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Article 4800 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Language as Technology: A Phenomenological Study
Message-ID: <1992Mar29.085440.24838@a.cs.okstate.edu>
Date: 29 Mar 92 08:54:40 GMT
References: <1992Mar27.130652.23929@neptune.inf.ethz.ch> <1992Mar27.231937.14949@a.cs.okstate.edu> <1992Mar29.045831.14523@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Oklahoma State University, Computer Science, Stillwater
Lines: 77

In article <1992Mar29.045831.14523@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <1992Mar27.231937.14949@a.cs.okstate.edu> onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu (ONSTOTT CHARLES OR) writes:
>>
>>Intelligence is not wrapped up in language(like first-principle
>>theories tracing back to Socrates)  Further, the AI appraoch thinks
>
> There is no such thing as "the AI approach".  There are many AI
>approaches.  The approach you criticize is a reasonable description of one
>of these.
  I am symapthetic to your distinction.  But you get what I mean.  


>
>>prior to language.  Now, I have maintained that language is dependent on 
>>intelligence as a genesis.  However, intelligence does not need language.
>>Further, language does not impact intelligence.  (Ie, knowing a theory
>>does not make you any smarter; however, being able to understand the
>>theory is a function of your intelligence.  A person who knows a theory
>
>  If you can't express the theory, you can't hope to understand it.  And
>many theories would be almost impossible to express without language.  You
>dismiss language far too lightly.
  Yes, but theory is something different than what I am talking about.
Theory is the collective product of language use of a phenomenological
observation.  Think of it as Karl Popper's world 3.  Theories are
dependent on language which is dependent on intelligence.  Not the
reverse.  Further, if one does NOT have a theory, it does not follow
that one does NOT understand the world in which he lives, or the activites
that he has.  However, it is true to say that a person who can not 
express a theory can not understand the THEORY--but the theory is not
the world, thus understanding of the world can be achieved without
a theory.  Afterall, we have experienced in our own lifetimes(and 
all of those before us) any number of theories; must of which are 
contradictory.  However, we live on just the same.  I suggest we live
on because we become expert, as it were, at living in some fashion or
another regardless of any theories.  Understanding of the world is not
dependent on theories.  Understanding of the world is dependent on 
intelligence. 
>
>>I have been using 'thinking'
>>in terms of 'reacting,' 'working with,' 'appropriation,' of a creature
>>and an environment in a dynamic way.  Intuition is generally beyond that
>
> This is a strange view of thinking.  Many mechanical contraptions would
>meet this description, but I doubt you would consider them to be
>thinking.
 They do not have thinking because they do not have worlds.  It requires
a world to think.  If I were to remain strictly Heideggerian, I might
have to say that only humans can think because humans are the only things
that are clearly Dasein.  However, I am trying to extend this idea
to a biological realm--phenomenologically speaking, this may be
a bad move on my part...However, you have given me something to think about.

>
>>A cockroach thinks, interms of appropriation and reacting to its 
>>environment, yet it does not appear to have a language.  Further, if
>
> In that case, I presume an amoeba also thinks, even though it evidently
>has no brain.  Your idea of "thinking" needs clarification.
It SURE DOES!

>  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>

BCnya,
  Charles O. Onstott, III

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Charles O. Onstott, III                       (onstott@a.cs.okstate.edu)
Undergraduate in Philosophy                   Oklahoma State University

"A man is a philosopher of genius only when he succeeds in transmuting 
the primitive and merely natural vision into an abstract idea belonging 
to the common stock of consciousness...The golden apples drop from the 
same tree, whether they be gathered by an imbecile locksmith's 
apprentice or by a Schopenhauer."
                                                       -- Carl G. Jung
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