alt Hacker News> Language is literally an abstraction of sensory inputs and cognitive processes.
Language can exist entirely independently from senses and cognition. It is an encoding of patterns in the world where the only thing that matters is if anybody or anything wielding it can map the encodings to and from the patterns they encode for (which is more of a sociological/synchronisation challenge).
Does C, or Java, 'make no sense' because it 'ignores lower level cognition'?
There are many parts of non-programming languages that similarly have nothing to do with embodiment. Some of them are even about incredibly abstract things impossible in our universe. One could argue that for many fields genius lies in being able to mentally model what is so foreign to the intuition our embodiment has imbued us with or to be able to find a mapping to facilitate that intuition. Said otherwise: the experience our embodiment has given us might limit how well we can understand the world (Quantum Mechanics anyone?).
Again, embodiment is interesting and worth pursuing, but far from a requirement for far-reaching intelligence.
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> Does C, or Java, 'make no sense' because it 'ignores lower level cognition'?
It makes sense in context, but that context includes the machine on which the compiled code runs. Without the underlying machine, there's no real purpose for C or Java. I'm open to the idea that 'lower level cognition' may be as relevant to language as the machine is to C or Java.
> Language can exist entirely independently from senses and cognition.
Helen Keller begs to disagree. Language and cognition were clearly linked for her.
> It wasn't until April 5, 1887, when Anne took Helen to an old pump house, that Helen finally understood that everything has a name. Sullivan put Helen’s hand under the stream and began spelling “w-a-t-e-r” into her palm, first slowly, then more quickly.
> Keller later wrote in her autobiography, “As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten–-a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that ‘w-a-t-e-r’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.”