[ExI] Wernicke's aphasia

[Anders Sandberg]

Gordon Swobe:
> I brought this factoid to post here on ExI because I noticed that a person
> afflicted with Wernicke's aphasia has much in common with the man in
> Searle's Chinese Room. Like the man in Searle's room, he follows the rules
> of syntax but knows not whereof he speaks.

I have neural networks (my language areas, in fact) that follows rules of syntax, yet cannot know what they speak about since that information is elsewhere in my brain. Searle's scenario seems to prime the intuition pump by using a human, who are usually aware and knowing, as a component of a system where the top-level understanding is the issue. He is biasing us to make a level mistake. 

It is worth noticing that people with Wernicke's usually have unimpaired cognition. They might be unable to speak and understand speech, but they can still think and plan. You could imagine someone with aphasia working at a translation company, moving stacks of documents around between the offices. This person could be absolutely essential for the translation work of the company, yet contribute absolutely nothing to the translation/understanding on the human level. If the person was replaced by a delivery robot or a normal person doing the same job, nothing would change. 


Aphasias are really annoying. My grandmother got it in her last years, limiting her vocabulary to a few swear words. For a rather prim lady this was a bit of a problem, although one can communicate a surprising amount this way. My dad managed to get sensory aprosodia, becoming unable to recognize irony - a bit of a handicap in my family. 


Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University