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中觀學思想傳統中的語言觀 Language in the Traditions of Madhyamaka Thought

http://tac.hfu.edu.tw/actnews/actnews.php?Sn=2

Susan Savage-Rumbaugh on apes

Ted Talks | Susan Savage-Rumbaugh on apes

#Susan Savage-Rumbaugh #ape #ape language #language

Early Attempts into Ape Language

The fascination with the idea that apes might be able to become human if they acquired a human language compelled early students of behavior to try to determine whether or not apes could, in fact, acquire language. In 1909, Lightner Witmer a behavioral psychologist observed that a zoo performing chimpanzee learned to produce the word “mama.” By working with this ape, Witmer found he could easily teach it to produce a “pa” sound. Witmer speculated that psychologists of the future should be able to make far more progress. In 1912, the novel Tarzan of the Apes appeared and the idea that humans might learn to talk to apes, if exposed early in life, began to settle into our national psyche, even though it was understood that the Tarzan story was a myth.

It was into this environment of questions that the study of ape language moved forward. At first, the questions were straight forward — could apes live in a human family and would they adopt human traits, possibly even language? The following article summarizes some of the early studies that attempted to answer that question. Today, however, the questions being faced by the scientists of Great Ape Trust are exceedingly complex.

The stories of Gua, Viki, and Washoe show the role of environment, particularly psychological environment, in the development of an individual’s inherent abilities.

#ape language #language #Gua #Viki #Washoe #ape #Sue Savage-Rumbaugh #Great Ape Trust

Lewis vs. Davidson on convention

David Lewis ("Languages and Language"):

It is a platitude--something only a philosopher would dream of denying--that there are conventions of language, although we do not find it easy to say what those conventions are.

Donald Davidson ("Communication and Convention"):

No doubt what Lewis has in mind is the idea that the connection between words and what they mean is conventional. And perhaps only a philosopher would deny this; but if so the reason may be that only a philosopher would say it in the first place.

#Lewis #Davidson

Monkey Business: Can Capuchins Understand Money? Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt. The New York Times Magazine, June 5th, 2005.

When taught to use money, a group of capuchin monkeys responded quite rationally to simple incentives; responded irrationally to risky gambles; failed to save; stole when they could; used money for food and, on occasion, sex.

#monkey #money #behavioral economics

Remembrances of Times East Absolute Spatial Representations of Time in an Australian Aboriginal Community

Boroditsky, L. & Gaby, A. (2010). Remembrances of Times East: Absolute Spatial Representations of Time in an Australian Aboriginal Community. Psychological Science. doi:10.1177/0956797610386621

Abstract

How do people think about time? Here we describe representations of time in Pormpuraaw, a remote Australian Aboriginal community. Pormpuraawans’ representations of time differ strikingly from all others documented to date. Previously, people have been shown to represent time spatially from left to right or right to left, or from front to back or back to front. All of these representations are with respect to the body. Pormpuraawans instead arrange time according to cardinal directions: east to west. That is, time flows from left to right when one is facing south, from right to left when one is facing north, toward the body when one is facing east, and away from the body when one is facing west. These findings reveal a qualitatively different set of representations of time, with time organized in a coordinate frame that is independent from others reported previously. The results demonstrate that conceptions of even such fundamental domains as time can differ dramatically across cultures.

#Pormpuraaw #language

Does Languages Influence Culture?

Boroditsk, Lera. Lost in Translation. WSJ. JULY 23, 2010.

Some findings on how language can affect thinking.

Russian speakers, who have more words for light and dark blues, are better able to visually discriminate shades of blue.

Some indigenous tribes say north, south, east and west, rather than left and right, and as a consequence have great spatial orientation.

The Piraha, whose language eschews number words in favor of terms like few and many, are not able to keep track of exact quantities.

In one study, Spanish and Japanese speakers couldn't remember the agents of accidental events as adeptly as English speakers could. Why? In Spanish and Japanese, the agent of causality is dropped. [Japanese and Spanish language speakers would likely say "the vase broke" or "the vase was broken" when talking about an accident.]

#Piraha #language

We May Be Born With an Urge to Help (By NICHOLAS WADE, New York Times, November 30, 2009)

What is the essence of human nature? Flawed, say many theologians. Vicious and addicted to warfare, wrote Hobbes. Selfish and in need of considerable improvement, think many parents.

But biologists are beginning to form a generally sunnier view of humankind. Their conclusions are derived in part from testing very young children, and partly from comparing human children with those of chimpanzees, hoping that the differences will point to what is distinctively human.

Pyers, Jennie E. and Ann Senghas. "Language Promotes False-Belief Understanding: Evidence From Learners of a New Sign Language." Psychol Sci. 20, 7 (2009): 805–812.

ABSTRACT

Developmental studies have identified a strong correlation in the timing of language development and false-belief understanding. However, the nature of this relationship remains unresolved. Does language promote false-belief understanding, or does it merely facilitate development that could occur independently, albeit on a delayed timescale? We examined language development and false-belief understanding in deaf learners of an emerging sign language in Nicaragua. The use of mental-state vocabulary and performance on a low-verbal false-belief task were assessed, over 2 years, in adult and adolescent users of Nicaraguan Sign Language. Results show that those adults who acquired a nascent form of the language during childhood produce few mental-state signs and fail to exhibit false-belief understanding. Furthermore, those whose language developed over the period of the study correspondingly developed in false-belief understanding. Thus, language learning, over and above social experience, drives the development of a mature theory of mind.

#Nicaraguan Sign Language #false belief test

Wilhelm von Humboldt (On Language, 46):

Language is, as it were, the outer appearance of the spirit of a people; the language is their spirit and the spirit their language; we can never think of them sufficiently as identical... [we] must seek the nature of this individuality in every case in its structure.

#Humboldt #language #structure

How to Train Your Robot (to Lie)

The first step wasn't teaching the robots how to lie, but when to lie. Computer scientists Alan Wagner and Ronald Arkin of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta came up with an algorithm that set two conditions: First, a robot had to be in conflict with someone or something else. And second, it had to be able to influence its adversary's actions. If both conditions checked out, the robot was cleared to lie.

#AI

An example of definition based on pragmatic concerns: IAU definition of planet

Putnam's notion of the division of linguistic labor? Experts decide the definition of planets by voting. Isn't it an arbitrary way to make the decision?

#definition of planet #division of linguistic labor #reference

TIME magazine features Kanzi and Great Ape Trust’s scientific research (with related resources)

#Kanzi

Greg J. Stephens, Lauren J. Silbert, and Uri Hasson. "Speaker–Listener Neural Coupling Underlies Successful Communication." PNAS 107 (2010): 14425-30.

ABSTRACT

Verbal communication is a joint activity; however, speech production and comprehension have primarily been analyzed as independent processes within the boundaries of individual brains. Here, we applied fMRI to record brain activity from both speakers and listeners during natural verbal communication. We used the speaker's spatiotemporal brain activity to model listeners’ brain activity and found that the speaker's activity is spatially and temporally coupled with the listener's activity. This coupling vanishes when participants fail to communicate. Moreover, though on average the listener's brain activity mirrors the speaker's activity with a delay, we also find areas that exhibit predictive anticipatory responses. We connected the extent of neural coupling to a quantitative measure of story comprehension and find that the greater the anticipatory speaker–listener coupling, the greater the understanding. We argue that the observed alignment of production- and comprehension-based processes serves as a mechanism by which brains convey information.

#communication

The Week in Dognitive Science: Kanzi, Marc Hauser, and Charlie Rose by Lee Charles Kelley

#Kanzi #Marc Hauser

Senghas, Ann. "Where did Nicaraguan Sign Language come from?"

If you have learned Nicaraguan Sign Language, you have probably noticed that its structure is very different from Spanish. Sentences have different words, and they are put together in a different order. That’s because the structure didn’t come from Spanish. In fact, most of the deaf children and adolescents, as they created Nicaraguan Sign Language, didn’t have enough access to Spanish to learn it fluently. They couldn’t hear it, and they had difficulty understanding their parents and teachers.

Nicaraguan Sign Language is also quite different from sign languages from other countries, like Swedish Sign Language or American Sign Language or even Costa Rican Sign Language. Some signs in Nicaraguan Sign Language come from these other languages, just as some words in Spanish come from English and vice versa. It is easy for languages with occasional contact to share words. But, as anyone who has learned a foreign language knows, it takes a lot of study and practice with native speakers to learn the grammar of a language from somewhere far away. So the structure of this new language didn’t come from far away; it came from the minds of the children and adolescents who were right here, in Nicaragua.

#Nicaraguan Sign Language

Donald Davidson: truth, meaning, and knowledge

Author: Urszula M Żegleń Publisher: London; New York: Routledge, 1999. ISBN: 0415189047

TABLE OF CONTENT

Introduction to reading Davidson / Kirk Ludwig and Urszula M. Żegleń --

Is truth a goal of inquiry? Discussion with Rorty / Donald Davidson --

Davidson on deflationism / Paul Horwich --

Theories of meaning, truth and interpretation / Kirk Ludwig --

Reply to Kirk Ludwig / Donald Davidson --

How a truth theory can do duty as a theory of meaning / Gabriel Segal --

Reply to Gabriel Segal / Donald Davidson --

Radical interpretation and compositional structure / Peter Pagin --

Reply to Peter Pagin / Donald Davidson --

From semantics to ontology, via truth, reference and quantification / Stephen Neale --

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