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Article 1184 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Animal Intelligence vs Human Intelligence
Message-ID: <1991Nov1.151043.14789@news.larc.nasa.gov>
Date: 1 Nov 91 15:10:43 GMT
References: <1991Oct24.234823.7560@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com> <1991Oct30.091241.9820@cs.bham.ac.uk> <1991Nov1.060336.28229@nuscc.nus.sg>
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In article <1991Nov1.060336.28229@nuscc.nus.sg> john@mango.iss.nus.sg (John Waterworth) writes:
>The Sapir-Worf (Linguistic Relativity) hypothesis is false. Eskimos do
>not have more ways of talking about snow than we do. People with
>different languages do not inhabit different worlds. We are all in the
>same boat. Some of us are human.

   Well, Eskimos have more words to describe snow than we do.  They don't
have any more way of talking about snow, just easier ones.  I am sure that
the English language can describe different types of snow quite as well,
but it will take more words to obtain the same degree of precision.

   My vocabulary (a subset of the English language) probably has more words
to describe computer architecture than does the vocabulary of my mechanic.
I could teach him all of the words that I know, and in the process of defining
them I would be reducing them to words that he already knows, thereby teaching
him the concepts involved.  Of course, he knows a lot more about cars than I
do, and the vocabulary he uses, while limited, is specialized in this manner.

    I could teach him these concepts without teaching him the particular
words that I use, but it would be somewhat more cumbersome.  So in that sense
you are right.  But if I do so, he will probably develop shorthand words of
his own (probably unlike mine) that describe the concepts.  So in that sense,
you are wrong.
--scott


