Silence: an ignored concept in artificial intelligence

Excerpt

Silence is a phenomenon in the personal and social aspects of human communication. It occurs in a conversation, when a person does not reflect any verbal response, either she/he has been asked a question or is in situations that need a response. Being silent is quite different from presenting any verbal response, like “I don’t know”, “Hmm”, etc. Based on various culture-dependent contents that can be assigned to silence, it has various propositional functions in communication. For instance, as indicated by Dennis Kurzon (1995), it may be used to question, promise, deny, warn, threaten, insult, request, or command. But after its occurrence, silence may be interpreted variously: (A) unintentional, which happens when there is an asymmetry in power between persons in a conversation, for example, in teacher–pupil, doctor-patient, and policeman-suspect relationships, (B) defensive, which happens when a decision-maker intentionally chooses to remain silent based on fear to defend him/herself from probable threatening dangers, (C) a sign for intentional consent, (D) a sign for intentional altruist motives, and (E) a sign for cooperative motives. Based on abovementioned points, silence may be explained in two forms. First, what we name “functions” and second, what is introduced as “interpretations”. The former is the usages of silence by an “intelligent” human to convey a linguistic message, the latter is what a person from outside view infers about silence. Therefore, we think that silence is not always a representation of human emptiness, but it can show a kind of hidden intelligence. …