GOLEM - all cognition is linguistic

GOLEM's two-channel template can be used to reason about primary and secondary (and perhaps, higher order, including those related to external language) notions of modelling selfhood, as shown in the figure below, which is copied from the previous section for explicative clarity. 

The term 'linguistic' covers syntax and semantics. In this section, the term 'syntax' is found to be of historical use only, and has been replaced with delta- or differential semantics. The term 'semantics' plays a more important role, covering some of the ground lost to 'syntax'. Semantics proper is replaced with sigma- or integral semantics. Sigma-semantics describes the cumulative (adaptational) property of the organism's current hierarchical state. Delta-semantics describes the discriminative (situational) property of the organism's current behavioural capacity.

By introducing the term delta-semantics, we avoid confusion around whether the linguistic construct which was called 'syntax' is used internally (i-syntax, as in behaviour planning of self, behavioural prediction of others, behavioural prototyping or thought in general) or externally, where there is audible or gestural speech, or legible writing [1]. 

Language (ie external forms) evolved from the predictive capacity of the output channel of the 'other self', ie the left hemisphere's output channel. Normally (ie internally) this is in the form of a plan in the animated layer that can be implemented by the automatic layer. However, when higher primates (and to a lesser extent, parrots and cetaceans) evolved methods of articulation (eg signing or voicing) for these 'other self' predictions, the nature of the other's information changed from mere prediction (differential description) into full-strength proscription (differential programming). Humans became communal in the same sense as ants, termites and bees- we became members of a 'hive' mind. Our social context became a selflessness content provider, able to cause normally self-protective individuals to martyr themselves for the latest social cause, from being 'cannon fodder' in WW1,  to  'volunteering' as 'suicide bombers' in Islamic struggles [2]. Indeed, the evolution of the collective consciousness is (arguably) nature's way of overcoming death itself, by obviating the loss of memory associated with the demise of any one individual. This research project is also a contributor to that ignoble cause, by making the construction of immortal robots which, because they have non-living analogues of consciousness and emotionality, possess a human-like sense of self and willpower [3]. 

1. we note in passing the role of Noam Chomsky's over reliance on the unalloyed concept of syntax.

2. All 'programs' have 'bugs'- perhaps the epidemic of ephemeral hoarding is the obverse side of martydom.. FYI collectors of ephemera accumulate, catalogue and display 'rubbish'- stuff normally lost to landfill and erosion, eg advertising hoardings, fast food wrappers, road signs ('Brake for Moose') and toilet-wall graffiti in all its Banksy-esque forms. 

3. Any robot exhibiting Ferdinand Nietschke's 'Triumph of the Will' is perhaps one of the ubermachinen.

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