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Joined: 04 May 2009
Posts: 301
Location: Nanjing |
 Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 8:57 am
Post subject: tapas y copitas |
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Guijarro, your li'l' black box idea is becoming an obsession!
I'm not sure what you want the box to do: produce language, or interpret language. To do either, it must be capable of both.
Language is communication. Whatever ideas you have in your head, if you do not communicate them, then I cannot know them. Uncommunicated language is silence, or a blank sheet of paper. Zen Buddhists and Paul Simon may listen to the sound of silence, but your box has to communicate 1) and 2) to you.
'Their aim may be visualized as the description of what happens inside a black box in which there is an input device through which, say, you introduce a linguistic chain, and whose two output devices state (1) whether or not this linguistic chain is well formed and (2) whether or not it has an institutionalized meaning. Period.'
'Introduce a linguistic chain'? You mean talk? Communicate with the box? What will you communicate with? Language? Now, tell me again, language and communication are not the same?
The arbiter of language is the hearer. Your box may produce language, but I have to hear it, if not, what is the point? If your box interprets language, then it will need to analyze the semantics of the input and act on that. To do that, it will have to be told the meaning of the incoming phones, and their meaning taken together. How will it get that knowledge? Perhaps you could communicate this knowledge to it, using ...... language?
The box could, I suppose, talk to itself, and tell itself, 'Yes, I am right.'
Language does not under determine sense. Spoken language is only a sequence of phones. Its only function is to ignite the great wealth of ideas which we all have as a product of our conciousness. We then align ideas with the percieved phones, according to the concepts we already have from our experience. Your box may be able to do that one day. But it would need to be able to tell me what it understood. Using language. How else could I know if it understood? Blink your little red light box. It blinks. Kiss my arse box. It blinks. Ice cream is made from seaweed. It blinks. Black is white. It blinks. The students are revolting. It blinks. There is life after death It. blinks. Tell me what you understood box. It blinks. |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Location: Cadiz (Spain) |
Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2010 12:00 pm
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It may well be an obsession!
But I use it to make some people understand a very simple idea. That, as scientific research is bound to be explicit and predictive, it must be able to obtain causal chains of a material sort that may be reproduced at will in labs or wherever. Now, this was impossible to achieve when the phenomena we wanted to understand were mental, and so, the frame that we call "Humanities" could never achieve serious scientific research results. Until ...
Until Alan Turing, a brilliant compatriot of yours, showed in the fifties of last century how we could devise an abstract machine that would simulate some of these mental processes in a materialistic and causal manner, by devising explicit algorithms that would make it possible for us to describe how the mechanism of a natural black box (i.e., the mental functioning we wanted to understand) could be. If the program we achieve does the same work as the mental function studied, then we may say that we have described the mechanism of the black box.
This may be proved scientifically by a procedure called, since then, the Turing test. A way to make candid subjects believe that they are experiencing a human mental achievement while they are in fact interacting with a Turing machine.
Of course, since cognitive science is relatively young, there is, as yet, very little scientifically accurate descriptions of that very constrained thinking. So, the goals that one attempts are necessarily very very reduced. If we have success in our thus reduced endeavour, we may use it to devise a more complex machine program, and so our knowledge will advance step by step (See end note)
As I said before, Noam Chomsky is, among other things, the founding father of cognitive science, so he tried to describe one such machine that would ONLY do what I told you it would do in my former posting. A machine (or a cognitive theory, name it as you want) which tries to simulate the native speaker's knowledge of what is a proper sentence in her language and what is not; and which also tries to simulate the native speaker's knowledge about the meaning such a linguistic string may have or not.
PERIOD
In Spanish, as you may know, we have a dictum that states no hay peor sordo que el que no quiere oir, which I'm sure may not be your case. Therefore you will hopefully understand from now on what our scientific efforts are trying to achieve. However, there is a remote possibility that perhaps you are wilfully deaf, in which case, I won't be able to go on trying to simplify my explanations as if I was talking to a ten year older.
[End note: Sperber and Wilson have built another Turing machine which, while using Chomsky's as one of its components, is able to simulate human communication in an explicit and predictive way. The machine is called Relevance Theory, in case you are interested in machines of that sort].
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JLG
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=w_oc_AqqqEk |
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Joined: 04 May 2009
Posts: 301
Location: Nanjing |
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 6:55 am
Post subject: Audífono |
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No hay mal que dure cien años , lo que ocurre es que
ahora no tengo dinero para comprarme un Audìfono. |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Location: Cadiz (Spain) |
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Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 10:09 pm
Post subject: simple things for simple minds |
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I am apparently not the only deaf person here. You may wish to review the concepts you employ in your simple plodding from what you know to what you don't.
What is explicitly predictive in a dynamic determinative chaotic system? |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 3:24 am
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Are you asking that question to me, are you?
Maybe you should try to clarify your points as I have tried to do most of the time when mine were not evident --and then, but only THEN, we may start debating about something seriously.
It's only a suggestion, of course!
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JLG
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=w_oc_AqqqEk |
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Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 3:02 am
Post subject: Clarification |
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José Luis, I know you do your best to try to clarify your point. Thank you for that. If a person doesn't accept your ideas, it doesn't necessarily follow, that that person is deaf. I'm sure Professor Chomsky doesn't want people kow-towing, but criticism.
'His only aim was to imagine a Turing Machine which would react to linguistic chains as native speakers do.'
One thing that the idea of a Turing Machine shows us is, that simple machines get complicated very fast. The total number of Turing Machines with N states is (4N + 4) to the power of 2N. The Busy Beaver solution, S(N) N=6 is of the order of 4.6 X 10 to the 1439. Considering the number of 'states' needed for language, I think the idea of a TM, or UTM for language is doubtful. You would have to crunch through (4N + 4) to the 2N machines to hope to find the one you want, then let each one run to see if it came to an acceptable conclusion. We would all be very dead long before then.
I find it difficult to grasp that language and communication are different concepts. You used language to communicate that to me. That doesn't seem like progress to me.
There are purely deterministic systems where for a given input, the output is not explicitly predictable. This is the domain of Chaos Theory. |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2010 11:49 am
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Of course we want criticism! Who said we didn't? But criticism that is to a point. You cannot criticize Chomsky for not achieving what he never tried to achieve, but only for the extent of his success in what he set out to do in the first place. This simple idea is what he found impossible to put across in that seminar of long time back in Madrid, and I am having trouble to make it clear to an intelligent person like you seem to be. Therefore, the "willing-deaf" dictum in Spanish. It is not because you criticize Chomsky, old mate, for I haven't seen you doing that feat yet!
Every researcher has, for sure, an inalienable right to decide which piece of reality (s)he wants to analyse, describe and possibly explain. If one wants to analyse the nail of the right toe, one certainly has the whole right in the world to do it! This doesn't mean that because the nail is human, one is trying to explain the human being. Now, you may well believe (and have the right to express it) that studying nails is a loss of time. That the important thing is to analyse the whole human being with all her oddities, unexpected (chaotic?) reactions, and whatnot. This is your privilege, OF COURSE! But, as I said in my former posting, the best thing for you to do is to present a series of arguments that make you approach the aim you think is most interesting, so that the rest of the World may test it and see whether it works or not.
That is: be clear on what your goal is, and be clear about how you are going to tackle this aim. And then accept the criticisms that people make on your work for the parts of your theory that don't achieve that goal in their opinion, or fall short of it.
I have told you two things:
(1) Chosmky confirmed personally that he had a very limited goal in his linguistic theory. Devise a theory that would be able to predict what stretches of words (a) had meaning and (b) were well construed.
(2) Sperber & Wilson who found that aim successfully achieved by Chomsky, believed that it could be integrated in a wider theory that interested them a lot more, namely, a theory that would analyse, describe and explain how humans communicate. And they set out to achieve that wider goal themselves.
Where the heck is the problem here for you? If you tell me that Chosmky's theory does not account for, say, "He danced his didn'ts" as the poet Cummings has written, then go ahead, criticise it BECAUSE of that! and we will able to argue seriously on that point. If, on the other hand, you find that S&W's theory does not explain how we understand that "John has always been very intelligent" said in a sarcastic tone has a different sense than the one we extract by applying the semantic algorithm of the Englsih language, then go on, and criticise it and we will have a real topic of discussion here.
But, if you want to stay relevant, don't go wide off the mark by telling me about chaotic systems and the like, for, (1) chaos may only mean that we don't have the necessary knowledge to describe and explain some phenomena, and (2) it doesn't belong to the discussion going on, unless you introduce it relevantly at some point of it, but not as if it were a rabbit that you take off your hat, whooops! ... like that.
So, to start again: what in the world are we debating about?
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JLG
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=w_oc_AqqqEk |
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Joined: 04 May 2009
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Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 7:28 am
Post subject: Contentious |
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From my point of view, I fail to see that language is not communication . Perhaps you would like to elaborate.
Maybe you think language and communication are like fm radio? There are radio waves and then modulations of the wave? |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 12:51 pm
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Let me ask your question from another view point:
How do you think that computer LANGUAGES are the same as COMMUNICATION?
Those languages, as you might know, are formalising devices that transform external information into a manageable tool with which we may store that information, retrieve it when needed and manipulate it. They have nothing whatsoever to do with communication. Well, human language, for some of us, is a mental equivalent of those machine languages.
Communication, on the other hand has been represented, since Shannon & Weaver, at least, as a coding-decoding model. This model is widely distributed in our culture --which is why you cannot visualize the distinction between language and communication. Don't bother, many other people have your same problem. This coding-decoding model was a metaphor of the telegraph. Nowadays, we have computers to attempt a better metaphor.
Communication is, for, us a process whereby we make our private mental representations manifest by using many indices at our disposal, one of them being our human language.
I hope this is clear enough. In any case, to have a deeper understanding, try to type RELEVANCE THEORY+ SPERBER&WILSON in your computer and Google will give you wide accounts of the theory in which some of us work and find ourselves at ease. You don't have to accept it right away, of course. But I can assure you that it is nowadays a very widely accepted view of the communicative processes in which languages are used. It is widely used for a good reason: it solves lots of unsolved problems in the old communication=language paradigm.
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JLG
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=w_oc_AqqqEk |
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Joined: 04 May 2009
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Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2010 8:24 pm
Post subject: language |
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Computer language is very illustrative here. In computer jargon we have 'hardware' and 'software'.
What is hardware? The computer, the motherboard, the drives, the memory chips, the processor.
What then is software? The CD a program comes on? No, this is hardware. The indents on the CD which the laser reads? No this is just the morphology of the CD. The magnetic clusters on the hard drives? No, that is a physical state of a magnetic disc. Nor yet is software the state of the RAM or registers.
The program is written in whatever 'language', assembler, C, Python. But it is then just text on a screen, or indents on a CD.
My point being, software is the idea someone had. The computer just adds 11 + 11 and gets 110. The interaction of the software and the hardware produces results. On its own the computer just waits. On its own the software does nothing.
If you try divorce language from communication, it is tantamount to saying: the CD is the software. |
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Joined: 30 Aug 2009
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Location: U.S. |
Posted: Sun Feb 07, 2010 9:10 pm
Post subject: Re: language |
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Pedroski wrote:
My point being, software is the idea someone had.
I have no idea what you are saying, since you completely fail to attempt to define software. What is software, to you?
Quote:
If you try divorce language from communication, it is tantamount to saying: the CD is the software.
I disagree. Why do you think so, other than your difficult to understand computer analogy? |
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Joined: 21 Jul 2008
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 4:07 am
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Following the analogy, human brains achieved by long evolution would correspond to hardware; minds, on the other hand, would correspond to software. Now, this software, in order to work, needs a program which processes incoming information, i.e., which transforms stimuli into formal objects which, then, may be stored, retrieved and manipulated. This particular device is what we know as language.
What is so darned difficult to understand?
I repeat, you may not like the idea, and you may prefer to stick to the old (for me) misconception that language and communication are the two faces of the same coin. There are thousand million people who still think that.
Fair enough.
But I don't.
For me (and for some other people who have very similar representations about this matter):
LANGUAGE 1 (Spanish, Lenguaje): the mental way to formalise stimuli into manegeable information that may be stored, retrieved and manipulated
LANGUAGE 2 (Spanish, Lengua): the evolutionary end-result of the original synthesis L1+Communicative behaviour which somehow makes human to process incoming (through communication) linguistic data in an authomatised way to achieve a structural sieve through which bebaies acquire ther native LANGUAGE 3 (Spanish: idioma), a tool that, along with other indices helps the human being to achieve communicative acts with some sort of success.
COMMUNICATION: a process by which we make manifest to others some of our mental states by using ALWAYS many kind of indices which are to be derived by mental operations called inferences, and very often, but not always, using L3 (which has to be decoded) as a very useful tool to achieve more accuracy.
Succinctly put, this is my own representation of this matter. I admit that my distinction of three languages comes from my own idiomatic background, Spanish, which, in this case, allows for a better observational accuracy than your only term in English.
However, this is not a dogma. You may disagree totally with it, but I am afraid that, after working within that frame for more than thirty years now, you will have to find better and stronger arguments than those you have used until now to make me even think of changing it.
Such is life!
_________________
JLG
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=w_oc_AqqqEk
Last edited by Guijarro on Tue Feb 09, 2010 4:25 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Joined: 04 May 2009
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Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:21 am
Post subject: communication |
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I did define software: it is the idea. Anything else can be touched, and is as a consequence hardware.
Language is the idea. Words are representations of ideas. Formalized vocal or written symbols to represent an idea (semants? Cool new word!). They vary from language to language, but the ideas remain the same. The larger ideas we have are expressed as a concatenation of these small ideas. Any instance of language is an instance of communication. (Claro con mas o menos éxito). In our heads we just have ideas.
Tell me 'language is not communication', and you will have contradicted yourself by communicating that to me.
Or put another way: dead brains don't talk. Whatever is stored in them! No software! |
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Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 4:01 am
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A) Human Language 1:
The structured set of mental representations
B) Mental representations:
(1) Analogous (have something in common with the objects they represent). Also named "images", but not only visual. The taste of gazpacho, the scent of the cherry blossom, the touch of your mother's hand, etc.
(2) Digital (have nothing in common with the objects they represent). Also named "propositions".
According to Levelt, in order to use the linguistic tool while communicating, we must be able to transform analogous representations into digital ones.
C) Communication: the process by which one makes private mental representations public by using some sort of behaviour:
Examples:
a) You ask me why I didn't show up yesterday. I take an aspirin bottle from my pocket and make a funny face. You inference that I was ill, had a headache, etc. No language 3 used, but communication achieved.
b) John and Mary go to the mountains of Grazalema after a long week of hard work at the office. John opens the window and ostensively mayes a deep inhalation. Mary inferences rightly that John is communicating his feeling of happiness. No language 3 used, but communication achieved.
c) John and Mary go to a party. When getting home and opening the door, Mary makes ostensively a deep inhalation. This, together with the strong gas odour coming out of their home, communicates inferentially that there is a gas problem ahead. No language 3 used, but communication achieved.
d) We are in an exam. I try to cheat by opening a book under the table. You say: "don't do that!". Language 3 used, which under-determines your message. This has to be interpreted by inference computing the context and the expression. It would be different if you would have said the same expression in a hospital when i produced a cigarette and tried to smoke it.
And so on ...
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JLG
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=w_oc_AqqqEk |
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