Separating language from biology

[A. Katz]

>Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 06:48:53 +0000
>From: Dan Everett <Dan.Everett at MAN.AC.UK>
>Subject: Re: Conceptually separating language from biology
>
>What you have just described is the Turing
>Test.

Yes, it is.

>Searle effectively showed the inadequacy of this kind of test with
>his Chinese room scenario.

Our purpose here is not to explore consciousness, but just to
determine whether language is necessarily biological.


>Ultimately, we have to understand something of
>the presence or no of the intentionality of the entity communicating, in
>order to tell whether it has semantics or just syntax.

At present, we are not able to objectively  determine
intentionality for human beings, either. The only intentions that
any individual has direct access to are his own -- by
introspection. Anyone else's intentions must be deduced from
actions or words.

When we talk to our parents, spouses, children, friends, we have no
idea of whether they possess "intentionality" or are well
contructed biological automatons. When we converse with strangers
over the net, we don't even know for sure that they are
biological.


> Using language
>alone is not enough, because, for example, AI programs can use syntax
>alone, bypassing intentionality, semantics, and consciousness.

"Using language is not enough" for what? You've just conceded the
point. Language is separate from consciousness and hence
biology.

Even if the use of the word "language" above was a slip of the
keyboard, let's argue it this way: if there's another test the AI
entity has to meet, before we can call what it does "language",
why don't we just assume that it passed? If tomorrow we
discovered a valid test for "intentionality" and our AI construct
passed that test, would you then concede that it possessed
language?

>And these,
>I believe, and Searle convincingly argues, are so far as we know only
>found in biological entities.

"As far as we know" is the key point here. I don't claim to know
different. But we ought to define our terms so that the claim
that only biological entities can possess language can be proved
or disproved. The question should not be defined away.



     --Aya Katz

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