From: "jeffrey E." <[email protected]> To: Noam Chomsky Subject: Re: Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2015 23:21:39 +0000 but the words are generated by chemical electrical actions. . nothing more. there is no make believe force. . go to the source. On Mon, Oct 19, 2015 at 7:06 PM, Noam Chomsky < > wrote: She is great, great, great. But for the moment, roles reversed. Valeria tore a muscle lifting something that she shouldn't have. Had to call of our trip. Last one was called off because I broke a rib. Maybe the next one because our dog will have a nervous breakdown. It's certainly true that there are all kinds of information transfer. Human language, a particular biological object, can also be used for this purpose (though it is hard to comprehend the common claim that this is its "function"). Suppose, however, that we limit ourselves to organ-to-organ signaling. Would it be appropriate to ask why chemical signals are not "merely a signal for internal use", just like electrical, linguistic, other? I don't think so. We would want to know what chemical signals are and how they work, and the same for electrical, linguistic, etc. They are all radically different, and their particular nature is the object of inquiry into them. And again, linguistic systems are radically different from the others in that signaling is only one of many uses of language, statistically speaking (for what that's' worth, probably not much) a very minor one. And crucially, investigation of the nature of language has, I think, yielded mounting and significant evidence that in the design of language externalization altogether is a peripheral property, largely a reflex of whatever sensory modality is used, hence special uses such as communication even more so. From: jeffrey E. [mailto:[email protected] Sent: Monday, October 19, 2015 1:23 PM To: Noam Chomsky <[email protected]> Subject: cells signal each other by various means. . chemical gas . electrical, . , multicellular other ch