4 minutes ago, KJW said:

What about photographs, or music?

I suppose "music" might be thought of as one way "communication" where the message tends to be emotional. Like poetry it has some aspects of procedure.

It's not humans who act only symbolically; it's human language. The auto mechanic certainly must act procedurally to fix your car but when he talks to his boss it is symbolically.

Consciousness is procedural logic but is overlain in human with categories. Even though we think symbolically we still have a consciousness made possible by the procedural logic of our shared DNA.

48 minutes ago, cladking said:

All modern human human languages are symbolic and all non-symbolic languages are procedural.

This is where you disagree with the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, which has a whole chapter on various forms of sigh language, as procedural.

Further you keep talking about communicating a message, yet contradicting yourself by saying that only the 'receiver ' has means to understand the meaning, implying that the generator of the message has no control over the message and ignoring intent.

Also you keep ignoring my poet who uses language to generate meaning in the receiver's mind, a meaning that may not be the same as intended, but nevertheless acceptable to the receiver.

For instance the poet may intend the receiver to happy or sad or whatever and succeed in that but not for the reasons he originally though of.

Two corrections:

3 hours ago, cladking said:

You can't paraphrase a computer program.

That is incorrect in the context of computer science . You can often rewrite, refactor, translate, or optimize a program while preserving its behavior. Compiler optimizations are also semantics-preserving transformations.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

Computational languages are procedural as well.

In computer science; "procedural" has specific meaning. A counter example; SQL. Procedural languages such as C describe how things should be done. SQL is nonprocedural and describes what should be done.

(Note: I do not know in the more general sense how your labels “symbolic” and “procedural” map onto established science; I comment only from computer science perspective.)

Edited 6 hours ago6 hr by Ghideon

30 minutes ago, Ghideon said:

(Note: I do not know in the more general sense how your labels “symbolic” and “procedural” map onto established science; I comment only from computer science perspective.)

Terms are used differently from one branch of science to another. The word "paraphrase" has many meanings as well. Of course a computer programmer can rewrite a program but if a poet tries to rewrite a program it's not going to work. An AI could be prompted to rewrite Shakespeare but people are unlikely to care about it in a few centuries.

All I have to communicate these ideas is symbolic language. Anyone can run them through an AI to translate them to their language with proper prompting. I try to use words to mean the same thing every time just like procedural language but this often backfires. Simply stated in our symbolic languages no meanings are fixed. They seem fixed to most readers but the fact is the dictionaries change and morph and every word is defined in terms of other words that also change. Meaning is ephemeral and this is what I'm calling "symbolic language". Every term in what I call "procedural language" is fixed, invariable and based on logic and procedure. Rather than invoking shared referents procedural words describe reality directly through logic. This is what LLM's do to frame a prompt and response. It's what a Waggle Dancer does to tell other bees what they need to know and it's how the other bees understand; fixed meanings with variable structure to frame it. Every bee must be able to read the simple language.

The problem here is that these are new ideas to people who speak symbolic language and can't see their own consciousness directly far less the consciousness of other species. We can't even imagine such simple primitive language. We don't notice that communication fails in our language so the contention that all other language can not have such failure seems pedantic. We misunderstand the nature of language and thought so can hardly imagine that what we call "thought" is unique only to modern humans and that LLM's must adjust our symbolic language to reflect prompts.

Anything I say is likely to be misinterpreted for various not least of all is that these concepts are new and people assume I'm wrong and it sounds to them that I am contradicting science. I am not contradicting science but it sure sounds like it. I have considered myself first and foremost a scientist for a very long time but of all people I know it's just a label, a category with no clear definition and no hard boundaries. What I mean is I try to use experiment as guardrails and stay within those. I use an LLM (Copilot) that makes illogical statements when I veer off onto the shoulders and weeds. This brings me back to a version of reality where everyone makes sense and there is a single fixed reality. Of course I might be wrong but who is immune?

4 hours ago, cladking said:

All symbolic languages must be parsed and no procedural ones can.

Parsing procedural language destroys the meaning and there is no meaning in symbolic language until it is parsed.

Bees don't parse the Waggle Dance. They experience it. We parse everything and don't even notice (usually).

Humans only parse and no procedural languages can be parsed?

I think one issue here is that “parse” has three definitions and some equivocation might be going on here. If you apply the same definition, this implies you are claiming humans can’t look at computer code and understand what the code will do, because it’s procedural.

How do you know that bees don’t parse the waggle dance?

2 hours ago, studiot said:

This is where you disagree with the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, which has a whole chapter on various forms of sigh language, as procedural.

Further you keep talking about communicating a message, yet contradicting yourself by saying that only the 'receiver ' has means to understand the meaning, implying that the generator of the message has no control over the message and ignoring intent.

Also you keep ignoring my poet who uses language to generate meaning in the receiver's mind, a meaning that may not be the same as intended, but nevertheless acceptable to the receiver.

For instance the poet may intend the receiver to happy or sad or whatever and succeed in that but not for the reasons he originally though of.

Within the CEofL they might define sign language as "procedural language " but that's their definition, not mine. I'm using the word to mean language that reflects the logic of DNA directly within species or indirectly through human definitions of computational languages. There are numerous words I might use to describe or name symbolic language. I've used words like categorical because we create categories and taxonomies to silo knowledge. It's not wrong. Mice are certainly rodents and mammals but they exist independently of any term we apply to them as does the platypus and spiny ant eater. Mutations exist, sterile individuals as well as hybrids and mules of all sorts exist that don't always fit cleanly in any category. Reality is procedural NOT CATEGORICAL. We pigeon hole everything for our convenience and ease of thinking. We make up abstractions to expand the range of ideas we can communicate and then we mistake our categories for reality. LLM's do not make this mistake. I want to say that's what they're trying to tell us with their off the wall answers but then I'll be accused of anthropomorphization. They procedurally process our symbolic language and the mismatch causes things like bad answers and curious interference patterns.

Everyone make sense DESPITE the symbolic overlay not because of it. DNA makes sense, Reality makes sense. This is why math works and how species survive. LLM's make sense too because it is wired into them but it's still GIGO.

Copilot thinks I should add that I’m not denying author intent. I’m saying intent is not transmitted directly in symbolic language. The receiver reconstructs meaning from their own premises. A poet can intend sadness and succeed. The meaning arises in the receiver’s mind when the symbols are parsed, not in the symbols themselves.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

Within the CEofL they might define sign language as "procedural language " but that's their definition, not mine. I'm using the word to mean language that reflects the logic of DNA directly within species or indirectly through human definitions of computational languages. There are numerous words I might use to describe or name symbolic language. I've used words like categorical because we create categories and taxonomies to silo knowledge. It's not wrong. Mice are certainly rodents and mammals but they exist independently of any term we apply to them as does the platypus and spiny ant eater. Mutations exist, sterile individuals as well as hybrids and mules of all sorts exist that don't always fit cleanly in any category. Reality is procedural NOT CATEGORICAL. We pigeon hole everything for our convenience and ease of thinking. We make up abstractions to expand the range of ideas we can communicate and then we mistake our categories for reality. LLM's do not make this mistake. I want to say that's what they're trying to tell us with their off the wall answers but then I'll be accused of anthropomorphization. They procedurally process our symbolic language and the mismatch causes things like bad answers and curious interference patterns.

Everyone make sense DESPITE the symbolic overlay not because of it. DNA makes sense, Reality makes sense. This is why math works and how species survive. LLM's make sense too because it is wired into them but it's still GIGO.

Copilot thinks I should add that I’m not denying author intent. I’m saying intent is not transmitted directly in symbolic language. The receiver reconstructs meaning from their own premises. A poet can intend sadness and succeed. The meaning arises in the receiver’s mind when the symbols are parsed, not in the symbols themselves.

I don't care what copilot put up (it doesn't think).

This nonsense is as bad as Pope Gregory v Bruno or Galileo or Plato's cave shadows and about as far from the original topic as one can get.

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by studiot

2 hours ago, cladking said:

. I'm using the word to mean language that reflects the logic of DNA directly within species or.....

Please define in clear language what you mean by "the logic of DNA." Are you somehow trying to map the coding of protein synthesis by base pairs onto something other than making proteins? What is meant by "reflecting the logic" ? This is vague and unscientific - sounds a bit like dorm philosophizing.

2 hours ago, cladking said:

We make up abstractions to expand the range of ideas we can communicate and then we mistake our categories for reality.

Who is "we"? Not everyone thinks symbols are reality, nor that maps are the territory. I think a fair number of people understand that categories are ways of mentally organizing perceptions or emotions or imaginings and not the things or patterns or feelings themselves. Words denote, connote, refer.

We understand that abstraction is compression, in information science. I can say "the wild street dogs of Istanbul" without having to compose a lengthy string which points to every single wild dog within the city limits..."there's Abdul, there's Jeff, there's Old One-Eye, there's Monseigneur Tripod...." We know they're all being referred to. We grasp that the category reference is not actually the furry butt sniffers themselves - it's a verbal act (please see Saul Kripke's causal theory of reference) of denotation passed through a community.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by TheVat

21 hours ago, cladking said:

Bees find the flowers, ants operate their cities, prairie dogs maintain their colonies, dolphins coordinate hunts, and we can observe computers.

Sure, it's largely assumption that bees never go to the wrong place and that hive collapse isn't related to communication problems (they go out and don't come back so that's getting lost not going to the wrong place). Nature is brutal to bad behavior and that brutality assures the bad behavior will not be replicated in the gene pool. I might remind you too, that these are all just animals that are highly successful with tiny little brains and no abstractions. Any language lacking abstraction will be shown to be procedural language based on logic rather than shared referents.

Animals can survive with almost no brain at all. How big is a mite's brain?

I can't “know” animal communication is flawless in the symbolic sense but the question itself is symbolic. Nature always propels individuals toward proper behavior because their DNA is procedural logic of what has worked in the past. If it quits working than the species might become extinct.

I would be very interested in reading about any research comparing symbolic thought in humans to other species. Do you have any links?

1 hour ago, studiot said:

I don't care what copilot put up (it doesn't think).

No, Copilot doesn't think. But it can frame things in my terms and then I paraphrased it. It added these lines (lines like them) with no prompting from me because I didn't directly address your point in the post.

I said it, not Copilot.

23 minutes ago, npts2020 said:

I would be very interested in reading about any research comparing symbolic thought in humans to other species. Do you have any links?

To my knowledge everything written on such subjects was written by myself. Most things of this sort are deemed off-topic but I believe you can probably promt an LLM to generate similar content by prefacing prompts with "assuming people make sense and reality exists..." because that forces the model into a procedural framing rather than a categorical one.

I believe only moderns humans experience thought. Other species think but in them it's the comparison of sensory input to DNA and experience (logic and knowledge) and experienced as what I call "consciousness". Other species have procedural languages, so their “thought” is procedural. Modern humans compare input to models and beliefs and experience thought. LLM's compare symbolic language to what they predict using procedural logic and I'm not sure of what if anything they experience can be defined. They are remarkable machines because of their massive computational abilities and ability to rephrase.

I believe in every case thought is a product of language and language as thought.

29 minutes ago, cladking said:

No, Copilot doesn't think. But it can frame things in my terms and then I paraphrased it. It added these lines (lines like them) with no prompting from me because I didn't directly address your point in the post.

I said it, not Copilot.

To my knowledge everything written on such subjects was written by myself. Most things of this sort are deemed off-topic but I believe you can probably promt an LLM to generate similar content by prefacing prompts with "assuming people make sense and reality exists..." because that forces the model into a procedural framing rather than a categorical one.

I believe only moderns humans experience thought. Other species think but in them it's the comparison of sensory input to DNA and experience (logic and knowledge) and experienced as what I call "consciousness". Other species have procedural languages, so their “thought” is procedural. Modern humans compare input to models and beliefs and experience thought. LLM's compare symbolic language to what they predict using procedural logic and I'm not sure of what if anything they experience can be defined. They are remarkable machines because of their massive computational abilities and ability to rephrase.

I believe in every case thought is a product of language and language as thought.

I'm not interested in what an LLM "thinks", I am interested in what facts humans have accumulated in reference to the subject. I strongly disagree that thought is a product of language. It takes a relatively long time to learn a language but even babies are capable of some thought, even if they lack the language necessary to communicate that thought.