Greetings Economists, On Apr 8, 2006, at 9:37 AM, Jim Devine wrote: yes, it's a two-way street, when it works. But sometimes language fails to communicate. The exchange isn't consumated.
Doyle, I think you are reflecting upon some key elements to be paid attention to. Language at present in ordinary usage doesn't work all the time, doesn't work very well between speakers etc. Much less people who don't speak the same language. In any case though the communications tools are being built to take on kinds of work that language does. It is obvious that national broadcasts of the news is one to many, so there is no exchange on the individual level. Whereas computing tools allow a primitive of exchanges but where is the scale of production? So great parts of language work lay beyond the scope of the tools we use now. However, I think it right to say some things about language; Math is not grammatical, meaning the work done in math does not perform the same functions of work that language does. Language work despite the 'rationalist' tradition 'requires' emotion structure to work. The work process of exchange demands emotional connection hence the prosthesis developed at MIT suggests that we could build a large scale emotion structure system for everyone to address your point about how language in our present culture fails to communicate. Grammar is a work process not a genetic code. Grammar is more related to culture than to genetics. Grammar reflects how to mentally understand a work process which we then share with others via language transmission. This can then reach back to our primate ancestors to see the roots of transmission of culture. you write, I think the point of the Turing Test is that no true machine will ever pass. A "machine" that passes will be an artificial human being. me, I think that reflects the claim of AI (artificial intelligence) but the Turing Test tells us nothing about language. I can use a telephone to communicate with others in a language like way. The digital telephone can record and store the conversation and allow me to edit it for later transmission. I'm doing work to language in some parts of the demand to have the machine do language work. That just gets elaborated over time into more complex ways to do language work. What's the machine that is human like? A machine is embedded in a culture and economy. We aren't building artificial humans, any more than our chimp like ancestors were building the super chimp smart asses we call humans. They had to live, they had certain tools and the world around them provided certain options to continue or die. Over time things changed, and certain options grew and others didn't work anymore. thanks, Doyle
