The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's ability to demonstrate intelligence. It proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with one human and one machine, each of which tries to appear human. All participants are placed in isolated locations. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine is said to have passed the test

Isn't this the gist of the Turing Test?

If, as you suggest, the rules of logic and language could be reduced to a machine-readable form, then it should be possible to build a computer that could pass the Turing test.

Would it be possible to incorporate the attitude and understanding of the speaker into a formal system of logic? This would be a logic that looked both backwards to the origins of its statements as well as forward to the conclusions that those statements imply.

Thus logic is a tool to be applied to "translated" arguments, and does not concern itself in determining whether the contents of a proposition are "true" or not. That is the business and object of philosophy itself, and it employs argumentation (in different ways) to determine the truth of a proposition, which may be at times "first principles."

Logic is one of the tools a philosopher has in his toolbox that enables him to articulate his first principles (Aristotle defined metaphysics as "first philosophy"). Like any workman who wishes to build something, the better the tools, the easier the process and the more certain the final product.

The lowest level is the production of a voice; the second, the utterance of words; the third, the joining of words to make sentences; the fourth, the working of sentences into a style; the fifth, and highest, the composition of the text.

The principles of each level operate under the control of the next higher level. The voice you produced is shaped into words by a vocabulary; a given vocabulary is shaped into sentences in accordance with grammar; and the sentences are fitted into a style, which in its turn is made to convey the ideas of the composition. Thus each level is subject to dual control: (i) control in accordance with the laws that apply to its elements in themselves, and (ii) control in accordance with the laws of the powers that control the comprehensive entity formed by these elements.

Such multiple control is made possible by the fact that the principles governing the isolated particulars of a lower level leave indeterminate conditions to be controlled by a higher principle. Voice production leaves largely open the combination of sounds into words, which is controlled by a vocabulary. Next, a vocabulary leaves largely open the combination of words to form sentences, which is controlled by grammar, and so on.

Consequently, the operations of a higher level cannot be accounted for by the laws governing its particulars on the next lower level. You cannot derive a vocabulary from phonetics; you cannot derive grammar from a vocabulary; a correct use of grammar does not account for good style; and a good style does not supply the content of a piece of prose.

Articulation is an active creation of the intellect ("art" being emphasized) that attempts to give both clarity and linkage between positions and ideas in an architectonic way to philosophical thinking; or---it is the process of thinking itself, as well as its goal.

One might go further and say that part of this process involves questioning and subsequent testing of conclusions and answers with the help of logic, broadly conceived and not without a sideways glance at the scientific method. But in the toolbox are many different tools that can be used depending on circumstances and what one is trying to do---often it is a matter of picking the right tool for the job.

The demonstrations (the showing) of philosophy are methodologically bound up with its articulation.

hmmm. I am having a bit of trouble working out exactly what the OP is getting at. I think perhaps you are asking if logic can be reduced to relations between a finite set of statements - in other words, reduced to the level of symbolic code. In which case, I am inclined to say the answer is 'no'. My general attitude anti-reductionist; so when you say 'a statement implies a speaker', what I take that to mean is that 'the speaker' is 'an intelligence capable of understanding the meaning of what is said'.

Michael Polanyi, 'Life's Irreducible Structure'

I suppose if you programmed it with a vocab, lexicon and sentence-structure, it might turn out meaningful statements, but a 'boundary condition' of the experiment would be that a person would be required to ascertain the meaning of the statements, and so this would be rather contrived.

Logos is not ethos.

I could use some more learning on semiotics. I know hardly anything about it, and it sound very interesting. But there is so much information coming out of this forum on topics of interest I am just not going to get it for the time being. I can read the signs.:bigsmile:

Language does have a virus -like quality in its written form, but like a virus it requires a truly living host. Burroughs used a cut-up method for inspiration. I've always like the phrase "sentences are viruses."

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I sometimes think that ethos is the turtle and logos is the shell. But ethos can be modified by logos. I believe we have us a Moebius strip here.

Don't forget pathos. Can there be a three sided mobius strip? Triangular contortions. I guess it would require a 4th spacial dimension.

Articulation is an active creation of the intellect ("art" being emphasized) that attempts to give both clarity and linkage between positions and ideas in an architectonic way to philosophical thinking; or---it is the process of thinking itself, as well as its goal.

You're right. I was making ethos do double duty, as I associate it with pathos directed at the ego-ideal. Are pathos and ethos conjoined twins?

If you think of it, much of early philosophy beginning with the Presocratics was various attempts to find the kind of articulation that separated thinking from myth and poetic views. And moreover, much of the philosophic tradition is a prolonged discussion (often heated) about what articulation is and the appropriate means to achieve it for philosophy (think, for example, of the Existentialists rejection of a certain kind of articulation because it distorted reality).

For example, as I have suggested elsewhere in different threads, philosophic articulation often requires specialised uses of common words to give a satisfactory account of events.

Logic has to do with internal relations among propositions. Propositions are usually thought of as the bearers of truth values. Truth (except for formal truth) has to do with the external relation between a proposition and the world.

The motivation of a statement which expresses a proposition has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the proposition (again, with the exception of formal truth) since whether the proposition is truth of false concerns (as I said) the relation between the proposition and the world.