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Article 2143 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: harwood@umiacs.umd.edu (David Harwood)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Scaled up slug brains
Message-ID: <44970@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 15 Dec 91 20:49:03 GMT
References: <12689@pitt.UUCP> <40650@dime.cs.umass.edu> <12708@pitt.UUCP>
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In article <12708@pitt.UUCP> geb@dsl.pitt.edu (gordon e. banks) writes:

>Put it this way.  We understand the way system X(1) works.  System X(2)
>is a little bit more complex than X(1).  It is a good bet that it
>works the same way, but is just more complex.  X(3) is a bit more
>complex than X(2).  And so on until we get to humans X(n).  There
>isn't really any place where you can draw the line since as you
>look at different organisms, there seems to be a pretty smooth progression
>in complexity.  The place most people who draw lines draw it is between
>say, the chimp and man, but there are obvious problems there too.
>You want to draw it between the worm and man because there is so
>much difference there it is easy to convince yourself that the same
>principles aren't involved.  But if you draw it there, you have
>the problem of deciding at which phase of evolution this *radical*
>difference in the way nervous systems operate occurred, and why.
>Care to take a crack at this?
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	It has been very recently (within the past year) confirmed
that chimps are very similar genetically to humans - more so in some 
respects than chimps and the other two great apes.
	But consciousness and intelligence among humans is closely
related to interpretable or symbolic behavior, especially language.
There is an anatomical singularity here though - human beings, unlike
chimps and other great apes do not have vocal cords as we do, with which
to fluently make regular, complex sounds. 
	While there is some evidence that the 3 great apes can be taught
a rudimentary sign language, they do not use it very creatively so far,
although there is some indication that they gain some sense of self-
identification by using sign language and by association with humans:
eg they will appropriately "lie", also they will classify their own
photographs as being human, and not "chimp." 
	As far as that goes, it could be that our own individual and 
collective conscousness depends on the "richness" or expressiveness of 
our cultural languages of all kinds. Certainly, mankind's modern scientific
understanding is largely mathematical, and mathematical analysis depends
on writing and external memory, libraries (computers etc) because its
complexity is too great for the unaided human nervous system.
	On the other hand, there is linguistic evidence that humans
have some kind of native meta-linguistic mechanism, and have specific
neurological structures involved in very specific kinds of language
processing. (There have been a few startling discoveries very recently,
of very specific linguistic deficits, as new research programmes and
techniques are developed.)
	It has also been very recently discovered that sub-vocal internal
"speech" in fact involves motor neurons which are active in ordinary speech
production, but somehow their "output" (to the mouth and vocal cords) is
suppressed.
	The point is that although chimps and we are apparently very close
genetically and along an evolutionary "continuum" supposedly, some relatively
small variation has made for profoundly different and complex correlations of
neurology, vocal anatomy, and linguistic abilities. The evidence suggests
that human beings are what mathematician Rene Thom might call a "catastrophic"
innovation. (By the way, I wonder how many know that Alan Turing did some
mathematical work on developmental morpholy.)
D.H.


