New theory... The **only** intellectual thing that seperates us from the rest of animals is the ability to do math.
All the things we dont usually think of as math but we associate with being human is in fact math... language is math, logic is math, its all math... language is simply our ontology we use to express logic as symbols we can express. We have a natural intuitive understanding (well some of us, to some extent) of prepositional logic and language is more or less a manifestation of that.
@freemo Counter: the ability to express feelings on a meta level is not dependent on math, and also an important factor.
Animals can express emotions too, so that isnt somethign we "gain" through language. In fact the only thing we gain through language is the ability to express logic attached to those emotions:
"You punched me in the face"
"I dont like being punched in the face"
"Therefore if you punch me int he face I wont be happy about it"
the only thing language is adding here is to express the logical consequences of actions towards my emotions. Without language I could have expressed my emotions in such a situation just fine but I couldnt express the why.
@freemo The "meta level" is what i mean.
I can express that some detail of what you do might be relevant to my emotional response or i might say that an emotion is not because of what you did, just coincidence that you are here to see the emotion.
An animal could only express the emotion itself, not descriptions around (the meta part).
Language is a part of this, if other factors are relevant is kind of unclear - lacking animals with language to test that.
@admitsWrongIfProven language is just a common term for "ontology" and ontology is just a term for "the way we describe logic".
Even if you express to me that your emotion is just coincidence and not related to anything I did, that is **still** an expression of logic not emotion. You are telling me that the things that effects your emotion, and my actions, are a disjoint set.
@admitsWrongIfProven Noit everything is under math no.
Math is the ability to represent the world symbolically an manipulate it using objective provable abstract logic.
Adding two numbers isnt math, writing "1+1=2" and understanding the meaning of those symbols and how they relate to the act of addition is math.
Everything falls under math because math is just another language. As with any language it is expressive enough to describe anything, so everything falls under math in much the same way everything falls under language, not that everything **is** language but that everything can be expressed in language.
Language **is** a math, not a prerequisite. I can say anything I can say with language in math and vice versa.
MAth is just a clearly less ambiguous manifestation of language, nothing else. Using prepositional logic and set theory notation I can turn any sentance into a mathematical expression that says the same thing, and vice versa.
@freemo Hmm. Language is a prerequisite of math, then, is it not?
It just remains that i see no proof that language alone would enable meta level assessment of emotions... a thing we cannot know, i guess.