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Broshaq

1/21/09

Refreshing...

Regardless of your opinions about Obama, it is a great relief to no longer have a stupid, criminal thug in charge of the government.

posted by Broshaq at 9:00 AM

3 Comments:

  • The problem is actually much more more difficult than you let on. Let’s set aliens aside for a moment, and just consider two humans who do not share a common language.

    To merely say that these two people would almost certainly have to resort to non-verbal forms of communication in order to establish a basis for translation still does not even come close to conveying how incredibly unlikely it would be for them to establish translation without it. For someone to successfully guess the meaning of sounds based purely on hearing patterns of sound would have to be regarded as a miracle. Indeed, non-verabl communication forms the basis for all translation (disregarding cases where two speakers share a common third language).

    But even in this case there are problems, of the kind Quine liked to write about. So, as he famously wondered, why, when I point to a rabbit and utter a sound, should you suppose that the sound I utter means “rabbit”, as opposed to “fur”, “disembodied set of Rabbit parts”, “running”, “cute”, etc. The answer seems clear enough to us who live post “cogntive-revolution”: We share a common biological architecture that endows us with enough innate knowledge to get each other’s meaning.

    In the case of the aliens, things are much harder, since we have no reason to expect that we will have much in common biologically. Thought experiments of this kind tend to be so anthropocentric as to disregard the possiblity, perhaps probability, that an alien species would not even share any sensory modalities (sight, hearing, etc) with us. It’s possible that there are common principles of development that apply to the evolution of creatures throughout the universe and that these would provide a basis for common understanding, but there is no reason in principle why we should suppose this.

    By Blogger Tim, at 10:19 AM  

  • Sorry, wrong thread.

    By Blogger Tim, at 10:21 AM  

  • are you serious? you'd rather have a smart, criminal thug?

    By Blogger Georgianna, at 5:38 AM  

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