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Author | Topic: What makes homo sapiens "human"? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
Firstly, I don't think there is any natural justification for a human/animal split. I think it is a simple case of anthrocentrism.
However, I would query one point:
It seems now that we have evidence of language Really? I haven't seen any. There's some exceedingly poor evidence that you can teach chimpanzees something that vaguely approximates rudimentary language. But as far as I know no evidence that they use any in their natural world. I'd say language remains a uniquely human attribute qualitively different from the communications of any other animal.
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
Elephants and whales both use "personal individual identifiers" in their messages... we would call such a 'name'. Cool. Interesting, but not language.
Also IIRC we have seen one of lab animals teaching its own child the sign language it had learned from humans, but I forget the reference. I've also seen that. I've also seen critques of the whole field. In my opinion (q.v. Stephen Pinkers' [i]The Language Instinct[i]) claims of sign language in chimps have been grossly exagurated and rely heavily on generous levels of interpretation by the experimenters. Although one case of Orang Utan language learning still stands above other examples. In any case no animal language learning has approached even the linguistic capabilities of an intelligent two year old and certainly has never approached that of a typical adult.
I don't accept that I'm afraid. One strand on the Neanderthal debate is the suggestion that they might have communicated by whistles; this would tie into the 'co-existant but apparently in mutual ignorance' scenario discussed on another thread. I'm not sure I understand the relevance of your point? Of course ancestral, and 'branch', homonids will have possessed some kind of intermediary between human language and ape communication.
Language is IMO a communications protocol; it is a technology, and tool as much as an axe is a tool. The qualitative complexity of our protocol does not make it meaningfully unique, even if it is the most developed such protocol on the planet. I'm unsure as to what you mean by 'meaningfully unique'? Meaningful in what sense?
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
Ok. I would most definetly disagree with that as a useful definition of language. By language I mean a communication form with grammar and the ability to express abstract concepts as a bare minimum.
There is utterly no doubt that animals can express emotional states to other animals (anyone with a cat or a dog can tell you that) or that they are capable of significant feats of communication (witness chimps hunting monkeys). Animals are also capable of verbally expressing specifics (prarie dogs have different calls for different kinds of predators) or transmitting those verbalisations culturally (different groups of prarie dogs have different calls). However, I don't consider these feats to be language. With the exception of the last item on that list, humans are capable of all of the above without ever using language and the last is no more than having a short vocabulary - no more language than telling a dog to sit, stay or fetch is language.
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
Based on this logic, I can claim that there is some exceedingly poor evidence that Americans (or English native speakers) cannot be taught Vietnamese and speak it the way that will make us Vietnamese understand. Therefore, I conclude that you don't really speak a language at all. Don't be absurd. I said the evidence from the chimps wasn't evidence that they speak language, not that it was evidence they don't.
The point is we haven't broken any code that the whales use or the elephants use. The whales could easily say to each other that humans lack language because there is little evidence that any human being at all could learn whale. Whale song, elephant vocalisations and dolphin noises can all be analysed, looking for syntactic patterns and data density. They don't have the patterns, complexity or data density that are (apparently) needed for language. All human languages do.
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
How would humans accomplish those things (expressing emotion, organizing a hunting party) without "language"? I'm guessing you mean through such things as facial expressions and gestures - which is language. Rubbish. How would you communicate in a non-ambiguous way 'the cat sat on the purple hat last tuesday when it was raining' using just facial expressions and gestures? Assuming I don't know sign language that is.
Just ask anyone whose first language is American Sign Language (considered by many to be far more expressive than spoken English). Sign language is not equivalent or comparible to simple facial expressions or gestures.
I feel like you are also contradicting yourself by commenting that animals have "a short vocabulary," since you can't have vocabulary without language; and again, that is only the vocabulary that humans have deciphered. Vocabulary may not be the best word. Repotoire perhaps? The point remains, the have a few calls which carry different meanings. These meanings cannot be combined in a combinatorial fashion; i.e. not language.
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
However there are some very clear examples that wild chimps use planning, spatial awareness, time sense and communication during a hunt. Yes, animals are capable of impressive feats. And some impressive examples of communication - however, the level of communication involved even in chimp hunts is tiny compared to the level of communication that is going on just in the debate. Still not language.
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
What we can do with these anecdotes is establish whether or not there is a PROBABILITY of self awareness and language in animals, even if this quality may not be as pronounced as ours. Whoa there, dude! Self awareness is a whole different kettle of fish. I would be astonished if the majority of mammals (at least) are not self-aware to varying degrees.
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
I was using self aware as a synonym for consciousness.
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Dr Jack Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
Silly argument, q.v.
Would you agree that bats evolved from fish? How is then that bats can fly but fish cannot?
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