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Article 6573 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bfish@sequent.com (Brett Fishburne)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Communication and Intelligence
Summary: Attempted Extention to Absudity
Message-ID: <1992Aug6.183619.8193@sequent.com>
Date: 6 Aug 92 18:36:19 GMT
References: <1992Jul31.233457.16966@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> <1992Aug4.152933.2523@sequent.com> <826@tdat.teradata.COM>
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In an effort to forward this discussion, I am going to make an effort to
analyze the position that intelligence is dependent on communication.  I am
doing this on the fly and would invite any responses which uphold or destroy
portions or all of the argument presented below.

THESIS: Communication has a causal relationship with Intelligence

PREMISE: The quality of the communication effects the quality of the
Intelligence

CORELLARY: Without Communication, there is no Intelligence

EXTENSION: Communication stimulates the "development" of Intelligence in
some proportion to the amount and quality of Communication.

CORELLARY: Without Communication, Intelligence degrades at some detectable
rate.

CORELLARY: Without quality Communication, Intelligence also degrades as some
detectable rate.

DEFINITION:  Communication is understood to mean interaction with the
environment as distinct from the individual.  This interaction can occur on
any level including, but not limited to, verbal, physical contact, visual
and aural.  Furthermore this interaction with the environment can be either
pasive or active.

ANALYSIS:  Throughout the process of growth and development prior to birth,
the fetus is exposed to many forms of communication.  Presumably intelligence
begins to develop as quickly as this communication can be absorbed, so there
is no child born (who can communicate) without intelligence.  But this is not
our experience, there are numerous children born who can communicate fine,
but do not exhibit intelligence in keeping with the quality of communication
which they receive.

ANALYSIS:  There are children who are born without the capability to
experience certain forms of communication (e.g. deaf).  Despite that, these
children appear to develop at the same rate as their peers.  In fact,
detection of deafness is particularly difficult in young children and both
casual and experienced observers have been surprised to learn of the deafness.
In keeping with the thesis we would expect to see corresponding deficits in
intelligence, which have not been discovered.

ANALYSIS:  One particularly notable person has lived an extemely "intelligent"
life without the benefit of the vast majority of means of communication we
enjoy.  Helen Keller (as she says in her own words later in her life) was
frustrated by her inability to communicate, but she was unquestionably
intelligent.  In fact, it is hard to believe that if she had not been _very_
intelligent, she would have understood the form of sign language that her
teacher was able to convey to her.  This method of "quality" communication
came very late in her life, but her intelligence was unquestionable amply
"developed".

ANALYSIS:  If increasing levels of communication increases intelligence, then
it would seem that when one was pondering something very complicated, one would
wish to do so in an environment which provided high levels of communicative
activity.  Despite that, scholars have always gone *away* from areas of
high communication.  Traditionally places of learning and deep thought have
been silent with a minimum of any communicative activity to allow individuals
to concentrate.  In fact, both Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison claimed that
they got their best work done late at night when noone else was around.  Once
more, this type of example seems to fly in the face of the thesis.

CONCLUSION:  It is impossible to determine whether or not "communication" of
any sort is necessary for intelligence, we simply don't have any practical
cases of no communication.  The logical extensions and corollaries which
fall from this sort of thesis, however, lead to conclusions which fly in the
face of experience.  From this analysis it seems that communication may or
may not be tied to intelligence, but while it may be a necessary condition,
it does not seem to be a causal condition.

Any thoughts?

-- Brett


