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Excellent article! A couple of observations... "Aristotle's idea of the scala naturae, the ladder of nature, put all life-forms in rank order, from low to hig
by xk_id 14y ago
Excellent article!
A couple of observations...
"Aristotle's idea of the scala naturae, the ladder of nature, put all life-forms in rank order, from low to high, with humans closest to the angels. During the Enlightenment, the French philosopher René Descartes, a founder of modern science, declared that animals were soulless automatons. In the 20th century, the American psychologist B.F. Skinner and his followers took up the same theme, painting animals as little more than stimulus-response machines." <- rudimentary systems of ideas.
And I kindof gasped towards the end of the article, when I read this: "The one historical constant in my field is that each time a claim of human uniqueness bites the dust, other claims quickly take its place. Meanwhile, science keeps chipping away at the wall that separates us from the other animals."
I mean, as I said, excellent article, but let's not falsify by omission. We are the only species who can build on previous generations' achievements; and the only species who can abstract indefinitely (i.e, always make a statement about a previous statement). These are both due to the special linguistic behaviours we are capable of.
- dormouse 14y agoYet don't you think your last statement there is a perfect example of walking through a quiet wood and declaring a woodpecker absent? We certainly don't understand non-human languages/communication systems, and significant evidence is piling up that it's often far more sophisticated than we think it is. And "building on previous generations' achievements" is a little ill-defined; isolated groups of individuals often form a unique society, even if they aren't conducting research on human intelligence.
- xk_id 14y agoI didn't say other species clearly do not possess equally impressive linguistic abilities. But qualitatively, our stand in sharp distinction. Surely, we can never be certain the woodpecker is absent, but, that's just a new take on the fact that our theories are merely the expectations with maximum probability. I stay open, and prepared to accept if a new sign of legacy-based behaviour is found in other species, as well as a form of extra-neural storage of symbolic configurations (e.g writing). But surely you cannot ask me to expect those. I'm not sure about what you meant in your last remark. I meant that humans are uniquely able of starting where the former generations left off. This explains the techno-ideological development that has been occurring naturally for all and any of us (unless a library was burned down, which was a pathological thing to do).
- meric 14y agohttp://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10071-007-0092-5?LI=true http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10071-007-0092-5... There's a definite possibility bowerbirds learn bower making skills from older bowerbirds. There's also... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect
- xk_id 14y agoThanks, I think it boils down to tokipin's comment above.
- tokipin 14y agothere's probably a lot of examples of knowledge in animals that is passed from generation to generation, like say the knowledge of how to crack open nuts with rocks we definitely have something most animals don't, but that something may be more of a degree thing than a kind thing
- xk_id 14y agoVery much agreed.
- derleth 14y ago> we definitely have something most animals don't "Religion and control of fire" seem to be the big things that humans have and no non-human animal has. "Language with recursive grammar" is a possible differentiator, but that's currently up for debate.
- yareally 14y agoI would amend that list and add conscience and the ability to question what is moral or not. Animals in some cases may have limited capabilities, but other animals, such as cats and their sadistic behaviors, I would question.
- tokipin 14y agothat reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo in the full talk, the speaker goes on to mention that some monkeys who were receiving the good reward would refuse to accept it until their counterpart was also given the good reward
- xk_id 14y agoSomebody else posted this in the same thread: http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsky_the_uniqueness_of_humans.html http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsky_the_uniqueness_of_h.... It overviews sharp distinctions between the behaviours of animals and humans.
- 14y ago