In my own thinking, under the influence of Monistic views of Spinoza, I have come the conclusion that we cannot define “Though” or “Intelligence” or “Life” or “Matter” (“Extension” in Medieval Philosophy.)
That is, I do not think it is scientifically productive to try to explain the origin of Life or Intellect; that search for an explanation (in terms of Matter – in the contemporary Scientistic Philosophy) is as barren as the Medieval Philosophers search for the origin of Motion (empirical sciences started when the focus went into the (quantitative) description of Motion – be it a ball rolling down an inclined plain or a planet orbiting a celestial body).
So, here, I think, the key observation is to take “Intelligence” or “Thought” as a qualitatively irreducible feature of the Universe and stop wasting all that effort in trying to explain it within a reductionist paradigm.
One implication of that perspective would be to introduce the notions of “Language” and “Grammar” into Biology at all its levels – from DNA/RNA to Species.
For example, this article argues that Fungi have a language for communication and the authors have discovered 5 words of that language –
and in this book, Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life 2nd ed., Yockey, Hubert P. - Amazon.com, we see how information theory is applied to molecular biology. That, in turn, makes possible the application of ideas in this paper: Frontiers | Information Theory as a Bridge Between Language Function and Language Form (frontiersin.org), to molecular biology; viz. how information-theoretic characterizations of functional complexity lead directly to mathematical descriptions of the forms of possible languages, in terms of solutions to constrained optimization problems.
But what is a Language? For human beings, we use Language to think about the world, make judgements about the world, and to communicate those judgements to others (brief example).
Can we think without our Language – I think not but others have disagreed with me on this point.
But if you entertain that notion, then Thought and Language and Intellect will become coterminous or at at least will have overlaps (in the sense of Venn’s Diagrams).
Since our Verbal Language is a social construct, that means some of our intelligence is due to us being members of a species that interacts with one another.
This is reminiscent of an idea in Physics which a particle experiences an effective force on it which is due to the collective effect of all other particles in that physical system.
On the other hand, with this approach, we can try to assess and distinguish among various human/animal societies’ Cognitive Abilities; “Was Rome more “Intelligent” than Samoa Tribes?” – we can talk about this in an intelligent way and devise a scientific program to answer such questions.
I would take, for the sake of continuing with my discourse here, that Though and Language are the same.
(Our Verbal Language is complemented with other Languages – such as smell, touch, gesture, music, and many more.)
Assuming that the proponents of Epigenetics are correct, some or many of those languages could have been acquired and then passed on….
I think Aristotle defined Man as the Talking Animal.
But we are also defined, as a species, by the our genomic, genetic, and epigenetic structures and processes (transformations).
I want to be very clear about Grammar; which is a set of rules for producing syntactically correct sentences.
A language is a set of symbols.
A Theorem in Category Theory states that a Grammar can be expressed as an infinite Power Series (Analytical Functor0 of a Language:
G = L + L x L + L x L x L + L x L x L x L + …
Which leads me to this:
For a species, it is defined by its own species-specific Language – a Dog is His Language, a Man is His Language and so on and so forth.
Per the Theorem above, Dog and Man, each possess their own Grammar.
But since we can communicate with Dog in a partial way, that means that there are areas of overlaps between Man's Grammar & Dog's Grammar. And the physiological similarities confirm the existence of overlap in the physical plain.
Which in turn, implies (IMHO) that we can infer the existence of a Universal Grammar for all Life on this Planet which encompasses Species Construction, Intra-Species Communication, and Inter-Species Communication as well.
The Process of Evolution itself may be part of a more general and abstract Grammar at a higher level but one can view it as a process in which New Grammars are created from some basic blocks.
But my interest is not here to try to come up with ideas about Evolution….my purpose here is to communicate the basic idea of Species-as-Grammars (Languages) – it gives a different perspective of how to think about the world.
(I would like to state that Physics may be viewed as a Grammar but I do not have the depth to develop that idea…)
In Computer Science there is a very general Theorem that states:
“Unrestricted Grammars are equivalent to Turing Machines used as Language Acceptors”.
Turing Machines are the theoretical basis of Computer Science – they are basic universal “problem solvers”.
Since a species (Life) is constantly Solving the problem of survival, it follows that it has a Grammar and Language, that it is reminiscent of a Turing Machine (this is my speculation).
I am motivated to support my speculations by observing how a single-cell organism – viewed as a “Natural Automaton” – can sense its environment and respond to stimuli without one being able to point to a decision-making center that - like a computer with a CPU - would be executing some instructions.
Spinoza, whose ideas have influenced me, posits that Thought and Extension (Intelligence and Matter) are inseparably intertwined in the Universe without one being reducible to the other.
Here, I am going a step further and suggest methods of
Linguistics, Semiotics, and Formal Language Theory to the Study of Life (in all
its aspects).
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