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Naturalizing language: human appraisal and (quasi) technology

  • 25TH ANNIVERSARY VOLUME A FAUSTIAN EXCHANGE: WHAT IS TO BE HUMAN IN THE ERA OF UBIQUITOUS TECHNOLOGY?
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Abstract

Using contemporary science, the paper builds on Wittgenstein’s views of human language. Rather than ascribing reality to inscription-like entities, it links embodiment with distributed cognition. The verbal or (quasi) technological aspect of language is traced to not action, but human specific interactivity. This species-specific form of sense-making sustains, among other things, using texts, making/construing phonetic gestures and thinking. Human action is thus grounded in appraisals or sense-saturated coordination. To illustrate interactivity at work, the paper focuses on a case study. Over 11 s, a crime scene investigator infers that she is probably dealing with an inside job: she uses not words, but intelligent gaze. This connects professional expertise to circumstances and the feeling of thinking. It is suggested that, as for other species, human appraisal is based in synergies. However, since the verbal aspect of language constrains action and thinking, we also develop customary ways of behaving. Humans extend embodiment by linking real-time activity to actions through which the collectivity imposes a variable degree of control over how individuals realise values.

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Notes

  1. Digital and printed word-forms are manufactured products; hand writing is based in hand-based technologies; however, even phonetic and visible gestures draw on a quasi-technological selection process that shapes collective modes of life. Where applied to the verbal aspect of language in general, this is said to be ‘(quasi) technological’.

  2. Intertextuality is “the transposition of one or more systems of signs into another, accompanied by a new articulation of the enunciative or denotative position” (Kristeva 1980:15). For Kristeva a text is a ‘system of signs’.

  3. Saussure separated the signs of a language-system (langue) from agents and circumstances. This reduces speech (parole) to forms that have linear relations. Based on the resulting written language bias (Linell 2005) much of 20th century linguistics asks (a) whether the (putative) forms are symbolic and/or semiotic; and, (b) whether to privilege formal or functional analysis. Bizarrely, language systems are taken to prompt us to construct and parse word-strings.

  4. For reference to phonetic evidence that we depend on making and tracking phonetic gestures, see Fowler (2010); for detailed exposition of the importance of rich phonetic memory, see Port (2010).

  5. James Gibson aspired to create a ‘psychology of values’ and his view has been pursued by Hodges and his collaborators (see Hodges and Baron 1992; Hodges 2007, 2009). In the distributed language movement, many see values realising as leading beyond behaviourist and cognitivist models (see Cowley 2011).

  6. See Varela et al. (1991), Clark (1997), Thompson (2007), Robbins and Aydede (2009) and Stewart et al. (2010).

  7. Though echoed in Wittgenstein’s (1958) emphasis on seeing aspects, Craik’s (1943) models ascribes this to—not language—but the brain. In second-generation cognitive science, by contrast, it is stressed that human forms of life self-organise as bodies act within (selected) second-order constraints: they make objectively valid judgements.

  8. Ross (2000) defines real-patterns (RPs) as projectible under at least one possible physical perspective (they can be differentiated by some possible instrument). A RP encodes information (about the structure of an object or event) where the encoding is more efficient than a bit-map encoding of E. Further, for one or more possible physical projections under which RP is projectible, at least one aspect of E can be tracked by recovering the encoding from the perspective in question. .

  9. In experiments with paper flowers, odour or visual cues alone were shown to be ‘redundantly attractive to naïve M. sexta males within 5 m of a flower’. Feeding arose when ‘simultaneous perception of these stimuli’—were synergised by multimodal cues. Hawk-moths use action-perception systems that base colour discrimination on real-time function that shapes memory formation for ‘colour discrimination’. This synergistic process integrates cues from two sensory modalities while using prepared learning (Wilson 1998).

  10. In Wittgenstein’s (1980) § 189) terms, this gives rise to certainties. He writes, ‘At some point one has to pass from explanation to mere description’ He emphasises how hard it is to clarify certainties. This paper applies the lesson to how verbal patterns result from an individual history of human interactivity.

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Acknowledgements

This paper began as a conference presentation in Tambov, Russia in 2009 that was developed into a paper for Voprosy Vazykoznanija entitled ‘Naturalizing language: linguistic flow and verbal patterns’ ( . 2010. No. 1. C.5-21). It has been completely rewritten for AI & Society to connect the distributed perspective on language and cognition with our Faustian heritage. Special thanks to Chris Baber for the examples and illustrations from crime scene investigation.

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  1. University of Hertfordshire, Hertfordshire, UK

    Stephen J. Cowley

  2. University of Southern Denmark, Slagelse, Denmark

    Stephen J. Cowley

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Correspondence to Stephen J. Cowley.

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Cowley, S.J. Naturalizing language: human appraisal and (quasi) technology. AI & Soc 28, 443–453 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-013-0445-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-013-0445-3

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