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From: curry@hpl.hp.com (Bo Curry)
Subject: Re: What's innate? (Was Re: Artificial Neural Networks and Cognition
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Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 20:25:11 GMT
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: In <D3swMp.Luz@hpl.hp.com> curry@hpl.hp.com (me) writes:
: >                           Can we agree on some terminology?
: >I'd like to talk about "semantic knowledge", by which I mean
: >knowledge of the sort which can be expressed in language
: >(as opposed to, say, knowledge of how strawberries taste,
: >or of how to ride a bicycle),

Neil Rickert (rickert@cs.niu.edu) wrote:
: Although much knowledge can be expressed in language, that does not
: imply that there are no other possible forms of expression, nor does
: it necessarily imply that the internal representation of the
: knowledge is directly connected with language.

I don't dispute this.

: >                              and about "linquistic knowledge",
: >by which I mean knowledge of the structures, customs,
: >and vocabularies of the language itself.

: >So dogs, presumably, have neither "semantic" nor "linguistic"
: >knowledge, though they have knowledge of other sorts.

: It is not clear that dogs do not have "semantic" knowledge, as you
: have defined it.  That is, they may well have some knowledge which is
: such that we would express it in language.  Of course the dog cannot
: express it in language.

They *might* have such knowledge, but it certainly isn't obvious
to me that they do. I am skeptical.

: >But if you express some idea involving rivers, beaches, etc, using
: >language, you have to impose some structure on your utterance.
: >That structure *is* the syntax, or grammar, of the language.
: >It may reflect deeper structures in the underlying knowledge
: >representation, or it may not. This is an empirical question.

: I think you have a strange meaning for "grammar".  Presumably a dog
: is aware of the relation between swimming, getting wet, and jumping
: into the river.  Thus there is likely to be a corresponding
: structuring of the dog's knowledge.  But the dog has no language.
: Why does the dog need a grammar if it has no language?

Again, the structuring of the *knowledge* is distinct from the
structuring of *utterances* which express that knowledge. The
dog lacks the latter, hence "grammar". And I am skeptical that the
dog organizes knowledge in a way very similar to ours.

: >But those are all grammatical ambiguities, which I don't deny.
: >The point is that the declarative forms "I saw John and Mary" and
: >"I saw John with Mary" have, in many contexts, precisely the
: >same meaning.

: That is absurd.  The meanings are not nearly the same.  Using "and",
: John and Mary are treated equally, while using "with" there is and
: unequal importance.  The use of "and" does not imply that John and
: Mary were together, but "with" does carry such an implication.

Nonsense. As for the latter nit, I could say "I saw John and Mary
together", which is also non-invertible. The sentence "I saw John with
Mary" is perfectly symmetrical. If you can see a difference in
meaning among "I saw John with Mary", "I saw Mary with John",
and "I saw John and Mary together", then it's a subtle one, indeed.

: >                                        The fact that I can
: >invert one, and not the other, is a fact about the syntactical
: >roles of "with" and "and", not about their semantic roles.

: No.  It is about the very clear semantic differences.

I stand by my statement. I see no "very clear semantic differences".

Bo
