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> What do you mean "incredibly unique?" I mean that no other species has the ability to do the same. > And what is the value in expressing the same thing in

> What do you mean "incredibly unique?" I mean that no other species has the ability to do the same. > And what is the value in expressing the same thing in so many different ways? I don't see how you can argue that saying the same things over and over is intelligent. Saying the same thing over and over again is not "intelligent." But being able to produce an infinite set of linguistic expressions which express the same idea is atomically indicative of a higher order of linguistic creativity than anything any other species is capable of. I'd say that qualifies as intelligence. > They are really not very different from us in terms of linguistic abilities. Our linguistic abilities are mostly a matter of socialization of history. I'm going to have to disagree in a major way with this. Humans have an innate, generative grammar that allows for a completely different system of communication and thought than that of animals. Animals, at best, may have something like words. But they do not have grammar. That's huge. > Feral humans won't be much smarter than an ape. Difficult to judge which would be "smarter." Secondly, not sure what argument you're making. You're saying that our linguistic abilities are not very different than apes, because they are socializations. But you also claim that humans without language are roughly as intelligent as apes. So, if language does not correspond to intelligence, does that imply that feral humans are just as intelligent as normal humans? Feral humans lack language because the brief period of time in which the human brain greatly expands its linguistic learning capabilities (infancy and young toddler-hood) is spent in isolation -- critical linguistic facets of the brain are never exercised. That period of development does not come back. Their brains are simply underdeveloped, in a fundamental way. I'd say that qualifies as less intelligent. I'd recommend picking up "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker.

Retra 11y ago
>But being able to produce an infinite set of linguistic expressions which express the same idea is atomically indicative of a higher order of linguistic creativity than anything any other species is capable of. I'd say that qualifies as intelligence. The key ingredient in this kind of activity is using existing terms in new ways through analogy. It's not just introducing new linguistic expressions. That non bulgero sammi solon be intelligence, because new words don't mean anything unless there's an understanding already backing them. >But they do not have grammar. That's huge. Do they need it? Do we need it? How much of it do we need? Have you made proper consideration for non-verbal grammars (like possibly in bees?) People like to talk about human intelligence like you could drop a baby in the jungle and it'd develop nuclear physics and ride out on a hovercraft. Just consider how frequently people claim quantum physics is unintuitive (as though classical physics didn't take many millennia to understand!) If you strip away our current environment and culture, you are left with a creature who has a slight advantage over apes -- and if you run that advantage for 200,000 years, the difference between humans and apes will magnify into vast differences in behavior, even if the underlying machinery doesn't change. >Feral humans lack language because [...] There were first humans who had language. There were early humans who had not yet started to use grammar and had proper socialization. Would you consider them significantly more intelligent than apes? Why or why not?
minwcnt5 11y ago
> I mean that no other species has the ability to do the same. Dolphins likely can. They're capable of inventing novel tricks, and then communicating the behavior with a different dolphin, proven by them doing the same new trick in synchrony without either having seen it before. They are also capable of communicating abstract concepts to dolphins in a separate partition of the tank who they can "hear" but not see. We don't know if their language has an equivalent of "sentences", I guess, so you may be technically correct, but I find it hard to imagine a method in which the complex and abstract concepts Dolphins have been shown to communicate only have a single or small finite number of representations. Captive Dolphins can also understand syntax in human sentences. They understand the difference between "get the hoop and then the ball", and "get the ball and then the hoop". And they can generalize this to different concepts and numbers of clauses, and tend to act confused if the sentence is egregiously ungrammatical. They also understand future and past tense, and the difference between a statement and a question. Is it likely that they would understand our language so well if they didn't have something fairly similar of their own, if they hadn't developed language capabilities at a young age? They seemingly have a better ability to understand human language than feral children. Finally, there is evidence that the Shannon entropy of dolphin language is at least 3-4. Human languages are around 8-9, but not enough data has been collected to know that the Dolphin language isn't more complex, and captive Dolphins may have less sophisticated communication than wild ones. In any case, I think even if their language is effectively determined by only 3-4 letter sequences (their "alphabet" is about the same size as English - ~27 whistles) rather than 8-9, that's still complex enough for me to doubt your claim that language capabilities are unique to humans.

Retra 11y ago

>But being able to produce an infinite set of linguistic expressions which express the same idea is atomically indicative of a higher order of linguistic creativity than anything any other species is capable of. I'd say that qualifies as intelligence. The key ingredient in this kind of activity is using existing terms in new ways through analogy. It's not just introducing new linguistic expressions. That non bulgero sammi solon be intelligence, because new words don't mean anything unless there's an understanding already backing them. >But they do not have grammar. That's huge. Do they need it? Do we need it? How much of it do we need? Have you made proper consideration for non-verbal grammars (like possibly in bees?) People like to talk about human intelligence like you could drop a baby in the jungle and it'd develop nuclear physics and ride out on a hovercraft. Just consider how frequently people claim quantum physics is unintuitive (as though classical physics didn't take many millennia to understand!) If you strip away our current environment and culture, you are left with a creature who has a slight advantage over apes -- and if you run that advantage for 200,000 years, the difference between humans and apes will magnify into vast differences in behavior, even if the underlying machinery doesn't change. >Feral humans lack language because [...] There were first humans who had language. There were early humans who had not yet started to use grammar and had proper socialization. Would you consider them significantly more intelligent than apes? Why or why not?

minwcnt5 11y ago

> I mean that no other species has the ability to do the same. Dolphins likely can. They're capable of inventing novel tricks, and then communicating the behavior with a different dolphin, proven by them doing the same new trick in synchrony without either having seen it before. They are also capable of communicating abstract concepts to dolphins in a separate partition of the tank who they can "hear" but not see. We don't know if their language has an equivalent of "sentences", I guess, so you may be technically correct, but I find it hard to imagine a method in which the complex and abstract concepts Dolphins have been shown to communicate only have a single or small finite number of representations. Captive Dolphins can also understand syntax in human sentences. They understand the difference between "get the hoop and then the ball", and "get the ball and then the hoop". And they can generalize this to different concepts and numbers of clauses, and tend to act confused if the sentence is egregiously ungrammatical. They also understand future and past tense, and the difference between a statement and a question. Is it likely that they would understand our language so well if they didn't have something fairly similar of their own, if they hadn't developed language capabilities at a young age? They seemingly have a better ability to understand human language than feral children. Finally, there is evidence that the Shannon entropy of dolphin language is at least 3-4. Human languages are around 8-9, but not enough data has been collected to know that the Dolphin language isn't more complex, and captive Dolphins may have less sophisticated communication than wild ones. In any case, I think even if their language is effectively determined by only 3-4 letter sequences (their "alphabet" is about the same size as English - ~27 whistles) rather than 8-9, that's still complex enough for me to doubt your claim that language capabilities are unique to humans.