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Post 20

Friday, December 26, 2008 - 4:27pmSanction this postReply
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Perhaps thats a large part of the difference. A different quality to cognition, combined with the ability to analyze the past and possible futures. To plan. I've also heard it said that a large gap separating us from animals is that animals adapt themselves to their environments as best they can, while we adapt our environments to ourselves.

Post 21

Friday, December 26, 2008 - 5:13pmSanction this postReply
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Yes - only animals are voluntary servile beings [tho dogs were bred for such]... and humans who so do are as animal as can humanly be......... ;-)

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Post 22

Friday, December 26, 2008 - 5:59pmSanction this postReply
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I would say the exact opposite. Animals are not voluntary in servitude, thats why their animals. Animals are what they are, we supply an environment that induces servitude and they adapt to the environment. Volition doesn't enter into it. In my view, Humans hold the dubious honor of being the only creature that chooses to be servile.

Post 23

Friday, December 26, 2008 - 6:02pmSanction this postReply
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I agree with you, Ryan. We're the only animal that can choose to wear a yoke. I guess you could say that "the yoke's on us."

:-)

We're also the only animal that can make and tell bad jokes ... as I've just made apparent.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 12/26, 6:04pm)


Post 24

Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 7:04amSanction this postReply
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Ed Thompson:

(1)  How do you test for imagination?

(2) Sorry, but could you provide examples of syntatic confusion and semantic confusion?  I tried the internet and all I got was gibberish, which might be indicative.  But, I ask because I regard you as proficient in objectivist epistemology.

(Time flies like an arrow.  Fruit flies like a banana.  -- Groucho Marx.
Eats shoots and leaves. -- popular book with a picture of a Panda.)

In Chinese characters, karate (chuan fa) originally had the "empty" part of "empty hand" being the word for empty as in nothing-in-the-hand.  A Japanese martial arts expert much later created the kanji for kara-te from the ideogram for "nothing-on-your-mind hand." Syntactic or semantic?

Noam Chomsky believes that only humans can use language.  Thus, researchers  named one subject "Nim Chimpsky."  Semantic or syntactic?

"Tanks" alot, Ed!
 


Post 25

Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 2:53pmSanction this postReply
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I should have added 'domesticated' as a preface to 'animals'... my bad... but it is true that tribal breeds servitude, a form of dependency... and that the tribal was bourne from the animals in general... a sense of self is what makes for an individual, and it had to grow and develop thru the millenia of civilization - that 'process whereby man is freed from man'...

Post 26

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 5:26amSanction this postReply
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RM: ...   it is true that tribal breeds servitude, a form of dependency... and that the tribal was bourne from the animals in general... a sense of self is what makes for an individual, and it had to grow and develop thru the millenia of civilization - that 'process whereby man is freed from man'...

Wrong... and yet right ...

The works of Deborah Tarn, Julian Jaynes, and Denise Schmandt-Besserat all from different disciplines, provide evidence that writing was the trigger for the widespread understanding of "self."  I allow that other forms of self-expression -- decoration and music -- also give an individiual the opportunity for self-perception, as would a pool of still water, for that matter.   If anyone here knows of a rigorous study of the origin and evolution of "self" please cite it.

Animals are not "tribal."  Some animals are social.  Others are not.  Society and individuality are modes of survival.  Some animals engage in both at different times.  Some peoples do as well.  (The Plains Indians had what the Spanish called a "fandango."  After wintering apart in small groups, families, perhaps men alone, they would all meet up in the spring.  Mountainmen, voyageurs and others also participated later. Then, they would split up again.

Generally, however, species are often, individualist or collectivist, depending on whether they are hunters, grazers, foragers or scavengers.  A school of sharks, a flock of hawks, or a troop of monkeys would be a contradiction in terms.  However, the troop of baboons, pride of lions, pack of wolves and school of piranhas also exist.  (Once thought to be a hunting band, the piranha school may be a mere defense against predators such as the river dolphin. -- wikipedia) 

Among social animals, the alpha leaders and beta followers are supplemented by "gammas" who move among gene pools.  These outliers and rangers do not socialize well, yet, they reproduce (or at least mate) more frequently than others, certainly more often than the alpha males.  (Ask any pirate: chicks dig rogues.)  Typically males -- but also female gammas are known -- they learn that they can survive away from the pack.  That may be a mere tautotology as the gamma chimps eaten by lions don't learn much more after that. 

At the same time, humans spread away from Africa, over the course of at least two, if not four ice ages.  Such harsh living gave the advantage to small bands, families, and individuals.

Whether a human culture is "individualist" or "collectivist" depends on more factors than mere climate, but, it is true that individualism is more common north of 40 degrees north latitude. 

Robert Malcom touches on a significant point about "civlization."  Literally "citification" or "urbanization" civilization, indeed, makes individualism easier.  I just finished reading The City by Max Weber. "Stadtluft macht frei."  City air makes you free.  We call it the asphalt jungle or the concrete jungle.  Socially, humans in cities are closer to monkeys in trees than they are to chimps on the ground.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 12/28, 5:28am)


Post 27

Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 9:05pmSanction this postReply
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Are you suggesting that animals make rational choices? If so I'm a monkey.

Post 28

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 7:35amSanction this postReply
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No- but you are an ape...;-)

Post 29

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 1:38pmSanction this postReply
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Mike,

==========
(1) How do you test for imagination?
==========
Well, you could give someone lemons, and see if they make lemonade (without ever having witnessing lemonade-making before). It's a crude test for "novelty-creation."

If a being consistently creates novelties -- rather than habitual creations, such as a beaver always and only creating a dam; or a spider, always and only creating a certain web, etc -- then that being is imaginative.


============
(2) Sorry, but could you provide examples of syntatic confusion and semantic confusion? I tried the internet and all I got was gibberish, which might be indicative. But, I ask because I regard you as proficient in objectivist epistemology.
============
Sure, here's one which I recently got exposed to:

Semantically-confusing:
=================
(Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. -- Groucho Marx.
=================
Only further discussion of these things will reveal whether you understand their meanings.

Syntactically-confusing:
=================
While waiting for the bus, Johnny opened up his ;koqehrgptoasrejlkh and then he showed it to the weorhadrofgeaqug0[ -- but then the policeman said: "You can't do that in public!" so he went to the asopighqe0pa8ghy and then he @#%^%^$@
=================
No further discussion of these things will reveal an understandable meaning. Whole new symbols (rather than rearranging old symbols, or improving understanding of old symbols) are needed in order for there to be any understanding.

Ed


Post 30

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 4:52pmSanction this postReply
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Semantics deals with the meaning of words, syntax with their arrangement. I kinda know what Ed was going for with his second example, but it's not a proper one. This is a syntactic ambiguity:

"I shot an elephant in my pyjamas."

Post 31

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 6:51pmSanction this postReply
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Ed, so, the Yerkes chimps made syntactic errors, but not semantic errors.  They inserted gibberish and nonsense, but did not create puns.

How about Washoe's invention of "cry hurt food" for "radish" or her preference of "food drink box" over the formally taught "cold box" for "refrigerator."

And what about shooting an elephant in your pyjamas?  I call that semantic, not syntactic.


Post 32

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 7:01pmSanction this postReply
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Depends on how large those pajamas are, Mike... [snort] ;-)

Post 33

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 9:14pmSanction this postReply
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Okay you guys, but ...

Ever get a "syntax error" message on your computer? Notice how you can't get past a syntax error -- if you don't first fix it? We can get past semantic errors by just explaining ourselves better:

"I didn't mean that there are tiny watch-wearing bugs -- "time flies" -- who happen to like an arrow; and I didn't meant that whenever thrown, that all fruit flies through the air just like a banana does!"

You cannot get past a "syntax error" with mere elaboration like that. You can only get past a syntax error by fixing it so that it's not an error any more, or by creating an encryption code that fixes it.

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 12/28, 9:16pm)


Post 34

Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 9:50pmSanction this postReply
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Mike,

=========================
... so, the Yerkes chimps made syntactic errors, but not semantic errors. They inserted gibberish and nonsense, but did not create puns.
=========================

I briefly checked out the Yerkes chimps but didn't find the right article. If you can lead me to the evidence, I would like to see it first (before responding).


=========================
How about Washoe's invention of "cry hurt food" for "radish" or her preference of "food drink box" over the formally taught "cold box" for "refrigerator."
=========================

I don't see this as evidence of imagination. It can also be seen as evidence for grouping things together based on proper and logical concept-formation, but I don't see it as that either.

Washoe knows a couple hundred signs. They could be created with pure conditioning, just like when you train a dog to sit, and to lay down, via repetitive use of signals. Similar signals, or things similar enough to known signals, might be substituted -- either intentionally, or by happenstance -- by the chimp.

For instance, going back to the example of a trained dog, the signal used in order to get the dog to sit -- the spoken word "sit" -- might get mixed up with the spoken word "soot." If you yell to your wife that you've got soot in the fireplace, then, at that moment, the dog might accidentally sit -- because "soot" sounds like "sit."

The dog heard a signal that sounded like the signal which the dog had associated with sitting. However, in the case of Washoe, it's the animal who's "doing the talking" (signalling). Examples where animals signal, rather than receive signals, would be better.

Birds signal other birds when a predator is around. Not just any predator, but all of them. I don't know, but logically assume, that the signal is the same for all of the potential predators. The other birds respond as if there's danger (and take flight or hide).

Now, if a brand new predator is introduced -- a predator from the other side of the world -- and the bird signals other birds of a predator, then the bird is merely using the only signal it knows which is associated with predators.

In the same way, Washoe might be using the only signals known for cry, hurt, food, drink, box. The researchers might try to teach Washoe "radish" or "cold box" -- but it's easier for Washoe just to call things by old names.

Interestingly, Washoe kept the word "food" -- which is probably one of the first ever words learned. There is probably even a specific bird call for "food" (just like there is for "predator" or "danger"), because food is so fundamental to survival in the wild.

Ed

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Post 35

Monday, December 29, 2008 - 10:12amSanction this postReply
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Food for thought -
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081224215542.htm

Post 36

Monday, December 29, 2008 - 11:05amSanction this postReply
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Interesting, Rev'.

The research test with the clump of dots moving on the screen might have evolutionary roots.

If you were an ancient human on the plains of the Serengeti, then it would have been awfully important -- perhaps "life and death" important -- that you were able to track which way a hunted herd of animals is moving. This is true even if not all animals are moving, or if some animals are actually moving in the opposite direction (temporarily).

Ed

Post 37

Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 8:19pmSanction this postReply
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I've been intrigued for many years with birds.  I had an Amazon Red Front parrot for a number of years, and he (or she??) was quite clever in many ways, but incredibly dense in many others.  (I got very frustrated at one point trying to teach him (or her?) to PUSH the damn keys on the computer instead of removing them with his beak - and he was a genius with that beak in general.) 

I've also spent many lunch breaks at work studying local crows, some of whom I watched through several generations.  It's clear that while they may not have much processing power in their little brains, still they will sit and patiently analyze whatever they are confronted with - like running a spreadsheet on a Commodore 64, it works, but it is necessarily s  l  o   w  w   w.  Yet they are VERY quick to learn from not just other crows, but from other birds or even humans when its a matter of perceiving a pattern of cause and effect.

The key difference here is probably one of the number of levels of abstraction that a particular brain structure can support and still deliver results in real-time.  I think that Ravens have the capacity for considerable human-quality abstraction, based on many accounts of their behavior, involving imagination, time-binding, trickery - implying the ability to think in terms of another animal's perception, as well as tool using and humor, such as in deliberate pranks.

Problem solving, however, is not generally all that linear a skill.  Usually, any significant problem quickly becomes interdisciplinary, and the solutions can be thought of as in algebra - the intersection of sets.  If you have more variables than independent equations, then you're not going to get a single point solution.  Sometimes just arriving at a finite solution space is sufficient. 

So, the usual practice is to mentally envision the problem from several different and independent perspectives.   Problems in law and justice, for example, often require aspects of epistemology, ethics, psychology and economics.  Real solutions often have to satisfy criteria from several independent viewpoints.

Then, of courser, you get the rationalists who are determined to follow a single equation whereever it takes them.  Leonard Peikoff has more or less labled this as the most common sin of objectivists - and as a personal fault, as well.

Ravens, in particular, appear to perhaps have the capacity of maintaining this multi-dimensional perspective, although doubtless not at the level of a normal human.  Various accounts of interactions between humans and ravens typically characterize the human side as tending to think of the raven as another person - and perhaps the raven equivalently thinks of people as clever - if ugly and non-flying - ravens.  It helps, I'm sure, that ravens have an apparently marvelous sense of self-possession, as well as a clear capacity for empathy.

My one personal encounter up close with a raven came when I noticed what appeared to be a very large crow, who was gleefully throwing the entire contents of a wire-mesh trash container out onto the pavement.  A crow would never have let me get nearly that close - as in about five feet.  And no normally paranoid crow (which is how they survive to a ripe old age) would have ever put itself deliberately in a confined space like that to begin with.

Yet here was this big bird, diving head first into the ~ four-foot tall container, and emerging triumphant with one food carton after another.  When it noticed me, it hardly paused, looked me over and then deciding that I was probably not a threat, looked around significantly at the huge mess it had created, which I took as inviting me in on the joke, which I'm guessing was along the lines of "look how easilly I defeated the humans in their attempts to keep me from the goodies."  Or maybe, "look what a grand mess I've made here."

Ravens are just big enough that no half-way smart cat or other common predator is going to try and jump them - not much meat and a lot of nasty beak.  So, they don't have to look twenty times before they furtively snatch at a piece of food on the ground in front of them - which is what every crow will do every time.  Having the luxury of being reasonably safe and confident in day-to-day survival issues has probably lead to a selection for high intelligence, likely similar to what happened to proto-humans, once they started doing weapons, fire and language.


Post 38

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - 4:22amSanction this postReply
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That's so Raven

Phil,

I've got to assume that you've seen me defend a position which characterizes its opposition as merely anthropomorphizing a human-like intelligence onto viewed animals. I've got to assume that you'll expect me to continue in the same vein until convinced otherwise. You said:

I think that Ravens have the capacity for considerable human-quality abstraction, based on many accounts of their behavior, involving imagination, time-binding, trickery - implying the ability to think in terms of another animal's perception, as well as tool using and humor, such as in deliberate pranks.
I read about your encounter with the trash-can Raven. I (no surprise) disagree that that Raven was feeling cocky and intelligent (as you had ascribed). For another instance, there is a spider known, in certain circles, as the Trap-Door Spider. It "creates" a web disk to cover a hole that it hides in, in order to surprise an innocent passerby. To avoid contradiction, here is what must be a portion of the psycho-epistemological continuum of this tiny-brained spider:

*************************
Okay ... Okay. There is a hole in the ground. Right over there. Now, all these insects run away from me when I try to bite them. That sucks. Can't a spider get a crunchy meal around here? Now, if I get down into that hole, then these stupid insects will walk right by and I can jump out and grab them. No, wait, they can see almost as good as I can. Damn! They'll see me in the hole and run away before I can grab them! Think, think, think! ... I've got it!

I am a spider, right? And, since A is A, I -- as a spider -- am a web-weaving creature. If I were to, say, weave a web-disk of the appropriate diameter to cover the top of the hole, then these other insects would just see the disk on the ground -- NOT EVEN KNOWING that there's a hole under it, LET ALONE that there might be a hungry spider down in the hole! It's ingenious!

Aaaaaaaaaaahahahahhahahahahahahaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!
**************************

Now, perhaps this is somewhat of a straw-man/web-man, because ravens are smarter than spiders, but I don't see how it is one yet. I'll leave it to others to either admit that they have to anthropomorphize the exact same thoughts onto a spider brain (to which I will follow up with an example of plants which must be thinking thoughts -- because it best explains their behavior), or they have to show me why the trap-door spider analogy -- compared to ravens -- is weak.

Ed


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Post 39

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - 8:44pmSanction this postReply
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Well, it so happens that we know that spiders and insects in general as well are pretty hard-wired.  Many tests of the learning capacity of insects and arachnids have indicated this.

I watched a sibling pair of teenage crows that I had been observing from the time they fell out of the nest once observe a gull hovering in an updraft without appearing to move its wings at all.  As soon as the gull left, one of the young crows flew up to exactly the same spot in the air and suceeded for several seconds in hovering, just like the gull.  It was clear in context that there was no reason for the crow to have flow up to that point in the air except to test whether it could in fact hover.  I think that crows only have the intelligence of a smart dog, overall, but they do use and even make tools, as in those crows that fashioned a hook out of wire to get food out of a tubular container.  Dogs don't have much capability in that respect, partly perhaps because they don't have anything like a hand to work with, while crows and many other birds are quite adept with beaks and claws.

The OC Register runs these "amazing pet tales" in its local section off and on, and a recent one featured "Bob, the raven."  Seems this raven just showed up one day in the patio area of a business, where a lot of employees spent their breaks or ate lunch.  The employees theorized that maybe it had flown into the reflective glass of the high-rise and injured itself, but, whatever the reason, the bird could not fly.  So, it became the company mascot for several months.  Everyone would bring food scraps (a good idea, given the lineage of the term "ravenous"), and reportedly, the general spirits of the entire work crew seemed to improve as they looked forward to interacting with "Bob."

The clue to what was probably really going on, of course, was connected with the raven's name.  Various people had come up with names for the bird, but none of them stuck.  Finally, one of the secretaries simply asked him, "What's your name?"  To which the raven replied clearly "Bob, Bob, Bob."  He should know, right?  Immediately upon reading this, I naturally hit upon the explanation.

"Bob" had doubtless been at some point raised by humans, perhaps from a fledgling.  Then either Bob escaped, or the humans abandoned him.  Still, it's interesting that after months away, the bird was able to recall his name and respond to a direct question.


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