Generally annoyed by public smearing of Objectivism...

O'ism is supposed to describe reality, not prescribe it.

Some people just don't get reality without a prescription.

Post 61

Thursday, September 7, 2006 - 6:10pm

Ted, not meaning to goad? you, but ...

By recognition I meant two phenomena, an animal's recognition of a known entity, like a dog to his master, and second, recognition as in, "that's a skunk, better stay away."

But isn't this mere memory (of a familiar, proper noun)?

and second, recognition as in, "that's a skunk, better stay away."

But can't this be explained evolutionarily -- as a mere, passed-on instinct?

Ed

Post 62

Thursday, September 7, 2006 - 7:16pm

My Scutes are not that Thin!

Ed,

No, the recognition of a skunk would most absolutely not be instinctual. If we take your typical carnivore as the example, it would be born as perceptually tabula rasa as a human, it would instinctually suckle at birth, squeak when hungry, or when not being touched by its mother or littermates, it would be excited by the smell of sex pheromones, etc. But in-born animal instincts are always mediated by sensation, through the pleasure/pain mechanism, not even at the level of perception. This is why mammalian childhood is so long, because the young must learn almost all their behaviors.

Naive carnivores will fool around with all sorts of deadly objects, this is why poisonous animals often give off sense-mediated signals such as hisses or sudden bright colorations that startle.

The recognition of a skunk is not a startle response though. Every dog in the neighbourhood where I grew up had to attack and get sprayed by a skunk one time before they learned not to do it again. (I still have the smell off tomato-sauce under my fingers 20 years later.) But they only had to do it once. The skunk's striped tail is not meant to startle, it is a little flag saying "remember me?" I would argue that this type of association would be the animal precursor of concept formation on the human level. It would be pre-conceptual, given that there would be no verbum, but it would be anthropomorphizing to call it vague.

[BTW, Please don't think you would ever provoke me, I might ignore you if you were the type to drop context, but I've been mugged twice in the Bronx without getting emotional. (Actually, they were only attempted muggings, and then the would-be-carnivores learned to watch out for my blue eyes.)]

Biology, instinct, animal mind, etc., are all issues which are sorely under-addressed and misunderstood, both in the general culture, but also, more critically, by even authoritative Objectivists.

Ted

(As for proper nouns, they are treated as concepts so far as logical predication, and I would consider them "defective concepts" to coin a very bad term. Proper nouns are an issue that Rand did not cover satisfactorily, and although I have my theories, there is not enough room in this margin for the proof.)
(Edited by Ted Keer
on 9/07, 7:21pm)

Post 63

Thursday, September 7, 2006 - 7:33pm

Ted, regarding the 2 "recognitions" -- you wrote ...

I think both involve what would be a perceptual judgement

But I've always found the term "perceptual judgment" to be wanting. The burning question in my mind is -- what faculty is doing the "judging"? If you stick with the 4 powers of perceptual awareness which I've outlined, then it seems to be a combination of memory and crude (non-integrative) association -- that is getting the "judging" done during "perceptual judgment."

Vague association as applied to animals seems to be smuggling in a moral implication, as if the vagueness were due to a lack of focus.

But how about crude association, Ted? Does that term suffer in the same way that vague does? In this respect, the crudeness is not due to a volitional lack of focus on the animal's part -- but, rather, to the limits of the animal's powers of awareness.

My impression of the higher animals is that they do form implicit 1st (and, especially in the case of that famous grey parrot) 2nd level concepts.

I don't share the same impression. Perhaps we could flesh out how it is that each of us is thinking about the available evidence say, for Alex the parrot, for example.

Last I heard, that bird had used 700 words. But birds are creatures with super-human powers of memory -- and it is not impossible that Alex the parrot has memorized 700 crude associations (though it may turn out to be impossible for a human to memorize 700 completely a-logical associations). As concepts are integrations of 2 or more units of things (with specific measurements omitted), and Alex my merely be rote-memorizing, I take it to be a stretch for you to claim that Alex has conceptual powers of awareness.

Has anyone read about the recent discovery that Dolphins develop unique identificatory calls that purportedly serve as "names?" I do not belive that dolphins have been shown to address other dolphins by the addressee's call, I believe it has only been shown that they each use their own self-identifying call when seeking another's attention.

I think that this is interesting, but I think that the uniqueness of the dolphin calls may be explained without reference to dolphin thought -- just as the uniqueness of each humans voice pitch, or accent, can be.

Ted, I haven't ever seen a good case made for conceptual powers of awareness in the animal kingdom. Do you have any other specific examples -- such as the apes that count, or the dolphin that can use a mirror to check out its own backside (this is the strongest evidence of animal cognition that I've ever been made aware of -- by the way)?

I'd be curious to travel down this road, interpreting evidence, and making conjecture about what sorts of generalizations ought to be drawn from what sorts of available evidence.

Ed

Post 64

Thursday, September 7, 2006 - 8:57pm

Looks like we are skipping each other, so will be very brief, then at length later.

• I do not hold that any animal conceptualizes. This would require the use of language with words to perceptually tag the concepts and make them manipulable as units.

• I do believe that the concept of a perceptual judgement "This is an X" is quite necessary and correct so far as humans, see Evidence of the Senses. As for animals, my intuition is that higher mammals and birds are at this level, but that given they lack words we cannot properly say that they make judgements as in explicit propositions. Given that humans have evolved from "dumb" animals, one must assume that there is some sort of continuity. The argument is the psycho-epistemological analog of saying, well, gliding animals don't fly, so are they really aerial?

• As for the grey parrot, it does have perceptual tags - remembered words, so I think it is plausible that it may have 1st & 2nd level concepts. When asked what color, what shape, what object, what material, it answers correctly (but not, so far as I know, without exception.) My evidence here comes only from popularized media such as Discovery Channel, so I cannot draw any conclusions on that simple basis. But regarding the 700 words, you're giving me new information here. My immediate reaction is that primates and carnivores in the wild are believed to have at most 30 calls at most. The only conclusion is that more evidence is necessary. (Oh, parrots do live as long as elephants, btw.)

• As for the dolphin calls, again, I only raised it as an interesting point, in itself, from what I have heard, the exhibited behaviour is NOT language, but again, may be a step along the evolutionary chain in that direction.

I owe Dustin a long response to his last gracious post, and only intended to write 100 words here. I find it almost impossible not to communicate in paragraphs, if not essays. My apologies to both of you for not having three heads and six hands.

Too much for now,

Ted

Post 65

Thursday, September 7, 2006 - 11:53pm

Ted, you said ...

As for animals, my intuition is that higher mammals and birds are at this level, but that given they lack words we cannot properly say that they make judgements as in explicit propositions.

But Ted, circumstantial evidence suggests that bird brains aren't even physiologically capable of concept formation -- which, purportedly, involves an advanced cerebral cortex ...

A bird's brain is different to a mammalian brain in that the complex folds found in the cerebral cortex of mammals are missing and the cerebral cortex itself is much smaller proportionally than in mammals. Instead the corpora striata, a more basic part of the cerebral hemispheres is proportionally larger and better developed. --http://birds.ecoport.org/Identification/EBnervous.htm

Post 66

Friday, September 8, 2006 - 11:25am

Ted, you said ...

The recognition of a skunk is not a startle response though. Every dog in the neighbourhood where I grew up had to attack and get sprayed by a skunk one time before they learned not to do it again.

Forgive me for beating a dead skunk here, but while I do now get your point (that mammals aren't born with an instinctual fear of skunks), isn't the best explanation for the 'learning' you mention here -- simply classical conditioning (ie. crude association, held in memory)?

In this respect, dogs who've been beaten by men in uniform -- bark at men in uniform, etc. There doesn't seem to me to be any kind of special recognition that goes along with that. Sense perception, crude associations, and memory seem to be all that is needed to explain behavior in the animal kingdom (though I'd be quite open to continually exploring alternative examples, regarding the correspondence to reality of this postulate of mine).

Ed

Post 67

Friday, September 8, 2006 - 4:48pm