Slide 13 of 37
Notes:
We are accustomed to communicate with one another through language mediated by combinatoric arrangements of discrete symbols. For the most part, the animals do not communicate with us in similar ways, but they are capable of a wide range of activities that require some kind of intelligence.
We share many behavioral characteristics with the nonhuman animals, and we have yet to develop a machine with the capabilities of a gecko or even a termite (two local creature with which I am too familiar).
There seems little justification for believing that animals use the kind of symbols that are presumed to be required by the language-of-thought hypothesis in controlling their activities. Parsimony would then suggest that at least some human behaviors might be controlled by similar non-linguistic processes. Even if it turns out to be true that human reasoning, problem solving and similar behaviors characteristic of human achievement are mediated by something like language, evolutionary continuity suggests that a substantial part of intelligence, both human and nonhuman, is mediated by substantially different mechanisms.
