DDL on 17/12/2013 at 19:54
But you're simultaneously saying (and yes, I'm paraphrasing for brevity, sorry) "we don't know what the fuck animals are thinking, and never will", and also "animals don't store ideas".
These are mutually exclusive, surely?
Also, animals DO store a lot of information, and pass it on to subsequent generations (crows (
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/science/26crow.html) teaching their kids to hate people in caveman masks, for example).
Chimps, elephants, dolphins, corvids, all of these have in some fashion demonstrated the ability to conceive of "self" and "other", and to work cooperatively. The ability to imagine the viewpoint of another to the extent that both can work toward a common goal is...pretty damn significant, and not in any way unique to humans.
SubJeff on 17/12/2013 at 20:42
Quote Posted by DDL
But you're simultaneously saying (and yes, I'm paraphrasing for brevity, sorry) "we don't know what the fuck animals are thinking, and never will", and also "animals don't store ideas".
No, I never said we don't know (I gave an example about a dog and his owner both knowing when the other is annoyed already ffs, learn to read) and also said that with more advanced tech we may be able to communicate better.
I mean they don't physically store it. They can learn from each other, sure.
Quote:
The ability to imagine the viewpoint of another to the extent that both can work toward a common goal is...pretty damn significant, and not in any way unique to humans.
I never said animals can't do this.
Nicker on 17/12/2013 at 22:02
Individual humans aren't that much more adept at physically storing information than bright animals. Most of our useful knowledge is accumulated due to our culture. Animals also have a capacity for culture. Our advantage when it comes to storage and transmission of information is our superior semantic capacity. We can store a greater volume of information and much more detailed information, first with oral traditions and later with writing.
But the point of defining apes as legal persons is not the same as taxonomically or philosophically classifying them as humans or human equivalents. Nor is it the same as expanding the definitions of sentience to include other creatures. As I understand it, personhood would mean that they are automatically entitled to certain protections and you don't need to continually establish that, case by case. So you don't need to determine how humanely they are being treated as research subjects or for entertainment, you simply cannot use them for those purposes. This would also automatically ban the trade in chimps as pets, a good thing.
Of course even if they were granted personhood, you couldn't simply open the cages and proclaim "Be free, my primate brothers and sisters". But you could certainly help prevent those cages being refilled.
SubJeff on 17/12/2013 at 23:10
Nonsense.
Individual humans can chronicle their own lives or the results of experiments on paper. No animal can do this.
Yes, our knowledge its passed on through our culture but that needs individuals with the ability to record and retrieve all that data.
I agree with protecting animals but I don't see why you need to bother with defining them as persons. In fact I think it's a silly side track, a waste of time and is actually detrimental to the cause. Quit talking semantic and legal bs about persons and get on with creating sensible codes of practice for treating animals with compassion.
faetal on 17/12/2013 at 23:38
That's a different level of storage. It's like spinning plates. Wipe out the population of crows and the knowledge is gone, since it's entirely dependent on 1:1 transferral knowledge between individuals. The technique may be learned again, but only by chance. Wipe out Western civilisation though, and subsequent humans can eventually decode our knowledge stores and tap into a wealth of stored knowledge.
That said, I disagree with Nuff's idea that the most complex other species could get is "do this for more food", since it adheres to half a century out of date ethological assumptions. One only has to observe the sign language successfully taught to apes to see that their minds are way more complex than this.
DDL - I'm totally in agreement that it is hypothetically possible to teach other species to harness communication with each other and humans more effectively. I doubt it would ever be on a par though due to theory of mind limitations.
SubJeff on 18/12/2013 at 00:01
Yeah, I know apes have the ability for more complex communication but how complex does it get?
Can you ask then why? Can they answer with a because? And can you get them to change their mind based on evidence?
faetal on 18/12/2013 at 01:17
We're not sure yet. Which is sort of the point. Communication by sign language is pretty crude and is designed for human-human interaction. It might be that what we know now is the limit, or it could be that there is some better way which parses human symbolism in a way which makes better sense to another species. I'm not in a position to say anything conclusive as it's a slow moving (very little money in it) and under-developed area of research. The trouble with science today is that it's mostly driven by money-making potential. Communication with the wildlife, other than perhaps helping Disney voice actors go method, isn't a money maker.
Queue on 18/12/2013 at 01:58
[video=youtube;E5IQnQhzMSI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5IQnQhzMSI[/video]
Caradavin on 18/12/2013 at 01:59
This is seriously a most interesting thread.
demagogue on 18/12/2013 at 02:05
Hmm, I think we understand more about animal language than people might imagine, with all the research that's gone into signal processing. We already have statistical models of how much information content is in various animal signal production, and the logical structure of it. I think the line humans cross is what I brought up in my last post, which is that other animals can't predicate -- actually some can apparently predicate, other higher primates and dolphins -- but even they don't predicate deeper than one level, and IIRC the subject needs to be presently available to experience. For the other primates, what I read was, it's the difference between chimpanzees and gorillas having a massive working memory so they can keep 20 items immediately in mind -- humans can't do that -- but what we lose in working memory, only 5-7 items, we trade off in being able to nest them, so you can have a dog that chases a cat that chases a mouse that lives in a hole, and we can follow it. If you can't nest like that, then predicating information can't really get off the ground (the theory goes) because most information bits that are only 1 level of predication (recognizing property->subject) are already immediately available to the senses so animals can coordinate around that already, e.g., wolves don't need to nest properties about their environment to pack hunt very well and know their individual roles.
The question still on the table though is what relevance this has towards a right to be treated with dignity... It means we are in a better position to take care of ourselves and animals, because we understand the world more deeply, so our responsibility is greater. But does having a greater responsibility immediately equate to greater rights? In the human rights literature, rights are reserved particularly for the exactly most vulnerable human populations, because they're the ones that need the protection most. Persons with knowledge and power, and greater responsibilities, already have some means to protect themselves.
