Telepathy: Why it's More Trouble than we Thought

Sheri Wells-Jensen
Here are lecture notes from the telepathy presentation.

Assumptions

Communication is mediated by language. Many assume that the result of a telepathic message is, or can be represented as, language. This serves as the starting point for the discussion that follows. Problems with 'direct' or 'pure thought' communication will be dealt with later.
The human capacity for decoding and encoding 'normal' (nontelepathic) language, would also be used with telepathic language. There is no compelling argument at this time for the existence of a separate 'telepathic language decoding' organ in the human brain.
Humans do not now regularly demonstrate an ability to communicate telepathically. This may mean one or more of the following:
- Humans cannot send telepathic messages. Perhaps this is because of the lack of sending organs, a lack of sufficient mental power to send messages or the inability to organize a sendable message. If this is our only problem with telepathy, we might be telepathic but have nothing to receive since none of us can send messages. We may be telepathic 'mutes'.
- Human beings cannot receive telepathic messages. Perhaps this is because of the lack of telepathic receiving organs, insufficient mental sensativity to such messages or inability to decode messages that are, in fact received.
- Human telepathic powers are latent. Perhaps the most common assumption made by SF writers is that human beings lack sufficient mental power to broadcast and sensativity to detect telepathic messages. Humans may be able to deal with such messages if another being both places them within a human mind and plucks intended utterances from the human mind (or reads surface thoughts as they pass involuntarily across human consciousness.)

Normal Human Speech Production

Forming a proposition. Before a speaker of any human language can utter a sentence, s/he forms an intention to speak and an idea to put into words. Linguists call this the 'proposition'. The structure of a proposition is not well understood. It certainly consists of a conceptualization of the participants being discussed, the activity in which they are engaging and the speaker's general attitude toward these actions and participants. The speaker's goal (what s/he wants to accomplish by the utterance) is also part of this. This may be the same in any human language since the proposition is essentially prelinguistic.
Making a plan for a sentence. Once the proposition is formed, the speech production system of the particular language takes over, assigning a sentence structure to the proposition, words to the sentence structure, and sounds to the words.
Uttering the sentence. The result of the previous two steps is a string of information which can be fed to the muscles of the vocal tract. Speaking produces an acoustic signal. Note that the speaker's attitude and intention are generally conveyed by intonation. Intonation is often a more important source of information about the speaker's emotional status and intent than is the linguistic content of the utterance. Intonation may reinforce the meaning of the words chosen, or it may negate it as in irony or sarcasm

Normal Human Speech Perception

Note that this is essentially performing the three steps above backward.

Hearing the signal. An acoustic signal is perceived, identified as speech and sent to the speech perception system to deal with. (Note that there is a syndrome called 'word deafness' where signals can be physically perceived but are not identified as speech.) Intonation information is noted in this stage and is generally processed separately on the right side of the brain.
Parsing. The acoustic signal is processed according to the requirements of the language of the hearer. Roughly speaking, it is broken down into words.
Interpretation. The output of step 5 is something that may be much like the propositions produced by speakers in step 1 above. Information from the intonation contour of the utterance, if available, is integrated here, modifying the proposition which is finally understood by the hearer.

What is a Telepathic Message?

We are not concerned here with the method of transmission, only with the structure of that which is transmitted. There is also no discussion here of alien Gricean maxims which might hinder communication or of special Gricean maxims for telepathic communication which might amealorate some of the problems discussed here.

Telepathic messages might be

Type A: The output of step 3.

This would be the mental representation of an acoustic signal. The sender "hears words" at the receiver. This mental voice, or silent speech, could include intonational cues just as a spoken version of the message would. The signal would then be processed by the receiver just as incoming acoustics signals are, beginning more or less at step 4 with the hearer identifying the mental acoustics as speech. Perhaps, this could even include amplitude information, making it possible to shout or mentally whisper. It would be as easy to lie via this kind of telepathy as it is in ordinary speech since the sender's intention to lie (if s/he is a skilled liar) would not be overtly represented in the mental acoustic signal.

Problem: The sender and receiver would have to share a language. Not much is gained by telepathy of this kind.
Problem: How would we disambiguate this mental acoustic signal from a 'real' acoustic signal? Or, would we necessarily have to know the difference?
Problem: How would the hearer identify the speaker? Would the sender transmit voice quality information so an identification could be made in the 'usual' way (Like those echoy voice-overs when two movie/Television characters are communicating telepathically)? Could a sender 'choose' a mental sending voice? Could this be any voice at all, making it possible to pretend to be someone else? Would it be the voice the sender hears from within his/her own head via bone conduction or some other voice? Could the speaker 'opt out' of sending voice quality information for all or part of a message making it possible to send annonomously or to quit sending these details once his/her identity has been established or use them only for emphasis? How else could sender's be identified if not by voice quality?

Type B: The output of step 2.

This would mean that the sender forms sentences, but does not include intonational information. The receiver would begin at step 5. This would be the mental equivalent of passig notes but without the advantage of recognizing handwriting or the ability to change fonts or write larger for emphasis. Deception would be even easier than a type B telepathic message.

Problem: The sender and receiver would have to share a language. Not much is gained by telepathy of this kind.
Problem: Since intonational information would not be available, misunderstandings, at least of intention and emotional factors, would be frequent. Receivers would interpret messages much as acters do lines read from a script.
Problem: How would the receiver identify the sender? What happens if a third, or fourth party joins in? How would messages be attributed to the right senders?

Type C: The output of step 1.

The sender broadcasts linguistic propositions--the input to the language-specific sentence making component. This might, in fact, make it possible for beings who do not share a language to communicate since the message has not been encoded via the rules for any particluar language. The receiver begins at step 6. Deception might be more difficult with Type C telepathy since the sender's intention (in this case the intent to deceive) forms the basis for encoding or creating sentences and all this would be passed to the receiver.

Problem: Although it would not be necessary for the sender and receiver to share a language, the language problem lingers in its more basic form. It would be necessary for sender and receiver to have similar experiential concepts and to share underpinnings of language. If the sender's proposition contained a truly 'alien' concept (perhaps an emotion for which human language has no ready counterpart or a cultural phenomenon) the human system has a limited number of choices. First, it might simply crash and fail to render the problematic proposition. Humans frequently find themselves in a position of not having words for something they want to say. Presumably, such a 'crash' would not be permanent! Alternatively, the system might select a word, or group of words, which seems to more or less match the intent, as well as the intent can be understood. Would there be any way the speech encoding system could let the human know that the words provided were a 'best fit'? Could there be any way of telling the human how well or how poorly the match had been made? Again, misunderstandings would be frequent if the concepts to be communicated were not shared in the first place. Tyep C telepathy might be useful for communication between similar spieces, but would fail both for spieces that were markedly different from one another and for cultural concepts. Alien intent might also be problematic.
Problem: How would a speaker understand that a proposition was communication from another being and not the product of his or her own thoughts?
Problem: How would the receiver identify the sender? What happens if a third, or fourth party joins in? How would messages be attributed to the right senders?

Type D: The product of prelinguistic mechanisms; the output of what might be called step 0.

This is the most attractive (and the most problematic) type of telepathy. It assumes the direct transmission and reception of pure thought without intervening language. If tenable, this would make it possible for beings who do not share a language to communicate since the message has not been shaped by language. The receiver can opt completely out of language encoding. Unless it is possible to partian the mind, holding some thoughts in reserve as private, deception would not be possible in type D telepathy.

Problem: We have, at this point in the development of cognitive science, no clear idea of what we mean when we say ,pure thought,. Although we know that thought can exist without language, the exact nature remains obscure. It may be that language is necessary for some abstract thoughts, making some things impossible to send without the structuring influence of language.
Problem: how would a receiver tell incoming perceptions, emotions or other sent-sensations from those generated by his or her own mind? This is scarey!
Problem: Although it would not be necessary for the sender and receiver to share even the rudiments of language, a more basic problem may persist. We know that thought is structured by experiential metaphor based both in culture and in physical experience. If such abstract metaphors are not shared, communication may be hindered.
Problem: Without the standarizing effect of arbitrariness provided by y language, ideosyncracies of thought might prove overwhelming. One person may conceptualize ,cup, via an image of a particular cup with which s/he is familiar. Another might use the feel of a cup in the hand. Perhaps this would be workable for concrete objects, but others' conceptualizations of verbs and abstract nouns might be unrecognizable.
Problem: Language offers a convenient short-hand for communication. Without this, it would be necessary to send one's unmediated perceptions to the receiver. If the sender really wanted to send what, for example, was meant by 'honor' or 'mother', s/he would have to send vast quantities of information. For someone to fully understand another, that person might need to download his or her entire mind. Also scarey.

It may well be that compatibility between languages is less difficult than compatibility between minds.

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