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Bee and wasp foragers give each other directions to food sources every day - not usually by pheromonic recruitment, although a few species including V. mandarin

Bee and wasp foragers give each other directions to food sources every day - not usually by pheromonic recruitment, although a few species including V. mandarinia do use that method, but by communicating. As far as we know, they don't have symbolic language or anything like the same level of abstraction we do, which is reasonable when our brains outsize theirs by eight orders of magnitude, but that doesn't stop them telling each other what they need to know. And that's just hymenopterans; we should also talk about corvids, who are well known to pass knowledge across populations and generations, and also to possess tool use and theory of mind. The definition of "unnatural" toward which you're extensionally groping here is "things only humans, and no other animals, do". I suspect you are going to find it a considerably narrower category than you presently appear to imagine. I also don't think it is going to lead you anywhere useful; many anarchoprimitivists have trodden this ground before you, and if nothing else it may be worth familiarizing yourself with some of their work lest you find yourself in one of the same pitfalls they so often do.

jerry1979 6y ago
Human language and animal language also differ in that people use grammars which recurse which shows a sense of abstraction (as you stated) and also objectivity. Do you see a narrow difference between human output and animal output? Would you consider that difference somehow not "useful"? I think the bird and bee examples do not provide a compelling sense of language in the same way human talking does because animal language appears tightly bounded and human language through its recursive features appears possibly limitless.
- throwanem 6y ago
  You see a difference of kind where I see one merely of degree, and your confidence in the sufficient extent of knowledge of nonhuman language and communication, to draw such clear delineations as you do, strikes me as unwarranted. It is a relatively recent innovation in modern understanding even to recognize that any animals beyond our own species have language; where come you by this idea that we know enough about how nonhuman language works to even attempt so broad a conclusion? - or, for that matter, even enough about how human language works? Anyone who's ever tried to explain a complex idea to someone and have them comprehend it, or tried to become a polyglot beyond the age of about ten, should have a better sense of our own limitations than you evince here.

jerry1979 6y ago

Human language and animal language also differ in that people use grammars which recurse which shows a sense of abstraction (as you stated) and also objectivity. Do you see a narrow difference between human output and animal output? Would you consider that difference somehow not "useful"? I think the bird and bee examples do not provide a compelling sense of language in the same way human talking does because animal language appears tightly bounded and human language through its recursive features appears possibly limitless.

throwanem 6y ago
You see a difference of kind where I see one merely of degree, and your confidence in the sufficient extent of knowledge of nonhuman language and communication, to draw such clear delineations as you do, strikes me as unwarranted. It is a relatively recent innovation in modern understanding even to recognize that any animals beyond our own species have language; where come you by this idea that we know enough about how nonhuman language works to even attempt so broad a conclusion? - or, for that matter, even enough about how human language works? Anyone who's ever tried to explain a complex idea to someone and have them comprehend it, or tried to become a polyglot beyond the age of about ten, should have a better sense of our own limitations than you evince here.