That's something I'm not terribly sure about, actually, and I've been arguing with people about it already today. Yes, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I've known animals that were definitely capable of thought and reasoning. Not calculus, maybe, but that's not the same thing as not being able to reason...
Or is that just me completely missing the point in an uninteresting fashion? :p
It may not be completely missing the point, but I think it is at most pointing out a minor wording niggle rather than contradicting my essential thesis. There seems to me to be no question but that humans can do something with their brains which other mammals cannot, and it is that which I was intending to talk about. If I've described it by the wrong words, I'm happy to take suggestions for better ones. Abstract thought and reasoning, perhaps?
(I suppose there remains the question of whether there is anyone who would criticise a human for excessive thought because they performed a feat of reasoning of which some other mammal was also capable. If so, those people should be complained about particularly loudly.)
Oh, yes, I agree with most of what you've said. It's just the first paragraph that grated slightly (but then I'm being a bit rubbish today anyway, so who knows, basically).
I don't know enough about theory of mind etc etc etc to actually contribute helpfully as far as alternative wording goes (but I did resent the line someone used at me earlier that went more-or-less "animals are completely different to humans [as far as euthanasia/assisted suicide/suicide goes] because we carry out tests on them".)
Meh. Nod, basically. I'll hush. I ought to use my own LJ for my rants.
Actually, I don't think I agree with the statement that there's "no question but that humans can do something with their brains which other mammals cannot". By which I mean, the statement may be correct, but I can't put my finger on such a thing, and I know that some people argue that it's not true. I suppose it depends on what you mean by "abstract" - but there's also the problem that it would be hard to know if some types of abstract thought were happening - because there might not be any external evidence.
For a start though, there's plenty of examples of toolmaking activity in animals. Some of this is pretty simple - for example, Jane Goodall's original example of a chimpanzee stripping a stick to make it a better prod for getting ants out of an ant hill (http://www.janegoodall.org/chimp_central/chimpanzees/gombe/tool.asp), but there have been some much more convincing examples since then - for example, a crow making a hook out of wire (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2178920.stm). Making a tool requires some degree of lateral thinking, and an ability to approach a problem from multiple angles, which seems pretty abstract to me.
Language is also something pretty abstract, but there's plenty of evidence for language being used by some primates - some researchers even claiming that vervet monkeys combine several words together to make sentences - some discussion of this is at http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/language.htm
There's plenty of evidence of problem solving abilities - for example, Louise tells a story of a chimpanzee she watched in a zoo building a pile of stones to raise an electric fence out of the way to get at some leaves on the other side of it.
Chimpanzees in captivity have been known to produce what I'd certainly call art: for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/may/12/arts.artsnews
There's little convincing evidence of religious activity (but, what _would_ be convincing) - but, for example, the complex art made by Bower birds would probably be called "ritual" if done by humans, and certainly involves a large amount of planning. The video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbWJPsBPdA has a good example of a bower, but there are plenty of other examples on the web.
It used to be thought that only humans used tools - but then examples of tool use were found. After that, if was thought that only humans make tools - but then examples of tool making were found. It used to be thought that only humans could use language to communicate - but lots of examples of what can only be called language are now known. I'd be wary of any claim that there's something qualitatively unique about the capabilities of humans.
I'm happy to settle for quantitative uniqueness: various animals may be able to do each of these things a little bit, but we do all of them at once, in an almost organised fashion, to a far greater extent.
Unless you seriously think that some other mammal would have been just as capable as Homo sapiens of building up a technological civilisation given the motivation and/or resources and without requiring any further evolution from its current state, I think this is still quibbling at my wording. Interesting quibbling though it is :-)
There's no question in my mind that humans do all these things to a greater extent than other animals, and I'm very dubious that other animals could equal human thought given the appropriate motivation (though I'm not sure what such motivation would be). And I'm certainly just quibbling with your wording to an extent. My serious point is that we shouldn't assume we're unique without due consideration of what being unique actually would mean.
(though I'm not sure what such motivation would be)
I mostly mentioned motivation there in order to pre-emptively rule out the Douglas Adams dolphin argument: in case anyone tried to argue that some other species was more intelligent than us because they didn't build up a technological civilisation, or that they were intelligent enough to do what they wanted to get done and that was all that was important. The key test is whether they could have done what we did if they'd wanted to; if it were shown that they could have and they deliberately chose not to, then I'd concede the point.
I generally agree on your wider point -- intelligence seems to be a continuum we happen to be at the high end of -- but on this specific point:
plenty of evidence for language being used by some primates
I don't believe this, for any meaningful definition of 'language'. Learning that certain gestures result in your keepers bringing you a banana isn't language. Producing a random string of signs which your trainers over-interpret as meaningful isn't language. Bee dances aren't language either. I think there's a real qualitative difference between various things that other species do and the human ability to combine abstract symbols in accordance with grammatical rules to communicate opinions, ask questions and all the rest of it. A lot of the 'animal language' stuff is really just animals using vocal or hand gestures at the tool-use level to get what they want. Other primates aren't just bad at grammar -- they can't do it _at all_.
The evidence discussed for animals using language in that language log posting is most unconvincing, I agree.
I'm not sure how I'd define language, but one thing I think I'd consider can only happen with language is communicating a description of a novel change in the environment.
The primary evidence I was thinking came from an anecdote in a biological anthropology lecture, and relates to vervet monkeys in the wild - unfortunately I couldn't find a reference to it with a quick google search, but the assertion was that vervet monkeys make up new warning calls for new potential predators by combining existing calls. Probably the reason that I couldn't find a reference to this is that it was anecdotal and controversial, of course. Indeed, the only agreement that I can find is that vervets have distinct warning calls for "leopard", "snake" and eagle, and it's hard to see how a combination of these calls could be descriptive, rather than just the monkey being unsure which warning call to use.
Perhaps I'd be on stronger ground if I hadn't included the word "plenty". On searching around a bit more, there seems to be plenty of debate on the subject, and very little consensus.
Interesting points, though, thanks. I wish I had more time to investigate the subject properly...
I feel very strongly that what separates us from animals is a quantitative rather than a qualitative difference — and not a very large quantitative difference at that. Indeed, if you read Jared Diamond's works it becomes clear the extent to which human progress depends on the right environmental conditions as well as our innate abilities. Explaining why some human civilisations achieved so much more than others requires one to understand the importance of East-West migratory routes, the horse, a relatively placid sea surrounded by crinkly land masses and lots of other things EMEA has and other areas lack.
Tribespeople from Guinea have been known to go from undeveloped to qualifying as commercial pilots within a generation. Then again, we can also teach a dog to cross a road safely.
The smartest non-human animals are capable of a lot more than the dumbest humans. It's legal to serve as dinner creatures more intelligent than the dumbest humans.
Essentially a threadjack, but Michael Tomasello makes an excellent case (http://www.2think.org/humancognition.shtml) that the major difference between humans and other animals is something he calls the "ratchet effect" of culture and literacy, such that useful things learned don't need to be either discovered anew by each generation or biologically inherited.
Tomasello works with great apes and small children, especially on language acquisition. He’s very anti-Chomsky and anti-Pinker in his conclusions, if you're familiar with those two, but he doesn’t condemn them much in his arguments.
I'm with you on this one... bee's are another species that have a clear language, though it is a sign language. They use intricate dances to tell the bees back at the hive the location of the source of nectar they found, so the rest can go there alone.
I love the crow-wire/hook experiment.
Mostly it annoys me how people automatically think they are so superior to animal, whereas really we're just different, as all animals are from each other. There are a lot of interesting experiments on animal intelligence, but there's a lot of stabbing in the dark still...
I'm not sure I see it as a minor wording niggle. You seem to be suggesting that human beings who are incapable of thought and reasoning (or thought and reasoning at a higher level than animals, or whatever else your something is) - babies and those with very severe learning disabilities, for instance - are less than human, which would obviously be quite a contraversial thing to believe.
It's difficult to come up with a reply to that which doesn't mostly consist of "arrgh!" and beating my head against the monitor. I specifically said I didn't wish to penalise stupidity and that I have nothing against people who are unfortunately unable to do serious stuff with their brains. What could I have done to make this even clearer?
Perhaps you're inferring this "suggestion" from the fact that I said "every human being's birthright is" a functioning brain, and deducing that if a functioning brain is not the birthright of some person in particular then by contraposition I must think that person is not human? (I have to guess at this, because you didn't show your working.) If so, I would say that (a) that's taking a piece of grandiose and imprecise rhetoric rather more literally than its manufacturer intended; (b) if you must consider that sentence literally in light of brain-functioning-disadvantaged people, I would say that for the purposes of that statement a functioning brain is their birthright but they have been unfairly deprived of it by an unfortunate accident (in particular, if medical science could fix it we would have the same moral duty to do so as we do with any other ill or injured person); and (c) if all else fails I will simply reiterate here, in case anyone is still in doubt, that I'm more than happy to agree that such people are fully human.
I specifically said I didn't wish to penalise stupidity and that I have nothing against people who are unfortunately unable to do serious stuff with their brains. What could I have done to make this even clearer?
Omitted the phrase 'at any particular moment'? It seemed to me that you were deliberately distinguishing between the temporarily stupid and the permanently stupid.
(a) that's taking a piece of grandiose and imprecise rhetoric rather more literally than its manufacturer intended;
Quite possibly. I know I have a tendency to take things literally when I shouldn't.
Someone from Speakability (http://www.speakability.org.uk/), a charity that helps people with aphasia, came to speak at my church a fortnight ago, and showed us a video that included an interview with a woman with moderate aphasia, who used to have very severe aphasia, and who spoke about how upsetting (and untrue) she found it when people make gradiose and imprecise rhetoric about language being what separates us from the animals, so I resolved to challenge that kind of sentiment whenever I saw it. Sorry if I was too quick to decide your post came into that category.
'at any particular moment' may of course mean that at nearly every particular moment you're unable to do serious stuff with your brain. It's a continuum, innit?
Omitted the phrase 'at any particular moment'? It seemed to me that you were deliberately distinguishing between the temporarily stupid and the permanently stupid.
Ah, I see. In fact that was intended to have precisely the opposite effect: I intended it inclusively, because if I'd just said "people being [...] too stupid to think" I thought it would look as if I only meant the permanently stupid. So I added "at any particular moment" to include the momentarily or temporarily stupid as well, and my maths background must have got the better of me for just long enough to overlook the fact that not everybody would instinctively consider this to be a generalisation which included the case "at every moment".
So, sorry about the misunderstanding, and about my lack of patience in my previous reply.
It's difficult to come up with a reply to that which doesn't mostly consist of "arrgh!" and beating my head against the monitor.
Much sympathy. I've often wrestled with the idea of trying to get a post concentrating on one topic, and not getting sucked into a nearby messy topic.
(And do you ever read Raymond Chen's blog? His nitpicker's corner is similar, although more about the little questions than the big ones)
Alas, it seems that making bigger disclaimers often don't help. Partly from a natural desire to explore any interesting question raised -- even in a "Hey, I know you didn't want to talk about FOO, but you really should have mentioned BAR if you mentioned FOO". And simply that having the disclaimer draw attention.
I'm slowly coming to the idea that it's better to say less and hope no-one notices the messy question, or at most throwing in an aside ("of course, there's a lot to say abot FOO I haven't")
Before reading the rest of the monsterthread I appear to have started, I should probably put into words what I was failing to earlier and have since pinned down - if humans aren't the only animal capable of this kind of thought, does it in any useful sense devalue the ability to think in this way? If not, why is the initial statement in the creed important? If so, why?
A quick thought experiment suggests that if there were another sentient species on this planet then I would wish to include them in the same category as humans for the purposes of my grandiose rhetoric. Quite where that leaves the exact purpose and nature of the comment I'm not entirely sure :-)
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That's something I'm not terribly sure about, actually, and I've been arguing with people about it already today. Yes, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I've known animals that were definitely capable of thought and reasoning. Not calculus, maybe, but that's not the same thing as not being able to reason...
Or is that just me completely missing the point in an uninteresting fashion? :p
(I suppose there remains the question of whether there is anyone who would criticise a human for excessive thought because they performed a feat of reasoning of which some other mammal was also capable. If so, those people should be complained about particularly loudly.)
I don't know enough about theory of mind etc etc etc to actually contribute helpfully as far as alternative wording goes (but I did resent the line someone used at me earlier that went more-or-less "animals are completely different to humans [as far as euthanasia/assisted suicide/suicide goes] because we carry out tests on them".)
Meh. Nod, basically. I'll hush. I ought to use my own LJ for my rants.
For a start though, there's plenty of examples of toolmaking activity in animals. Some of this is pretty simple - for example, Jane Goodall's original example of a chimpanzee stripping a stick to make it a better prod for getting ants out of an ant hill (http://www.janegoodall.org/chimp_central/chimpanzees/gombe/tool.asp), but there have been some much more convincing examples since then - for example, a crow making a hook out of wire (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2178920.stm). Making a tool requires some degree of lateral thinking, and an ability to approach a problem from multiple angles, which seems pretty abstract to me.
Language is also something pretty abstract, but there's plenty of evidence for language being used by some primates - some researchers even claiming that vervet monkeys combine several words together to make sentences - some discussion of this is at http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/psych26/language.htm
There's plenty of evidence of problem solving abilities - for example, Louise tells a story of a chimpanzee she watched in a zoo building a pile of stones to raise an electric fence out of the way to get at some leaves on the other side of it.
Chimpanzees in captivity have been known to produce what I'd certainly call art: for example http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/may/12/arts.artsnews
There's little convincing evidence of religious activity (but, what _would_ be convincing) - but, for example, the complex art made by Bower birds would probably be called "ritual" if done by humans, and certainly involves a large amount of planning. The video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPbWJPsBPdA has a good example of a bower, but there are plenty of other examples on the web.
It used to be thought that only humans used tools - but then examples of tool use were found. After that, if was thought that only humans make tools - but then examples of tool making were found. It used to be thought that only humans could use language to communicate - but lots of examples of what can only be called language are now known. I'd be wary of any claim that there's something qualitatively unique about the capabilities of humans.
Unless you seriously think that some other mammal would have been just as capable as Homo sapiens of building up a technological civilisation given the motivation and/or resources and without requiring any further evolution from its current state, I think this is still quibbling at my wording. Interesting quibbling though it is :-)
There's no question in my mind that humans do all these things to a greater extent than other animals, and I'm very dubious that other animals could equal human thought given the appropriate motivation (though I'm not sure what such motivation would be). And I'm certainly just quibbling with your wording to an extent. My serious point is that we shouldn't assume we're unique without due consideration of what being unique actually would mean.
I mostly mentioned motivation there in order to pre-emptively rule out the Douglas Adams dolphin argument: in case anyone tried to argue that some other species was more intelligent than us because they didn't build up a technological civilisation, or that they were intelligent enough to do what they wanted to get done and that was all that was important. The key test is whether they could have done what we did if they'd wanted to; if it were shown that they could have and they deliberately chose not to, then I'd concede the point.
I generally agree on your wider point -- intelligence seems to be a continuum we happen to be at the high end of -- but on this specific point:
I don't believe this, for any meaningful definition of 'language'. Learning that certain gestures result in your keepers bringing you a banana isn't language. Producing a random string of signs which your trainers over-interpret as meaningful isn't language. Bee dances aren't language either. I think there's a real qualitative difference between various things that other species do and the human ability to combine abstract symbols in accordance with grammatical rules to communicate opinions, ask questions and all the rest of it. A lot of the 'animal language' stuff is really just animals using vocal or hand gestures at the tool-use level to get what they want. Other primates aren't just bad at grammar -- they can't do it _at all_.
This elderly language log posting expresses a similar view.
I'm not sure how I'd define language, but one thing I think I'd consider can only happen with language is communicating a description of a novel change in the environment.
The primary evidence I was thinking came from an anecdote in a biological anthropology lecture, and relates to vervet monkeys in the wild - unfortunately I couldn't find a reference to it with a quick google search, but the assertion was that vervet monkeys make up new warning calls for new potential predators by combining existing calls. Probably the reason that I couldn't find a reference to this is that it was anecdotal and controversial, of course. Indeed, the only agreement that I can find is that vervets have distinct warning calls for "leopard", "snake" and eagle, and it's hard to see how a combination of these calls could be descriptive, rather than just the monkey being unsure which warning call to use.
Perhaps I'd be on stronger ground if I hadn't included the word "plenty". On searching around a bit more, there seems to be plenty of debate on the subject, and very little consensus.
Interesting points, though, thanks. I wish I had more time to investigate the subject properly...
Tribespeople from Guinea have been known to go from undeveloped to qualifying as commercial pilots within a generation. Then again, we can also teach a dog to cross a road safely.
The smartest non-human animals are capable of a lot more than the dumbest humans. It's legal to serve as dinner creatures more intelligent than the dumbest humans.
Me, I'm vegetarian.
Tomasello works with great apes and small children, especially on language acquisition. He’s very anti-Chomsky and anti-Pinker in his conclusions, if you're familiar with those two, but he doesn’t condemn them much in his arguments.
bee's are another species that have a clear language, though it is a sign language. They use intricate dances to tell the bees back at the hive the location of the source of nectar they found, so the rest can go there alone.
I love the crow-wire/hook experiment.
Mostly it annoys me how people automatically think they are so superior to animal, whereas really we're just different, as all animals are from each other. There are a lot of interesting experiments on animal intelligence, but there's a lot of stabbing in the dark still...
Perhaps you're inferring this "suggestion" from the fact that I said "every human being's birthright is" a functioning brain, and deducing that if a functioning brain is not the birthright of some person in particular then by contraposition I must think that person is not human? (I have to guess at this, because you didn't show your working.) If so, I would say that (a) that's taking a piece of grandiose and imprecise rhetoric rather more literally than its manufacturer intended; (b) if you must consider that sentence literally in light of brain-functioning-disadvantaged people, I would say that for the purposes of that statement a functioning brain is their birthright but they have been unfairly deprived of it by an unfortunate accident (in particular, if medical science could fix it we would have the same moral duty to do so as we do with any other ill or injured person); and (c) if all else fails I will simply reiterate here, in case anyone is still in doubt, that I'm more than happy to agree that such people are fully human.
Omitted the phrase 'at any particular moment'? It seemed to me that you were deliberately distinguishing between the temporarily stupid and the permanently stupid.
(a) that's taking a piece of grandiose and imprecise rhetoric rather more literally than its manufacturer intended;
Quite possibly. I know I have a tendency to take things literally when I shouldn't.
Someone from Speakability (http://www.speakability.org.uk/), a charity that helps people with aphasia, came to speak at my church a fortnight ago, and showed us a video that included an interview with a woman with moderate aphasia, who used to have very severe aphasia, and who spoke about how upsetting (and untrue) she found it when people make gradiose and imprecise rhetoric about language being what separates us from the animals, so I resolved to challenge that kind of sentiment whenever I saw it. Sorry if I was too quick to decide your post came into that category.
Ah, I see. In fact that was intended to have precisely the opposite effect: I intended it inclusively, because if I'd just said "people being [...] too stupid to think" I thought it would look as if I only meant the permanently stupid. So I added "at any particular moment" to include the momentarily or temporarily stupid as well, and my maths background must have got the better of me for just long enough to overlook the fact that not everybody would instinctively consider this to be a generalisation which included the case "at every moment".
So, sorry about the misunderstanding, and about my lack of patience in my previous reply.
Much sympathy. I've often wrestled with the idea of trying to get a post concentrating on one topic, and not getting sucked into a nearby messy topic.
(And do you ever read Raymond Chen's blog? His nitpicker's corner is similar, although more about the little questions than the big ones)
Alas, it seems that making bigger disclaimers often don't help. Partly from a natural desire to explore any interesting question raised -- even in a "Hey, I know you didn't want to talk about FOO, but you really should have mentioned BAR if you mentioned FOO". And simply that having the disclaimer draw attention.
I'm slowly coming to the idea that it's better to say less and hope no-one notices the messy question, or at most throwing in an aside ("of course, there's a lot to say abot FOO I haven't")
Etc.
On with the thread...
It was quite a fun monsterthread!
And okay as far as the grandiose rhetoric goes, then. :)