergence of language count as "intelligent design"?

This really depends on our notion of intelligence, which is itself a tricky subject.

I define intelligence, I think very reasonably, as the ability to solve problems. This definition seems to apply to all forms of life, at least to the extent that any living organism can be said to face problems for its survival. Plants have an ability to solve problems, but the range of problems they can solve is arguably less extended than that of animals, and that of other animals less extended than that of humans. So plants are intelligent, just probably much less so than humans.

The restriction comes from the notion is design.

Design requires intent, that is, it requires the designer to think about the problem and to think about it in order to solve it. This obviously excludes plants but not necessarily some animals, such as apes and corvids.

Given this, should natural languages be regarded as designed? No.

A natural language is the solution to the problem of communicating ideas between humans, but by definition, it is natural. That a language be natural means that it results from the natural interactions naturally taking place within a group of humans over several generations. Nobody during this process had to think about solving the problem of how humans could communicate their ideas to other humans.

This should be compared to how most humans solve most of the problems they face everyday. Most of these problems are resolved without us having to think about how to solve them. Nobody who wants to go out of a building will spend any time thinking about how to achieve this. A typical human will just use the door, and never try to go through a wall or a window. Most of what we do in our lives is done intuitively, that is to say, without ever having to think about the problem of how to do it. Just do it, as some would say.

So most of how we solve problems in our everyday lives proves intent and proves intelligence, but not design. Natural languages belong to this category.

We should also think for a moment at the typical process of design. Design is typically hard work. Design has always been thought of as typically involving drawings, preliminary sketches or plans.

We can also compare to formal languages such as the language used by mathematicians. Although it is an extension of our natural languages, mathematicians obviously have to think carefully about the mathematical concepts themselves and how best to represent them.

So a natural language demonstrates intelligence, not design, and this applies just as well to chimpanzees, magpies and dolphins as it does to humans.

Answer 3

Intelligent Design, or ID, is a movement that criticizes Darwinism (or, more accurately Neo-Darwinism) on scientific grounds, and offers an alternative explanation of life that is argued on philosophical grounds rather than scientific grounds.

This question is intended as an argument against the philosophical part of the ID argument, so before I address it, let me indulge in a digression on the practice and argumentation of the ID community. First of all, Intelligent Design is often conflated with Creationism because they have in common the criticism of Darwinism; however, the positive claims they make are quite different as are the arguments they make for their claims. Creationists try to leverage the scientific evidence into their religious writings, usually by taking liberties with both the science and the religious writings. ID is much more circumspect. It makes no religious claims and no supernatural claims. There are atheists and agnostics who have found the ID arguments persuasive.

Any scientific criticism of any scientific field ought to be given its due as a part of the grand project of science; however some Creationists, particularly the Young Earth Creationists, or YEC, have well-earned the contempt in which they are often held by appealing to the sneaky-God hypothesis who fabricates evidence to make the earth look far older than it actually is. Even the old-earth Creationists are really pushing the patience of rational thinkers with a lot of their work.

Unfortunately, the negative attitude engendered by Creationists often spills over onto ID advocates, but that spill-over is without justification. I used to have a similar attitude to ID until I read some of their material (including a couple of their books) and found them to be well-reasoned. I found the philosophical part of the argument rational and well-reasoned, but ultimately unpersuasive, while I found the scientific criticism of Darwinism to be well-reasoned, well-documented, and quite persuasive. It deserves a serious reply from Darwinists that as far as I know, it has not yet received.

So, with that background explaining why ID deserves a polite hearing, let me summarize the philosophical part of their argument, which this question is aimed at. The philosophical argument of ID is basically that design and the various aspects of design such as organization and function are recognizable and identifiable, and that life exhibits the signs of being designed, so life must be designed. Note, there is no assumption about who or what the designer is. ID is perfectly compatible with the existence of an alien species that evolved naturally and that seeded life on earth. Of course, that alien species would have to be such that the argument from design did not apply to them.

The weakness of the argument from design is not that it is unscientific to postulate design. Scientists postulate design all the time--particularly archeologists who will find a broken piece of rock and decide that it was broken deliberately to use as a tool. The SETI program is also built around the idea that it is possible to recognize an intelligently-designed signal. Design is also something that is uncontroversially identified by police detectives, coaches, and military analysts when they detect a purpose behind something that a non-expert might think is an accident. The idea that humans have the ability, in some circumstances, to recognize something that was intelligently designed cannot be rationally disputed.

The real problem of the argument from design is that although the ID proponents are right that design is recognizable, it is also the case that sometimes we see design where there is none. Detectives and military strategists are sometimes wrong. So are archeologists. People see horses in the clouds and the face of Jesus in a tortilla. The appearance of design is only a clue, not a proof.

More pressingly, in the case of life there is a competing theory (Darwinism) that explains exactly how the appearance of design might exist in living organisms even though there was no design. That is why the large majority of any ID book is aimed not at the philosophical argument, but at scientific criticisms of Darwinism, attempting to show that Darwinism cannot, in fact, explain the appearance of design.

Now we get to the question. Human language is a phenomenon that many ID proponents would agree evolved naturally--that is, without design. Human language has many indications of design. It has organization. The parts of a sentence serve particular functions. So human language is a counter-example to the notion that design can be reliably recognized.

Although the argument is interesting and made me think, it is ultimately a weak argument against ID for the following reasons. First of all, I don't think ID relies on the assumption that there are no cases where someone can be fooled into seeing design where there is none. The most this argument could do is make them back off on their claims a bit, and acknowledge that human recognition of design can be fooled. This marginally weakens their position, but not much.

Second, and more seriously, some ID proponents would take the position that what was designed was the human faculty for language. Language is something that is enabled by brain structure; it's not something that just any animal can do (yes, I'm aware of the research on animal "speech", but I minored in linguistics for my Ph.D., and the complexity of human language is astonishing. There is no animal behavior that even comes close to being like human speech). So, although the particulars of human speech may not have been designed, it arises from something that was designed. This is no different in principle from the claim that an individual animal today was not designed, but it arises from something that originally was designed.