From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!linac!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert Tue Apr  7 23:22:35 EDT 1992
Article 4751 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Language as Technology: A Phenomenological Study
Message-ID: <1992Mar27.002606.32145@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
References: <1992Mar26.003003.20515@a.cs.okstate.edu> <1992Mar26.134711.10708@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Mar26.223702.28641@a.cs.okstate.edu>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1992 00:26:06 GMT
Lines: 117

In article <1992Mar26.223702.28641@a.cs.okstate.edu> onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR) writes:
>In article <1992Mar26.134711.10708@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:

>  Ah, but from my story, language does not enhance intelligence.  Language
>is only a product of intelligence.  If anything, language increases the
>number of interactions and the amount of knowledge.  But language itself
>has no impact on intelligence.  It is intelligence that generates language.

  It is pretty obvious that language enhances intelligence.  That is, the
intelligence with language exceeds the intelligence without language.  For
example it enhances knowledge acquisition.  You may wish to exclude knowledge
from your definition of intelligence, and I would concur with that.  But the
ability to acquire new knowledge is an important component of intelligence.

>  Language is the WHOLE story for the RULE BASED stance, NOT for
>MY stance.  Language is only an outcome of intelligence.  The rule based stance
>maintatins that language has EVERYTHING to do with intelligence.  It is this
>view which I am against.  Perhaps my first explaination was not clear.

  Thanks for the clarification.  My confusion was due to the distinction not
being sufficiently clear.

>> Human language is very much like that.  When we hear a spoken phrase we
>>recognize it and recreate it.  There is no cumulative degradation.  This
>
>First, I disagree with this.  I don't think this is right.  Second,
>why do you deny, if I granted the first, the bird the ability to do this?

  I admit to not being a bird expert.  I certainly could be mistaken.  However
it is my impression that for a given species there is a steady drift in bird
songs both over time and laterally from one local grouping to the next.  Of
course human language changes too, but in a quite different way as new
phrases are incorporated and language from other cultures in incorporated.
But the differences in the type of change are (in my non-expert opinion)
strongly suggestive of a non-digital basis for bird language.

>> But my point was that the rules for music are relatively simple, and are
>>of minor importance.  They have little or anything to do with the expertise
>>which comes from the coordination and the musical sensitivity derived from
>>intense practice.
>
>They may be simple, but they have everything to do with expertness.  How
>does one become expert without learning the first principles?  Expertness

  But the most important principles of music are those of aesthetics, not
formal rules of music.  A tone deaf person who masters the rules of music
will never be an expert musician.  At least for vocalists it often happens
that someone with no formal music training at all will turn out to
demonstrate great musicality.  This is less likely with instrumentalists,
due to the mechanical nature of the instruments.

>> If your definition of intelligence is limited to formal deductions, you
>>have a very limited view.  Please note that there are already some quite

> I think you are mistunderstanding me.  I am doing two things here: 
>representing the phenomenological destruction of rule-based learning
>whch can be traced back to Socrates.  Second, I am supporting a view that
>intelligence exists before those rules.  Rules are of low intelligence,

 OK.  With your clarification above, clearly separating the contrasting
views, I believe the confusion is eliminated.

>We are not in disagreement on this point.

 Agreed.

>>  No.  Language really is digital.  Take your analog volt meter.  No matter
>>how hard you stare at it, you will have trouble getting more than two to
>>three digits of precision from it.  But, unlike analog technology, digital
>>technlogy allows precision to be arbitrarily extended.  And language has
>>this same property.  If we think it too limiting to talk about a forest,
>>we can coin words for trees.  If we need still more precision, we coin
>>words for tree trunks and branches.  For more we add words for leaves.
>>Next we add words for leaflets; next veins and stomata within the leaves.
>>In principle we can extend precision arbitrarily.

> Ah-ha!  I now see what you mean.  Yes, I can agree that language is digital.
>(Sometimes, you just have to pound this stuff in my head.)  I am, however,

  Language is a predominant presence in our lives.  It is too commonplace.
Familiarity breeds contempt.  It is very difficult -- perhaps
impossible -- to divorce ourselves from our personal involvement with
language, and to analyze it without bias.  It took me a long time to come
to my present understanding of the nature of language.

>still in disagreement that the digital property of language impacts
>human thinking is such a way that humans only think digitally.  As I have

  I don't believe I suggested that humans only think digitally.  If I gave
you that impression, it was unintentional.  I certainly don't believe
that thought is all digital (i.e. linguistic).  We tend to be consciously
aware of little more than linguistic thought, since language is such a
predominant experience.  But a significant amount of thought is non-digital.

  Of course abstract thought is largely digital, consisting as it does of
symbolic modelling.  The people who write the text books and set the
definitions of thought processes are much more involved in abstract thought
than the average member of the population.  Therefore they almost of necessity
make their assessments of the nature of language from a rather narrow
viewpoint.

>stated, intelligence and thinking are prior to language.  Intelligence
>generates thinking and the technology to communicate it.  The technology
>is in language.

  Technology does more than communicate thinking.  Or perhaps I should even
say that communication does more than communicate thinking.  Communication is
critical to advanced intelligence.  Communication allows many individual
intelligences to cooperate and thereby coordinate and concentrate their
intelligences.  I do include here the communication between individual
cells, both neuronal and hormonal, in this assessment.

-- 
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940


