Matt said: Why do we _need_ the idea of an "idea" that's distinct from words?
"why do we have two immaterial objects in our mind, linguistic concepts and prelinguistic ideas?" Ron: Hello Matt, I had just said to Krimel yesterday about how intellectual distinction was illustrated well in Moravec's Paradox. As Moravec writes: "it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility." Moravec also wrote "computers are at their worst trying to do the things most natural to humans." "Encoded in the large, highly evolved sensory and motor portions of the human brain is a billion years of experience about the nature of the world and how to survive in it. The deliberate process we call reasoning is, I believe, the thinnest veneer of human thought, effective only because it is supported by this much older and much powerful, though usually unconscious, sensorimotor knowledge. We are all prodigious olympians in perceptual and motor areas, so good that we make the difficult look easy. Abstract thought, though, is a new trick, perhaps less than 100 thousand years old. We have not yet mastered it. It is not all that intrinsically difficult; it just seems so when we do it." Ron: These problems AI scientists are running into shed some light on the issue Of the origin of thought. Matt said: Why do we _need_ the idea of an "idea" that's distinct from words? Ron: Words bring with them grammar and this grammar becomes The structure of thought. We as Pirsigians need the idea of an idea, distinct from words Because it is one of MoQ's metaphysical pillars that this distinction Exists as SOM in our culture. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
