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LoquaciousAntipodean t1_j3clp3v wrote

Reply to comment by d00m_sayer in Now that’s pretty significant! (By Anthropic) by MajorUnderstanding2

Well that's sort of what 'reasoning' is, right? Using one's internal language system and reference library to discourse with someone else's (compatible, mutually shared) language system and reference library?

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IonizingKoala t1_j3d9uet wrote

Language is a way of knowing, but it's not the only one. Reason, emotion, and sense perception are also ways of knowing.

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LoquaciousAntipodean t1_j3dbgqc wrote

That's true I suppose... but I see those things, 'reason, emotion and sense perception', as fundamentally arising from language, not necessarily from intelligence (with the possible exception of sense perception). Because 'intelligence' alone doesn't give a being any need to communicate, and all those evolved skills like reason and emotion are communicative in nature.

Personally I think Descartes was dead wrong when he had that special little thought; 'I think therefore I am'; that's not sound logic, it's a silly tautology. Intelligence isn't what creates language... *language* is what gives *intelligence* a reason to evolve in the first place. Intelligence doesn't arise in singular isolation - what would be the point of having it?

Evolutionary intelligence is more like the Ubuntu philosophy, '*We* think, therefore *we are*' - that's a much more realistic way of thinking of the nature of mind, in my humble opinion.

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