Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!necntc!dandelion!ulowell!hawk!sbrunnoc
From: sbrunnoc@hawk.ulowell.edu (Sean Brunnock)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology
Subject: Re: language, thought, and culture
Message-ID: <5492@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 15 Mar 88 21:37:15 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> <2920@omepd>
Sender: news@swan.ulowell.edu
Reply-To: sbrunnoc@hawk.ulowell.edu (Sean Brunnock)
Organization: University of Lowell, CS Dept.
Lines: 37

In article <2920@omepd> max@omepd.UUCP (Max G. Webb) writes:
>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...

   Stimulus->response associations cannot explain language, but my
definition of intelligence can be applied to any animal which possesses
a rudimentary form of intelligence. A broader definition is required
for human intelligence. Chomsky believed that the human brain is 
structured to generate language, but this doesn't explain the ape's
ability to learn sign language since they were never recorded to have 
used sign language of their own initiative. 


>>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"... 

>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... 

   If a person's entire frontal lobe is removed, then that person will
be reduced to the state of a chordate. In actual practice, only part
of the frontal lobe (the pre-frontal lobe) is removed. I believe that 
the sections to the fore of the lobe are where the most recent associations
were made (and hopefully the malignant ones).

Sean Brunnock
University of Lowell
sbrunnoc@hawk.cs.ulowell.edu