Abstract
We are all familiar with robots and other computers producing linguistic expressions. The essay discusses the question in what sense these speech-like phenomena can be regarded as an outcome of what might be called learning to talk. The question might also be rephrased as follows: in what sense can a talking robot be considered a speaker. In the debate becoming a speaker is often construed as an ability to connect signs with objects. As was shown by Wittgenstein this conception of being a speaker is highly impoverished. To be a speaker is to be able to express oneself by means of words. This ability is connected with having a life, which robots lack. What concerns me in this discussion is not so much the ongoing debate about what robots can and cannot do. Rather, it is the light it may throw on what it means for a human being to learn to talk.
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- 1.
For an essay pursuing similar lines of thought to those developed here, see Beran (2018).
- 2.
Also in Beard (2018).
- 3.
https://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word?language=en. Accessed 19 January, 2019.
- 4.
Augustine, Confessions, I.8. Quoted in Wittgenstein (2009).
- 5.
See Chomsky (1959).
- 6.
For a discussion of related issues, see Shanker (2001).
- 7.
For a sample of the various things people may do with words, see Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 22.
- 8.
Philosophical Investigations, § 244.
- 9.
On this, cp Wittgenstein’s comparison of the inner to a beetle in a box, Philosophical Investigations, § 293.
- 10.
Harmon (2010).
- 11.
- 12.
Arthur Coady puts a similar point as follows in his thought-provoking essay “On the Creation of a Speaker”: “For me to speak there must be an understanding of what there is to say. That understanding must be mine.” Mind 77 (1968), pp. 68–76. The quotation is from p. 75.
- 13.
Rhees, op.cit., p. 81.
References
Beard, Alex, Natural Born Learners: Our Incredible Capacity to Learn and How We can Harness it (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2018).
Beran, Ondrej, “An Attitude towards an Artificial Soul? Responses to the ‘Nazi Chatbot’”, Philosophical Investigations 41 (2018), pp. 42–69.
Chomsky, Noam, Review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. Language 1959; 35:26–58.
Harmon, Amy, “A Soft Spot for Circuitry”, The New York Times, July 4, 2010. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/science/05robot.html?.
Rhees, Rush, ”Wittgenstein’s Builders”, in Rhees, Discussions of Wittgenstein (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970).
Rhees, Rush, Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Discourse, ed. D. Z. Phillips (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Shanker, Stuart, “What Children Know when they Know what a Name is” (Current Anthropology 42 (2001), pp. 481–497.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (4th ed., Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Merete Mazzarella, as well as the participants in the philosophy research seminar at the University of Queensland, for helpful comments.
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Hertzberg, L. (2020). Can Robots Learn to Talk?. In: Wuppuluri, S., da Costa, N. (eds) WITTGENSTEINIAN (adj.). The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27569-3_21
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