Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!littlei!intelisc!omepd!max
From: max@omepd (Max G. Webb)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: language, thought, and culture
Message-ID: <2920@omepd>
Date: 14 Mar 88 23:41:03 GMT
References: <44@gollum.Columbia.NCR.COM> <2894@pbhyf.UUCP> <888@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <326@thirdi.UUCP> <899@bingvaxu.cc.binghamton.edu> <5776@dhw68k.cts.com> <5378@swan.ulowell.edu>
Reply-To: max@omepd.UUCP (Max G. Webb)
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro
Lines: 32
Keywords: thought modalities

In article <5378@swan.ulowell.edu> sbrunnoc@eagle.UUCP (Sean Brunnock) writes:
>   OK I'll bite. I define intelligence as the ability to make new
>Stimulus -> Response associations...

There are problems with defining 'intelligence' in those terms. As
Chomsky demonstrated a long time ago, a strictly behaviorist definition
of this kind is incapable of explaining the acquisition of competency
in a natural language. After all, a natural language contains an
_infinite set_ of stimuli. Adding S-R pairs, one at a time, will never
produce the language capability humans (and even chimpanzees) can show.

If you extend your definition to allow the addition of infinite sets
of S-R links, without specifying how this (remarkable) feat occurs,
then you haven't said much. All you will have said is that intelligence
allows a progressive modification of reactions to stimuli.

>The frontal lobe is considered to be the seat of man's intelligence.
>If you remove the frontal lobe ( a lobotomy ) from a person, then that
>person becomes "stupid".
...
> He will only be capable of Pavlovian learning
>and no more intelligent than a flatworm.

If that were the observed effect of a lobotomy, I doubt whether
the operation would have ever been done more than once. In actual fact,
a lobotomy does not reduce a person to a vegetable state. The change
is quite a bit more subtle than that. The psychopath may still hear
her/his voices, but not be moved to a frenzy by them.

>       Sean Brunnock
>       University of Lowell
>       sbrunnoc@eagle.cs.ulowell.edu