Author: Stevan Harnad

No, it was not his defiant
but unmistakably wounded
words that revealed at once
what an unspeakable travesty
this all had been.

It was his consort
and coeval
shuffling out laboriously
with her walker.

Commentary on: Savage-Rumbaugh, S. (2011) Human Language — Human Consciousness On the Human. January 2011

There is much to agree with in Sue Savage-Rumbaugh’s reflections on human and nonhuman primates. Sue has probably spent more real time rearing and observing our closest hominoid cousins than any other human being has done. Bonobos are indeed astonishingly intelligent and capable, and become still more human-like when reared in daily contact with humans.

But there is one radical inference Sue makes that it will be hard for most people to agree with: Bonobos have acquired a (“kind of”) language: “the kind of language they have acquired — even if they have not manifested all major components yet — is human language as you and I speak it and know it.”

Let us reflect for a moment on languages and kinds: Humans have many kinds of languages, but there is one thing all those languages have in common: Anything you can say in one of them, you can say in any of the others. And anything and everything that can be said at all can be said in any one of them. Not necessarily in the same number of words (and you might have to define a few new ones); not necessarily equally elegantly; but anything and everything.

(Some readers may find the foregoing assertion as hard to agree with as Sue’s that bonobos have language. I suggest they test their intuitions by finding a counter-example: either a human language in which you can say this, but not that; or something you cannot say in any human language. Until someone comes up with such a counter-example, I will provisionally take it to be a true property of language — not human language, but language itself — that if you have it, you can say anything and everything that can be said [or gestured or written, as the modality need not, of course, be vocal], and if not, not.)

Neither Kanzi nor his kin or kind can say everything (or anything faintly near everything). I accordingly conclude that they cannot say anything. They can do a lot — far more than anyone ever imagined nonhuman primates could do. And what they can do includes an astonishing amount of intelligent, purposive communication with humans, using some of the same components to communicate that humans use for language: They can communicate purposively by sending and receiving computer images as well as by responding to human spoken sounds. But the undeniable fact is that — no matter how much linguistic understanding we attribute to them — they cannot enter into this “conversation” we are having in this Forum, not even into a rudimentary approximation to it, whereas any speaking human being, using any (spoken or gestural or written) language, can; even a child.

And the most likely reason for that is that bonobos cannot express or understand propositions as propositions (statements with a truth-value: true or false), otherwise they could express and understand any and every proposition; and what they do understand and express when we think they are understanding propositions is not what we think it is. The “narrative” gloss that we project on it is more like the sound-track of a silent movie — one generated by our own language-prepared brains, irresistibly “narratizing” (as Julian Jaynes dubbed it) every scene we see, but especially every communicative interaction with another mind (and sometimes even, frustrated, with malfunctioning machines). We are inadvertently projecting propositionality even where it is absent.

(This is not merely about “aboutness” in the sense Sue intends it — not just about the intended object or “referent” of attention, shared attention, pointing, gesturing, or miming; it is about making and meaning subject/predicate assertions with truth values. For that is what gives language its unbounded expressive power, allowing us to express any and every proposition. Nor does that have anything to do with “consciousness,” i.e., feelings, which bonobos, and of course most — probably all — animals have; nor with the “self/other” distinction, which many species can make, to varying degrees, in the practical, sensorimotor sense, but none but ourselves can make in the linguistic sense.)

It is hard to understand why creatures as stunningly intelligent and capable as bonobos cannot acquire language. I’d say that that inability was a more remarkable and puzzling fact — begging to be understood and explained — than even the remarkable intellectual and communicative feats that bononbos have indeed proved capable of mastering; for of course it is precisely how very much they can do that makes what they can’t do all the more perplexing: Why can’t they say anything and everything, given what they can demonstrably do, if it’s really language?

Sue’s reply is: “cultural differences”; and with Teco she’s hoping to close the cultural gap. But with any human child, the gap is closed almost immediately, in infancy, once the child acquires (any) natural language. (Some unnatural languages can be designed that defy the child’s language-learning capacities, but that’s another matter; even those artificial languages still have the full expressive power of any natural language.)

So until Teco can join this conversation, I will assume that what is going on is a good deal of hopeful, irresistible propositional over-interpretation (by humans) of some remarkable cognitive and communicative capabilities and performance (by bonobos) — but not a conversation, not propositions, and hence not language.

Harnad, S, (2010) From Sensorimotor Categories and Pantomime to Grounded Symbols and Propositions. In: Handbook of Language Evolution, Oxford University Press.

______. (2010) Symbol Grounding and the Origin of Language: From Show to Tell. In: Origins of Language. Cognitive Sciences Institute. Université du Québec à Montréal, June 2010.

Commentary on: Kobe, Joshua (2010) Do People Actually Believe In Objective Moral Truths? On the Human. December 2010

Neither logical judgments nor moral judgments would have much power if they were not underwritten by feelings. The proposition “P & not-P” is not only formally wrong, but it (usually) feels wrong. Same with the proposition “lying is wrong.” If it did not feel wrong to lie (mostly, for most people, in most circumstances), we’d probably lie a good deal more (as sociopaths do) — and information conveyed through language would become a lot less reliable: Perhaps even the adaptive value of language itself — the advantages it conferred on our ancestors: the advantages that gave birth to language (hence culture) and embedded it in our genomes and hence our brains — would have been nonexistent or insufficient if telling hadn’t been coupled with a sufficiently strong propensity toward telling the truth rather than lying (as CL Dodgson‘s Tortoise tried to explain to Achilles).

So we believe certain things are true because they feel true (not just because they are true). And we believe certain things are wrong because they feel wrong. This is not unlike the reason we like sweets (evolutionary biology’s favourite example of proximal causation): not because they raise our blood-sugar and give us energy but because they taste good. And they taste good because the tendency to seek and eat sugar was adaptive for our ancestors (when sugar was still rare: unlike now, when it is available everywhere and excess causes caries and diabetes.)

And what feels right and wrong is no doubt more influenced by our experiences and culture than it is by logic, or even by empirical evidence (another taste that is partly wired-in and partly acquired).

So it is unsurprising that our moral tastes coincide more with our own culture than someone else’s. It is also unsurprising that in hypothetical or even counterfactual mode — “Imagine extraterrestrials with feelings and practises very different from our own…” — we make different “moral judgments” on others’ behalf. It’s rather like asking “If candy tasted bitter rather than sweet, would one feel like eating it?” The prevailing feeling in such hypotheticals is the more abstract one, of formal logical consistency with the premises rather than about what you yourself find tasty.

One might have added (hypothetically) that in a hypothetical, insentient-zombie world, anything goes, morally speaking: nothing feels (hence is) wrong or right, since nothing feels like anything at all. (But universal sociopathy does not seem to be an evolutionarily stable strategy in the real world, even if behavioural propensities replace feelings.)

So much for “objective moral truths.” The rest is just about either (1) practical rules for people to agree to abide by and enforce compliance with or (2) ways to influence or manipulate people’s feelings about what’s right and wrong.

Carroll, L. (1895) What the Tortoise said to Achilles Mind 4(14): 278-280

Harnad, S, (2010) From Sensorimotor Categories and Pantomime to Grounded Symbols and Propositions. In: Handbook of Language Evolution, Oxford University Press.

________ & Scherzer, P. (2008) First, Scale Up to the Robotic Turing Test, Then Worry About Feeling. Artificial Intelligence in Medicine 44(2): 83-89

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Footnote: I am a vegan, and the image of the mutilated rabbit, which I display very reluctantly, is in no way intended to be facetious or flippant: It’s dead serious. 

Mit van mit kivánni még
Ily áldott időben? –
Adjon Isten, ami nincs,
Ez uj esztendőben…

What’s there,
This blessèd time,
To want?
May God
What’s not
This year ordain…

Arany János (1853)

Who’s there,
This blessèd time,
No more?

May God
(Who’s not)
His “gifts” retain…

Apart from not capturing the King’s English — either then or now — The King’s Speech does rather simplify and even trivialize speech defects, speech therapy, and, no doubt, George VI’s struggle. But the two principal male (and female) roles are well (if inauthentically) played. (Colin Firth mastered the royal mispronunciation of “r,” but not the Windsor accent.) Derek Jacobi, however, is simply dreadful as the A of C, and Timothy Spall’s face and facial expressions were terrible as Churchill. The anachronisms — e.g., I rather doubt that the royal family’s locution “the firm” dated as early as the 1930’s, but the urge to slip it in prevailed — are sometimes intrusive, and I’d certainly hate to be one of the portrayed parties having to view this. Nevertheless, overall, the film works.

But two obvious strategies to make the task of public speaking (and especially public broadcasting) easier for the king were never tried. And leaving us to wonder why cannot but reduce the drama of the struggle:

(1) Why insist that broadcasts be done live, rather than recorded in advance (with multiple takes and edits)?

(2) If playing loud music in headphones while reading a speech inhibited the stammer, why not use that during the speech-making, rather than only as therapy?

Hernád István (1936) Hogyan alkalmazzuk a négyász rendszert? Az eredményes licitálás kiskátéja. Az uj játékszabályokkal. A Magyar Bridzsélet Kiadása

 

Dr. Hesslein Henrik:
Eszmények és érdekek, szociológiai tanulmány.
Athenaeum, 1908.

Öt tanulmány a hitről, a történelem tanításáról, az erőről és az anyagról, az eszményekről és érdekekről.

„A természet teremtette az önzést és a szeretetet, hogy az ember elérje az öncélt és megközelíthesse a közcélt. Ezen természetes eszmei eszközök is, mint maga az ember és a lélek, természetes úton jöttek létre. Minden önfentartási és fajfentartási eszköznek, módnak, eszmének ősapja a fizikai kapcsolódás. A nehézkesség nagy törvénye és az ezen törvény alatt álló vonzás és taszítás, a rugalmasság, az összhang és az egyensúly — ezek az ősere- deti alaptörvények, egyben alapzata az emberi létnek és rendnek is. Mindezt áthatja a nagy természet csodás érdekszerűsége, melyből kisarjadzott az emberi érdek is. Az érdekszerűség magasabb szférája az eszme. Puszta eszményből nem él meg sem az egyén, sem a társadalom, a puszta érdek felfalná a társadalmat is, az egyént is. Másrészt az eszmében is van érdek, az érdekből is kiválik az eszme. Ez a kiválás nem egyéb, mint a természetes érdekszerű- ségnek az emberi életen át is kitörő fenséges evolúciója.

Hernád Henrik
Eszme és fizikum
Budapest, 1934
Kellner és Kiss
Filozófia

 

Some people
and poets
feel it
and fear it
above all else
prematurely
pre-emptively
life-long.

I didn’t.

Till you died.

Then I felt it.

But not feared it.

My fear
had already befallen.

Inside Job is a documentary film written and directed by Charles H. Ferguson. It tries to illustrate through narration and interviews how the global financial crisis of 2008 was the result of deregulation of banking and the resulting unregulated growth of “derivatives” in which bad debts are packaged together and repeatedly resold in what amounts to a massive pyramid scheme, with investment banks hedging their bets by encouraging bad loans, receiving high fees, offloading them on other lenders, and then betting that they will default.

Complicit in this are banking executives, credit rating agencies, politicians (lobbied by the extremely wealthy financial industry), presidential appointees (often former and future banking executives), corporate lawyers, and economists (often likewise drawing large consultant fees from the financial industry), greatly weakened regulatory agencies and regulatory laws, and legions of greedy, risk-prone traders.

The 2008 financial crash in Iceland is presented as a harbinger and microcosm for the phenomenon.

Reminiscent of the film The Corporation, Inside Job’s premise is that enormous incentives together with lack of controls and answerability create an industry that behaves like a sociopath, pursuing its interests relentlessly, at the expense of that vast majority of poor people who end up having paid for it.

The most worrisome conclusion is that even after the evidence of the global financial crash that such unregulated trading has induced, many of the very same people who brought it on are still in power and perpetuating the same system, despite minor cosmetic reforms, because of the undiminished resources and lobbying power of the financial industry.

The sociopathy seems to be scale-invariant: It is present at the level of the banking industry, which is not an individual sentient human being but a virtual entity created by human laws and individual human actions, at the level of individual corporations, likewise not sentient, but also at the level of sentient financial industry executives and the other individuals involved, and they appear to be genuine sociopaths, blinded by their greed and their addiction to the system that allows its uncontrolled indulgence, still perpetuating the same system without the slightest admission of guilt, remorse, or any genuine commitment to reform.

This just confirms the incommensurability between what things actually are like and what they feel like (via any sense). Why should a seen distance (or form) be “shaped” differently from a heard distance (or form)…?

The correlation between the shape of things and what we can do with them is real enough. And their felt shape certainly accompanies (and in that sense correlates with) the viewing and doing.

But (to repeat myself, with other words), apart from that, a sphere no more (nor less) “resembles” what it looks like than it resembles what it sounds like…

And the point of the “What [does it feel] like to be a bat?” question, I take it, was — or ought to have been — to highlight that incommensurability (not to try to feel the way a bat feels: I suspect that in its essential features all feeling is pretty much of a muchness: seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting are all varieties of feeling, just as seeing red vs seeing blue are; we can talk to a congenitally blind person about the world, because although he cannot see, he can feel — and of course all the rest of his correlations are intact).