From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!sdd.hp.com!wupost!gumby!destroyer!uunet!tdat!swf Wed Aug 12 16:52:28 EDT 1992
Article 6567 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!torn!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!sdd.hp.com!wupost!gumby!destroyer!uunet!tdat!swf
>From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Communication and Intelligence
Message-ID: <826@tdat.teradata.COM>
Date: 5 Aug 92 18:00:24 GMT
References: <1992Jul31.061939.16766@dirac.physics.sunysb.edu> <1992Jul31.233457.16966@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> <1992Aug4.152933.2523@sequent.com>
Sender: news@tdat.teradata.COM
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit
Lines: 46

In article <1992Aug4.152933.2523@sequent.com> bfish@sequent.com (Brett Fishburne) writes:
|In article <1992Jul31.233457.16966@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> abreu@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Abreu) writes:
|>External communication isn't important; it is ESSENTIAL. Internal
|>communication, per se, has no reason of being because there's
|>nothing to trigger it.
|
|I don't follow your reasoning.  Are you arguing that without external
|stimuli, intelligence cannot develop?  Cannot exist?  

I would say 'cannot develope'.

|Clearly the case of an autistic child is one where communication does not
|normally exist, yet, as mentioned in other posts, once communication is
|established, intelligence is found to exist.  Are you willing to take the
|position that the intelligence suddenly developed the instant that
|communication was established? 

I would tend to deny the premise that no communication was occuring prior
to establishing normal social contact with the autistic person.  It may
have been one way, or using channels other than *spoken* language, but I
would claim that *some* (perhaps limited) communication *was* taking place
all along.

Thus, in my view, this case is *not* a counter-example to the premise.
Communication occurs in just about every mammal that is not in a vegetative
coma.

|I am willing to argue that communication
|is impossible without intelligence (not vice-versa).  ...

Hmm, I would tend towards making this an 'if and only if' relationship.

|If interaction with the environment is a necessary condition for intelligence,
|then removing someone from the environment(say in a deprivation chamber) would
|also remove intelligence.

I do not think that this is the position being taken.  I suspect that the
idea is that interaction is necessary to *develope* intelligence, and to
demonstrate its existance, but not necessarily to sustain it after it forms.
(Though even there, I suspect that over time a fully sensory deprived
individual *would* tend to lose intelligence, and would eventually became
a babbling idiot - it just would not be intantaneous).
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com


