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Article 6587 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Communication and Intelligence
Message-ID: <BILL.92Aug10101125@ca3.nsma.arizona.edu>
Date: 10 Aug 92 17:11:25 GMT
References: <1992Aug6.173825.31310@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992Aug6.185819.9079@sequent.com>
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	<1992Aug10.133447.6855@sequent.com>
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In-Reply-To: bfish@sequent.com's message of 10 Aug 92 13: 34:47 GMT

bfish@sequent.com (Brett Fishburne) writes:

   > 2)  In this scenerio, what is _not_ communication?  It seems like
   > I can  interpret virtually anything that happens anywhere as
   > communication.  If that is true, is the ensuing definition of
   > communication really a definition? 

In information theory, "communication" occurs whenever you have two
systems -- a "sender" and a "receiver" -- and the state of the
receiver is not statistically independent from the state of the
sender. 

Of course, this definition doesn't capture the complexity of human
communication, and says nothing about intelligence or consciousness or
mentality, but it's useful nevertheless.

	-- Bill


