Hahaha, oh man this is beautiful!
Pokémon only say their species name
This Meowth appears to be able to converse with the trainer
Meowth* says that it is in fact only saying its name, thus behaving as all other Pokémon
*thus it is not actually a ‘Meowth’ but a species of a name that consists of every utterance it ever said or will say
If its linguistic behavior is indistinguishable from a human’s linguistic behavior, who is to say that humans aren’t also only saying their species name over the course of their lifetime?
One of the reasons this is brilliant is because “infinite utterances with finite resources” is a key tenet of human language. We (humans) can respond to unexpected situations with novel, unexpected, and unique utterances. In other words, how could every single utterance be pre-programmed into us, when (at our birth), there are words that don’t yet exist that we will use in our lifetime? Concepts we can’t imagine now? Things that don’t exist yet?
(remember this? who could have predicted this headline when you were born?)
For instance, Pokémon: Pokémon was released in 1996. If you were born before then, there would have to be a remarkable coincidence in genetics and biology for your pre-programmed linguistic behavior to include that word (as so many other people also, coincidentally, had that word programmed into them).
Unless, the universe itself is pre-programmed. Freaking out yet?
Don’t worry, quantum physics suggests that this can’t be the case (or at least is highly implausible). The universe is too unpredictable to be pre-programmed. So what does that leave us with?
If something can produce linguistic behavior (i.e., utterances) that are indistinguishably similar to humans’ linguistic behaviors, this means that it can (seemingly) respond appropriately to otherwise unexpected circumstances. After all, the endangered ferrets can be discussed, as can Pokémon, as can whatever else is going on in the news. If the universe is too unpredictable to be preprogrammed, then utterances can’t be preprogrammed in our genetic code or in our brains. Unless we’re all just very lucky all the time…?
Anyway, this is a great demonstration of how a thought experiment can help you test hypotheses about language. It’s not 100% conclusive, but it’s a good way to start thinking about how one might test a hypothesis, or what one would need to find in order to support or disprove a hypothesis.
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