Yes, and I’m sure God decides who speaks French and who speaks Latin. He can decide for any reason or no reason. So?
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JUst think of all the ways phenotype-genotype connections can arise.
Perhaps it was co-dominant effect, a recessive trait, perhaps it was a particular combination of alleles. And perhaps it was a threshold was crossed based on cultural factors after the genetic capacity had already spread through the population. I certainly can’t review all the ways phenotype-genotype relationships have been understood, but there is no reason to restrict ourselves to Chomsky’s single dominant alelle, or even to think it must be entirely defined by genetics at the transition point.
It is worth point out another two scientists, Ajit Varki and Danny Brower, also propose a discrete beginning, neither of them do so for theological reasons.
How we understand the transition, as smooth or discrete, is just a natural and expected consequence of how we understand the meaning of “human.” But the meaning here is contested and up for debate.
Then it may come down to an arbitrary choice of which philosophy to use.
The single mutation/allele concept seems a bit dangerous. It would suggest that a mutation could knockout that phenotype and result in a non-human. Do people want to ascribe to a theology where our souls are linked to the base sequences in our genomes? This would also seem to conflict with body-mind dualism that is popular in theological circles. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it does seem frought with difficulties.
Sorry, but based on the description that seems like a crackpot book for whose thesis there can be no possible evidence. “…they also laughed at Bozo the clown.” Nor do I see anything about how genetics interacts with Chomsky’s ideas.
I don’t even see recursion as that important. Anything that can be said by embedding one sentence inside another can also be said, at only slightly greater length, by putting one after the other. It’s a grammatical innovation, not a semantic one.
I suppose that’s true, by virtue of saying very little. I would say that it’s silly to define “human” based on possession of a single allele. Can one be heterozygously human, or must one be homozygous?
For the record, I don’t think a single allele is most plausible. I’m not personally so concerned about whether there was in truth a discrete beginning or not. Rather, I think the questions here are interesting, as is the discussions that it surfaces.
Varki is no joke. He is a leading scientist, and has published extensively in antropogeny, and is in leadership at CARTA: Ajit Varki | Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA).
You’ve really misread this situation.
Which philosophy of the mind we adopt is certainly not arbitrary, but it isn’t well controlled by scientific evidence. It is also outside our expertise. What might seem arbitrary to us can have much stronger motivations to the expert.
I think you are conflating two issues: (1) how humans arise, and (2) how we define human in present day. So I don’t think the danger is as real as you fear. That being said, I also don’t think the single-allele idea is most likely correct, but it is illustrative.
Leading scientists can have crackpot ideas. Remember Linus Pauling and vitamin C? Roger Sperry and his religion of life, violation of the laws of thermodynamics? I could go on.
The book seems to have nothing to do with his actual scientific studies. Have you read it? How could this theory be tested? I don’t see a way.