Abstract
There are no satisfactory, generally accepted definitions for the concepts of “intelligence” and “intelligent behavior.” Equating “intelligence” (rationality) with “human-like behavior” is no more acceptable than equating it with “logical behavior.” An example of the former would be Turing’s definition, which treats as intelligent those reactions that in the process of extended communication cannot be distinguished from human reactions. An example of the latter might be the endless attempts to construct a model of artificial intelligence by complicating some simple, basic logical acts, such as solving a problem or proving a theorem.
Originally published as “Fenomen kul’tury,” Trudy po znakovym sistemam 10, 1978: 3–17. The translation here is from Iurii Lotman, Semiosfera, 568–580. Saint Petersburg: Iskusstvo—SPB, 2000.
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Notes
- 1.
And so, in European culture of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, a discrete verbal system clearly dominated. Natural language and logical metalanguages became models for culture itself. However, it is precisely in periods dominated by this or that system that the impossibility of transforming that system into the only one becomes evident.
- 2.
See Lotman (1973).
- 3.
Consider Tolstoy’s description of a dream in “The Snow Storm”: “But the old man breaks through the heap of snow with his head; and now he is not so much an old man as a hare, and leaps away from us. All the dogs bound after him. The advice-giver, who is Theodor Filípych, tells us all to sit round in a circle […] but the little old man is no longer the little old man, he is the man who was drowned” (Tolstoy 1964, 298, 299). The sign images here are not conventional insofar as their form is associated with the content unconditionally and not iconically. (In this case, the change of an outward sign would mean the sudden shift to another sign: “hare,” “drowned man,” and “old man,” “advice-giver” and “Theodor Filípych”; if we read them as iconic signs, they are essentially different kinds of sign; however, in this case “hare—old man—drowned man” are perceived by us as one and the same.) The presence of both conventional and iconic signs is a reflection of the dualism “discrete ↔ non-discrete” in a discrete system. In such a transposition of the fundamental semiotic dualism of a culture into one of its parts, verbal signs are doubled (a discrete representation of discreteness), which results in their becoming meta-elements, while the iconic signs become hybrid formations: a discrete representation of the non-discrete.
- 4.
All translations from works cited are mine, unless otherwise noted. (Translator’s note).
- 5.
See Lotman (2004).
References
Pushkin, Alexander Sergeevich. 1959–1962. Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v 10 tomov. D. D. Blagoi et al. (eds.). Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia Literatura.
Lotman, Iurii. 1973. “Proizkhozhdenie siuzheta v tipologicheskom osveshchenii.” In Iu. M. Lotman, Stat’i po tipologii kul’tury, 9–41. Tartu: Tartuskii UP.
Lotman, Iurii. 2004. “Kul’tura kak kollektivnyi intellekt i problema iskusstvennogo razuma.” In Iu. M. Lotman, Semiosfera, 557–567. Saint Petersburg: Iskusstvo—SPB.
Tolstoy, Leo. 1964. “The Snow Storm.” In Leo Tolstoy. Short Stories, Louise and Aylmer Maude (trans.), 274–305. New York: Random House.
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Lotman, J. (2019). The Phenomenon of Culture. In: Tamm, M. (eds) Juri Lotman - Culture, Memory and History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14710-5_3
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