Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!rochester!sol!yamauchi From: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Language and Self-Awareness (was Re: Testing Intelligence) Message-ID: Date: 1 Dec 90 19:55:15 GMT References: <4832@gara.une.oz.au> <1990Nov30.180650.26648@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Sender: news@cs.rochester.edu (Usenet news) Organization: University of Rochester Lines: 75 In-Reply-To: greenba@gambia.crd.ge.com's message of 30 Nov 90 20:49:38 GMT In article greenba@gambia.crd.ge.com (ben a green) writes: In article <1990Nov30.180650.26648@watdragon.waterloo.edu> cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley) writes: In article greenba@gambia.crd.ge.com (ben a green) writes: > ... >reasoning and self awareness in any >non-trivial senses require language. > How do you figure that? Do you mean a mental language? If so, what do you consider 'mentalese' to be like? No, not a mental language. An actual, socially derived language. What is reasoning without talking to oneself, or actually writing to oneself? We do this all the time when reasoning with tough problems. Now cats can solve tough problems, but there is no way to classify their performance as reasoning beyond just the statement that they solve the problems. When we humans reason, we clearly use language. For some forms of reasoning, in particular formal deductive reasoning, this is certainly true. However, other types of problem solving (such as spatial reasoning) seem to involve visual simulations (imagery) rather than language. One psychological experiment involved mental rotation of three-dimensional shapes to determine whether two shapes were equivalent, and the results indicated that the time required was proportional to the number of axes necessary to rotate one of the shapes into a similar orientation as the other. (Sorry, I don't remember the reference.) More generally (and intuitively), many types of problem solving behavior seem to involve visualizing the effects of actions rather than performing logical/linguistic inference. On the other hand, I would agree that an organism which can perform logical reasoning can solve many problems which cannot be solved by imagery alone. Self awareness is more subtle and perhaps here I am relying on an unpopular position that self awareness is learned by interacting with other people. I would argue that self-awareness is learned through interacting with one's environment -- regardless of whether that environment includes people. At the most basic level, one learns that one can directly control the actions of his body (but not the rest of the world) through his thoughts. This strikes me as the core of the separation between self and non-self. Any control over the "non-self" world requires intermediate use of the body. This can include both sensorimotor activities and social communication. You could look at the difference between these forms of interaction in terms of the length of the chain between thought and effect on the world. Self: mind --> body Direct Action: mind --> body --> world Communication: mind --> body --> other people --> world Furthermore, tactile and force sensing are directly related to sensors on the surface of body, and this (combined with the linkage of tactile/force sensing to pleasure and pain) would serve to reinforce the separation between self and non-self (i.e. hit the table with the hammer and you don't feel much -- hit your foot with the hammer and it hurts!) -- _______________________________________________________________________________ Brian Yamauchi University of Rochester yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu Computer Science Department _______________________________________________________________________________