Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uupsi!grebyn!fi
From: fi@grebyn.com (Fiona Oceanstar)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Perceptron limitations...
Summary: twisty brains and twisty vines
Message-ID: <1991Apr2.182825.4500@grebyn.com>
Date: 2 Apr 91 18:28:25 GMT
References: <1991Apr2.092041.9391@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <1991Apr2.145525.11793@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Organization: Citizens Opposing the Offing of Peaks
Lines: 48

Cameron Shelley writes:
>Not only do our brains contain more than some minimum of
>neural cells, but the cells come in many kinds and similar ones tend to
>group themselves together.  The groups then tend to take on different
>functions.  This kind of diversity is apparently part of what makes
>`mind' possible.  Since the human brain is our best (understood) example
>for mind, the factor of morphological diversity should at least be taken
>into account.

It does my heart good to hear someone alluding to cells, even anatomy,
on this newsgroup.  I feel that I am not alone out here, in my puptent
in the realm of neurobiology.  And I do agree with Cameron: models that view
the brain as homogeneous, are hard for me to make heads or tails of--because
the brain is so highly structured, so complex in three dimensions.

>Slightly off topic, there is an article in a 1976 Scientific American 
>about paleoneurology.  The author suggests that since our ancestors
>had a very rudimentary sense of smell, they could not do things like
>territory marking by scent (like wolves), so they resorted to vocalizations
>(like apes do, at least when film-crews are around).  This, he claims,
>might have been our first impetus to speech and thus language.  If 
>you're going to start comparing us with lower primates, then you
>should check the paleologic work out.

'Makes me think of those experiments with vervet monkeys in Africa
(Seyfarth et al., _Science_ 210:801), where they found that vervet
monkeys give different alarm calls for different predators.  What they
did to crack the code: they taped the alarm calls and played them back at
different times, to figure out from the monkeys' reactions, the meanings
of the different "words."  They found that one call caused the monkeys
to run into the trees--that would be "leopard."  One call caused them
to look up at the sky--"eagle."  And one call caused them to look at
the ground--"snake."  They noticed that while the adult monkeys called
primarily for leopards, martial eagles, and pythons, the youngsters
were more confused in their calling behavior, giving leopard alarms to
a wide variety of mammals, eagle alarms to many birds, and snake alarms
to "snake-like objects."

Can't you just imagine it?  This little monkey looks down, sees what he
thinks is a snake on the ground, and goes "Snake! Snake!" in a loud
voice.  Then some adult comes over, checks out the situation, and
discovers that it's not a snake, just a long twisty vine.  The adult
goes over to the little guy, cuffs him around a bit, and says "Don't
say 'snake' when it's not really a snake, you dummy!"

And they say only humans have language.

							--Fiona O.