[Fis] Intelligence & Meaning & The Brain

[Pedro C. Marijuan]

Dear FIS Colleagues,

Herewith the dropbox link to the Chengdu's presentation on Intelligence 
and the Information Flow (as kindly requested by Christophe and Gordana).

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wslnk41c3lquc55/AADpm_U6xuhm6jHK0esyN-29a?dl=0

About the ongoing exchanges on language and meaning, there could be some 
additional arguments to consider:

1. Evolutionary origins of language (Terry can say quite a bit about 
that). It is difficult to establish a clear stage into which well formed 
oral language would have emerged. That the basis was both gestural 
(Susan Goldin Meadow) and emotional utterances seems to be more and more 
accepted. Alarm calls for instance in some monkeys contain distinct 
sound codes that clearly imply an associated meaning on what is the 
specific predator to take care of (aerial, felines, snakes) with 
differentiated behavioral escape responses in each case. Pretty more 
complex in human protolanguages.
2. Nervous Systems functioning. The action-perception cycle in advanced 
mammals would be the engine of information processing and meaning 
generation. The advancement of the life cycle would be the source and 
sink of the communicative exchanges and the ultimate reference for 
meaning. (This connects with the info flows and intelligence of my 
presentation).
3. Human "sociotype" maintenance. As the natural social groups of humans 
grew out of proportion regarding other Anthropoidea (see Dunbar's 
number), a new form of "grooming" and group consensus was established 
around language and other emotional utterances (importance of laughter). 
Paradoxically, language's meaning becomes downsized to the level of 
small talk, just chattering to keep social bonds afloat.  The "social 
brain hypothesis" on the origins of language developed by Robin Dunbar 
and other scholars points in this direction.

In my opinion, points 1 and 3 have already appeared in this list. But 
point 2 has been very rarely discussed among us (how the brain 
fabricates meaning). So, tentatively, the next discussion session will 
deal with some of this neurodynamic stuff (in preparation yet: "The 
Topological Brain"). In the meantime, Maybe Mark would like to make some 
concluding comments in order to close the present session... Thanks are 
due to him both for his preparation-work and for his patience regarding 
all the tangents in this session!

Best wishes
--Pedro


El 16/11/2016 a las 15:51, Dai Griffiths escribió:
> Many (most?) linguistic interactions are not propositional in the 
> sense that you imply.
>
> There is no verifiable equivalent to opening the fridge door for 
> utterances like "Cool", "Give us a hand won't you", "You're welcome", 
> "Justin Bieber is wonderful", "You go and sneak in round the back 
> while I distract them at the front door", and so on.
>
> So I doubt your 'usually', and the application to natural language.
>
> Dai
>
>
> On 15/11/16 15:05, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> A model is a mathematical structure making a sentence (proposition) 
>> true or false, and this, in my opinion applies to meaning in the 
>> natural language, where usually some notion of reality is involved: 
>>  the proposition "there is two beers in the fridge" is judged 
>> meaningful because we believe in a reality with fridge containing, or 
>> not, beers.
>