From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!wupost!waikato.ac.nz!rmarsh Tue Apr  7 23:22:38 EDT 1992
Article 4755 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rmarsh@waikato.ac.nz
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Language as Technology: A Phenomenological Study
Message-ID: <1992Mar27.224344.7150@waikato.ac.nz>
Date: 27 Mar 92 22:43:44 +1200
References: <1992Mar26.003003.20515@a.cs.okstate.edu> <1992Mar26.134711.10708@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Mar26.223702.28641@a.cs.okstate.edu> <1992Mar27.002606.32145@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Lines: 55

In article <1992Mar27.002606.32145@mp.cs.niu.edu>, rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
> 
>   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.
> 
I'm not sure if that's quite correct. Certainly we use language for a great
deal of knowledge acquisition, but whether our knowledge acquisition through
language is any more useful than other forms - perhaps forms we have neglected
through our use of language - is still, I believe, debateable. I would agree
that language helps in the communication of ideas, and hence the acquisition of
knowledge from other intelligences, but does this make our intelligences any
greater?

>   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.
> 
What about dialect and accent? Perhaps the birds' language is as homogeneous in
meaning as ours, with a mere change in accent over space and time.

>   But the most important principles of music are those of aesthetics, not
> formal rules of music.  
> 
One could make a similar assertion about race-car driving. 'Instinct is more
important than knowing how to make the car go faster.' The bottom line is still
the ability to make the machine move, or to make the desired sounds - without 
that all your instincts are worth nothing. That, I believe, was the point of 
the original post.

>   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.
> 
Communication is critical to society, but not (IMHO) to advanced 
intelligence. I doubt that we will ever know whether an intelligence can 
develop its potential without social interaction, but I suspect that it 
could.

Stumpy.

--
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Robert G. 'Stumpy' Marsh  | Brought to you from the bottom of the world, 
rmarsh@waikato.ac.nz      | once only literally, but now figuratively too.
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