Symbols v Language which is #1

The question is partly AI and partly other. Does non autonomous thought require language ?

By non autonomous I mean working something out, planning, analysing type thought. Not the "thinking" required to walk, wave hello type. Dam I hate language it is so hard to make things clear :-O)

By the way communication almost always requires a language, so if you require AI to comunicate then it will almost certainly require language. But lets consider the case where we dont require it to communicate.

Now two arguments in favour of language not being first.

1) At risk of confirming my insanity... Moi when a few years younger, read a sugestion that you could improve thinking by not naming concepts as depending on language one could only think about things that the language had names for. This I have encouraged my mind to do. It has a down side when it comes to trying to communicate my thinking though.

For example I have a concept < I call them engrams > anyway I have an engram for the ? that happens when you start to move to reach for a coffee, for the pencil , for the keyboard.

When you do this ( or maybe you dont) you can remember you made a thought to start this and then it carried on automatically, while you thought of other things. When say the phone rings, you seem to have to think for a very short time to break the reach for the coffee. And again to start ? for the phone.

The "start to reach" or whatever I have not named. Not that I drop language all together. The noise in my conciouness tends to be Hmmm when engrams occur, so it would sound like if you could partly mind read "if the hmm gets interupted, there's a hmm that stops the hmm and gets the new hmm started".

2) There is a AI/Robot experiment that was done with a robot that cruised round a small lab. It had a compass and a distance measurer, and bumper bars. This was to test the knowledge base building software, on a PC, it was in radio communication with.

It started with very little knowledge builtin. It was left to "play". It built a world veiw of the lab, of the "If this is true and I do this then this happens" kind. (Precondition, action, add+sub) After it played for a while, it stopped and built up common concepts before continuing.

Now one place in this lab had a partition close to one wall leaving a corridor. The guys noticed when looking through the knowledge it had created that it had created a concept of locations and that one "location" was if I Go east a short distance I will bump, go west a short distance I will bump.

They artificailly labelled, told the beasty, this concept was "corridor". Then they told the beasty to go corridor. The command to go somewhere, was programmed in before hand. Well more acurately Go was programmed in as "make the following true".

It worked ! It promptly went to the corridor. It had also gained enough knowledge to work out a reasonably efficient way of getting there as well.

This seems to me to be showing that the symbol for corridor came before the word. It also seems to suggest that the beasty could think, not with language but with private symbols.

Feel free to chime in

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My gut feeling says there were symbols before there were words. For what is a word other than a symbol converted into sound/dot's on a computer monitor?

In this case the word was put there by an external force. That seems like cheating. As for the robot being able to think; it all depends on how you define thinking.

btw, do you happen to know what language they used for the robot? It sounds like they used Prolog. A very cool AI-ish language.

 

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The article gave a layout for an SQL database for the knowledge. Also mentioned it was multiprocess and on a unix system ( Go linux !) . So probably not prolog.

Prolog is way cool for some things, would have been great for the Natural Language interface, and the goal finding. Not that it is perfect, try doing a low level interface to a disk drive or a FFT in prolog <VBG>.

( Creak of pandoras box opening and scream as language wars start) Now if I could add, Perl like hash arrays, a nice SQL interface and a prolog type rule based backtracking engine to C/C++ ...

Oh and an interpreter with compiled objects arrrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh.............\/

 

To Allant,
I like the topic, I unfortunately am not a programmer (or a good speller) but I wish I was.
If possible I would like to spend some time exanding the basic idea's relating to AI and Human inteligence. I had started a thread Partners in Mind in hope of learning an sharring information about these topic's.
I have a great interest in the develpent of human langauge and if understand it's key proccesses could be used in AI or in the development of more effective teaching aid's etc.
I have a few idea's in the mean time I would like someone to help me develope.
If someone out there is interested in developing what I Code name Educational Software please contact me through my thread Partners in Mind or my e-mail adress numberscripts@hotmail.com

For starters the realization that words are like object's in program performing many mental proccess so as to give meaning to it is facinating. Run= Lifting one foot at a time quickly while moving hand's too and fro etc etc. This is an example of the built in assocciations a word can have so as to give the word Run the meaning and feeling needed to make it a useful tool for communication.
It's funny how a simple word like Bud with the help of clever and humours assocciations made in Commercial's etc can grow into a powerfull communication tool.
This proccess of giving power to word's I feel my have many uses.
I also feel the more advanced a language is the more power word's it has to share amongst it's members. AI is a Power Word because so much has been achived through it and so many industrious countries use it.
So much more I would like to share,
hope to hear from you or anyone willing to share idea's etc.
Regard's,
Harry.