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The "entirely different" part is about specific claims about language. There are many different ways animals are able to communicate with each other, and with

by lambda 8y ago

The "entirely different" part is about specific claims about language. There are many different ways animals are able to communicate with each other, and with humans. Sounds, gestures, songs, body language, scents, and so on. They can get quite creative, they can be used to communicate emotion, they can indicate that the animals have some sense for the mental state of who they are communicating with, and so on. Almost all of this is fairly obvious to anyone who's ever owned a pet (though there are plenty of cases in which there can be some subjective bias there, so it can be good to devise better tests if you're really skeptical). But none of them have been demonstrated to have the arbitrarily complex, abstract, compositional nature that human language does; in which a finite (but large) set of words or signs can be strung together in arbitrarily complex ways, allowing a countably infinite number of different ideas to be potentially conveyed. This is qualitatively different than any other communication method that has been demonstrated in other animals. There's no dogma about it; it's just something that is unique to humans, as far as we know, just like the amazing ability to manipulate skin color and texture is something that's unique to cuttlefish. There are some things that certain kinds of animals can do that other kinds of animals can't, like flight, breathing via water or air, producing venoms, and so on. It would be a pretty big scientific breakthrough to discover that there was some mammal that could change its skin like cuttlefish, or to discover that a mammal could be trained to breath water. Likewise, discovering that non-human animal can learn a human-like language, with its arbitrary complexity through compositionality and ability to express abstract thought, is a pretty big claim too. The problem is, some people make this claim, without sufficient evidence to back it up.

trhway 8y ago
> to discover that a mammal could be trained to breath water. this was done to dogs back in 20th century. The water was saturated with O2 to high levels. Again, the difference isn't the divine-granted qualitative "entirely different", it is just about continuous incrementally changing quantity.
- lambda 8y ago
  That's not training dogs to breath water, that's altering the water to be breathable by dogs. If you want to look at it that way, nothing is qualtitively "entirely different." We can all breath water to different degrees, and if you go down that route, then there's no real qualitative difference between mammals and fish, right? Saying that these differences aren't qualitative and are just difference of degree isn't really a useful way to have discourse. There is absolutely a qualitative difference between how respiration works in mammals and fish, and just because you can manipulate the environment in some way to make it work doesn't change that. Language is in the same way qualitatively different than other forms of communication, just as mammals are qualitatively different than fish. Humans can communicate in language, and can communicate other ways. If I go to China (and I don't speak Chinese), I can buy food by pointing to it and having someone hold up their fingers to signify the price. I'm not communicating through language, but I have communicated effectively. And you wouldn't call what I did there sign language; it is not a consistent set of signs shared by a group of people which can be composed into an infinite number of sentences with arbitrarily complex meanings. It is instead a fairly limited method of communication which can be used to communicate a fairly direct concept, I need that thing, along with a response that simply indicates a number for how much is expected in payment. I don't know why you keep on referring to the distinction I'm making here as "divine-granted." I'm simply making a distinction between language, and communication that is not language.

by lambda 8y ago

trhway 8y ago

> to discover that a mammal could be trained to breath water. this was done to dogs back in 20th century. The water was saturated with O2 to high levels. Again, the difference isn't the divine-granted qualitative "entirely different", it is just about continuous incrementally changing quantity.

lambda 8y ago
That's not training dogs to breath water, that's altering the water to be breathable by dogs. If you want to look at it that way, nothing is qualtitively "entirely different." We can all breath water to different degrees, and if you go down that route, then there's no real qualitative difference between mammals and fish, right? Saying that these differences aren't qualitative and are just difference of degree isn't really a useful way to have discourse. There is absolutely a qualitative difference between how respiration works in mammals and fish, and just because you can manipulate the environment in some way to make it work doesn't change that. Language is in the same way qualitatively different than other forms of communication, just as mammals are qualitatively different than fish. Humans can communicate in language, and can communicate other ways. If I go to China (and I don't speak Chinese), I can buy food by pointing to it and having someone hold up their fingers to signify the price. I'm not communicating through language, but I have communicated effectively. And you wouldn't call what I did there sign language; it is not a consistent set of signs shared by a group of people which can be composed into an infinite number of sentences with arbitrarily complex meanings. It is instead a fairly limited method of communication which can be used to communicate a fairly direct concept, I need that thing, along with a response that simply indicates a number for how much is expected in payment. I don't know why you keep on referring to the distinction I'm making here as "divine-granted." I'm simply making a distinction between language, and communication that is not language.