Re: Strong AI Thesis (No Chinese room, I promise)

"bob the builder" <brulsmurf@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote on 22 Mar 2006 05:1:
But there are so many neurons and so little (working)DNA.

You need to distinguish between data and architecture. The real world has a
lot of data, and clearly needs a lot of brain memory to hold it.

If you look at a piece of software, you may see a giant RDBMS, along with a
little tiny quicksort algorithm. That doesn't mean the quicksort is not
important merely because it's a small fraction of the size of the RDBMS.

The brain must be (for greater part) a generall learning device. So only a
portion is determent by DNA (a very small, but crucial part). The rest of
the development is ofloaded in its environment.

I'm curious, then, why you think that humans turn out so differently from other
large-brained animals. Great apes, dolphins, whales. Humans can learn
multiple natural languages with hundreds of thousands of words of vocabulary.
If brains are so generic, why can't other animals pick up at least one human
language, say tens of thousands of words? (Forget about speech, which may
depend on the physical throat. What about just understanding?)

A two-year-old child has far superior language skills to any adult non-human
animal. Surely the physical structure of the human brain (as encoded by DNA)
is critical.

-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ don@xxxxxxxxxx
What was sliced bread the greatest thing since?
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Evolution and Morality
    ... get wired properly in the brain of animals, ... Even some animals, like the chimps, has a sort of limited language ... Other stories I read about the language of chimps, in Nature magazine, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Is the human mind/brain special wrt animal minds/brains?
    ... language, I find the author's dichotomy between humans and animals to be ... But the reorganization of the human brain has not ... quantity has a quality all its own, but that's not what he was claiming. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Is the human mind/brain special wrt animal minds/brains?
    ... language, I find the author's dichotomy between humans and animals to be ... But the reorganization of the human brain has not ... quantity has a quality all its own, but that's not what he was claiming. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Many brain regions are used in processing language
    ... Instead, humans rely on several regions of the brain, each designed to ... language unlike any other species. ... and the word order can be interchangeable. ...
    (uk.philosophy.humanism)
  • Re: Equine Cognative ability
    ... AFAICT, only humans, think> ... In animals this is not impossible, but very difficult to get any ... animal in any Human language 'why' it did something, ... personalities exist in horses then surely this proves some form of higher ...
    (rec.equestrian)