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Agreeing with your distinction. Also, you could "issue the same warning" by growling like the dog, too - or by waving your hands frantically or shaking your hea

by xg15 1y ago

Agreeing with your distinction. Also, you could "issue the same warning" by growling like the dog, too - or by waving your hands frantically or shaking your head, etc. This would absolutely convey the same information and count as an act of communication, but we wouldn't describe it as using language. But the information in that example is also relatively simple. There are other kinds of information that are much harder to convey without language, talking about future or hypothetical events or abstract concepts, etc. There seems to be evidence that dolphins use sounds to identify each other and to coordinate tasks that involve a number if animals. I think this is much more interesting and strongly hints that something language-like is going on there. https://www.ecowatch.com/dolphins-language-communication-evidence.html https://www.ecowatch.com/dolphins-language-communication-evi... https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8074934/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8074934/

0xEF 1y ago
Interesting reads, thank you. You're right in that the complexity of the information matters when it comes to how it can be communicated, although I also think of the bit, as in the smallest unit of information, and how we have accomplished communicating some wildly complex information by cramming a billion transistors into microchips. Still blows my mind while it seems like it's become so commonplace for most people. When I first learned about the dolphin "names" whistle, I thought of the way dogs supposedly identify each other by scent in the way that there's subtle differences that our olfactory system is not able to pick up on, but theirs is. In both cases, it begs me to ask what that means for consciousness. If the dolphins and dogs can assign individual labels to each other and recognize those labels when used later on, does that imply they form some sort of a personal identity? I also have to wonder how language, as opposed to other forms of communication, promotes the birth of that identity, but so much of this is over my head in a way that leaves me grasping at how to, well, communicate my own questions so that I receive answers that promote better understanding of the phenomenon and its challenges.

by xg15 1y ago

0xEF 1y ago

Interesting reads, thank you. You're right in that the complexity of the information matters when it comes to how it can be communicated, although I also think of the bit, as in the smallest unit of information, and how we have accomplished communicating some wildly complex information by cramming a billion transistors into microchips. Still blows my mind while it seems like it's become so commonplace for most people. When I first learned about the dolphin "names" whistle, I thought of the way dogs supposedly identify each other by scent in the way that there's subtle differences that our olfactory system is not able to pick up on, but theirs is. In both cases, it begs me to ask what that means for consciousness. If the dolphins and dogs can assign individual labels to each other and recognize those labels when used later on, does that imply they form some sort of a personal identity? I also have to wonder how language, as opposed to other forms of communication, promotes the birth of that identity, but so much of this is over my head in a way that leaves me grasping at how to, well, communicate my own questions so that I receive answers that promote better understanding of the phenomenon and its challenges.