What makes homo sapiens "human"?

"Imbued with the ability to fly?" The way you make it out, flight is a magic property of birds.Birds fly because of the way air moves over their limbs. If you could get air to move that way over a man's limbs, he would fly too. There's no fundamental difference between the way that a bird flies and the way a man flies in an airplane.If you wanted to talk about fundamental differences, planes and rockets are fundamentally different. That's two fundamentally different ways to fly. Birds and rockets are fundamentally different in a way that birds and planes are not. So now that you know what I'm talking about, show me what humans are doing that's fundamentally different than what the chimps and the parrots are being made to do.

I would too, and I would before I tried to pass this off as a sure thing. I just think it's worth thinking about. Unfortunately I think a paucity of data is inherent in the subject - there's a reason they refer to this as "the forbidden experiment."

Here is another link to animal communication and reasoning studies:http://www.ahs.cqu.edu.au/...22/readings/pdf/lect11b.prn.pdfIn short, while Dr. Premack taught several chimps to read and write using magnetized plastic tokens (similar token language as used by Kanzi the wonder chimp) when posed the question whether this form of 'language' deserves the term language in the human sense: [quote]Many researchers, including Premack himself, doubt that it does. One reason advocated is that chimpanzees seem to be unable to learn a richly structured system of rules for putting words together. Such a rule-system, or syntax, is characteristic of human languages, and the fact that chimpanzees seem unable to acquire anything like it suggests that languages is specific to humans alone (Gleitman, 1986).[/qs]Oh, and about that airplane flight is the same as a bird flying analogy: you are comparing apples to oranges. One is a machine, the other is an organism. You can put anything on a plane, but at the end of the day, a man is physically incapable of being able to fly. I could stick a processor in a monkey's brain which could do all sorts of calculations, but the monkey still wouldn't be able to learn algebra.

Can they learn any such system, like a simple one? Why would we expect them to be able to learn a "richly structured system"? That sounds like an unrealistic expectation for chimps. No, I'm comparing wings that utilize Bernoulli's Principle for flight to wings that utilize Bernoulli's Principle for flight.The physical principle that allows a bird to fly and a plane to fly are fundamentally the same principle. The principle that allows a bird to fly and a rocket to fly are not. The analogy is valid. If you shaped a man like a bird, he could fly. If you shaped a bird like a rocket, it could not. The analogy is valid in terms of describing a difference between two fundamental ways to fly.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 06-29-2004 05:41 AM

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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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I'm really inclined to disagree with that myself, although not on a strong evidential basis. But I heard orcas in the Tysfjord hunting herring by hydrophone, and I have to say, theres an immense amount of communication, and that only in the range that my ear can discern from the hydrophone. Theres a constant, really constant barrage of clicks and squeals... the nearest comparison I have in my experince to what it sounded like was the hubbub you get in a crowded party.I would point out that we have very very little information at all about cetacean behaviour. We can hear the whale songs from far away but if theres any short range comms within a whale pod we will likely not hear it unless we are directly observing that pod. What we really need to do is attach mic's to a whole whale pod and work on analysing like a years collected recordings, or maybe longer.--I'd just like to address the overall structure of this conversation at the moment briefly. First, we need a clear defihnition of what Custard is looking for in the term 'abstract' so we can talk about it constructively. I'm not interested in some external definition, only what Custard would be willing to accept. Second, I think we need to recognise that at this point most of what we have is a collection of anecdotes, and even more problematic, we have no clear subject to study. We even have little idea what we are hearing when we hear it.What we can do weith these anecdotes is establish whether or not htere is a PROBABILITY of self awareness and language in animals, even if this quality may not be as pronounced as ours.For example, I feel this point is a strong argument to the probability of self-awareness and a conscious capacity to communicate meaningfully:

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Deception implies that one has attributed a mind to another (one which can be deceived). Deception by means of information concealment is described by Goodall (1986). On one occasion, a 9-year-old chimp, Figan, gave a loud food calls when he was given bunch of bananas. Consequently, the whole group heard the cries and converged on his site, leaving few bananas for him. The next time Figan was given a bunch of bananas, he remained silent (though Goodall reports hearing faint choking sounds in throat) and ate bananas undisturbed. Woodruff and Premack (1979) provides the best example of active deception. In one experiment, a common chimpanzee is shown where in two containers the experimenter has hidden some food. Following this, either a cooperative trainer (who when showed the food by the chimpanzee always shares it) or an uncooperative trainer (who when shown the location of the food, always eats it himself enters the area. The chimpanzee always provides correct information as to the location of the hidden food to the cooperative trainer, however, he acts differently with the uncooperative trainer. First, the chimpanzee withholds information: turns his back and sits motionless so as not to cue trainer to where the food was hidden. Later, after many more trials, some of the chimpanzees will attempt to deceive the trainer and gesture or point to the wrong container. In the wild, chimpanzees often act deceptively to hide their fear-smiles from dominant apes, either by turning away, or pressing their lips together or by covering their mouth with a hand.

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From: http://home.onemain.com/~dk1008206/html/cexam.htm
Linguistic Behavior in Nonhuman Species: A Paradigm for Testing Mental ContinuityElephants can and do remember individual humans as individuals. African elephants have been seen apparently returning to the scene of the death of one of their herd members and manipulating the skeletal remains. Dolphins have exhibited the ability to understand rudiemntary syntax, as discussed in that linked article, although you will see there are also criticisms of this work.But dolphins in the wild for example are known to develop pod-specific 'dialects' of the broader set of dolphin signals. Incomers from another pod will struggle to communicate without first learning that local dialect. Now it seems to me that if dolphins show dialect, and naming, and can parse syntax, and can even express an explicit preference for the Miami Vice soundtrack by Jan Hammer, as observed in a Hawaiian dolphinarium, then we are looking at an animal that appears to communicate deliberately and intelligibly.From my prespective, the fact that dogs (that is, even animals as dumb as dogs) can and do recognise their own names and learn some other communicative tricks like ringing the bell to be let out, we in fact have been communicating with many animals at a rudimentary level for centuries. I expect the bigger brained animals to be similar, only more so.

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.

Yeah, in a sense. It's the awareness of another's self that's a significant precursor to consciousness.

Which appears to have been observed in many mammals, particularly in Elephants.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I was using self aware as a synonym for consciousness.

If it looks like a duck, quack likes a duck ..its a duck.
Custard would you agree humans are animals? If the answer is yes then would you agree humans are apes? If the answer is yes ; then would you agree that human language evolved from apes? And if so then how is it humans are the only creatures capable of language? If even the most rudimentary of language is present in other creatures then it IS present.

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"One is punished most for ones virtues" Fredrick Neitzche

Silly argument, q.v.Would you agree that bats evolved from fish? How is then that bats can fly but fish cannot?

Exactly, that's the point. That's why linguists think it is nonsensical to try to teach chimps 'language.' Yeah, and if a chimp were a human, he could talk. So what? You can keep doing these linguistic twists and turns to try to avoid the fact that your analogy is bankrupt, but at this point it has become so tangential to the topic, I suggest we drop it.This message has been edited by custard, 06-29-2004 01:50 PM

I feel like I've been dominating this thread, so I'll back off a bit after I offer these two things:1- Rather than delve into the debate of 'what is abstract,' I'm fine to keep using this simple list of criteria of what distinguishes 'language' from animal communication (from wikipedia.com). And I'll add SYNTAX to this list since everything I read consistently maintains that syntax is a distinctive feature of 'language.'Show me which animal communication fulfills all of these criteria. If, as crashfrog seems to maintain, you maintain that only some of these criteria need to be met for a form of communication to be considered 'language,' please indicate which/how many you think must be met. 2-I think self-awareness is not necessarily a requisite for language as defined above. Also, relating to the original questions of the thread, I think self-awareness has been demonstrated in enough animals that this attribute is not unique to humans - although it may not be as prevalent as one might suspect.For example, there is a self-awareness test where the animal is made unconscious and a mark is put on the animal's face or body. When the animal regains consciosness, it is placed in front of a mirror and observed to determine whether it recognizes that the animal in the mirror as itself, and whether it understands that the mark on the animal in the mirror is also the mark on itself.I read that gorillas tested succeeded about 50% of the time (except Koko the wonder ape who aced it), while Organgs and chimps scored much higher.I was surprised gorillas did so poorly. There was also data on porpoises, etc. I'll see if I can find this paper.

No. I wouldn't agree that human language evolved from trillobytes either. You are redifining 'language' to mean any form of communication whatsoever. I think we all understand non-humans communicate with each other, some in more complex ways than others. We are discussing whether this communication meets the criteria of language. It does not. I have listed some of these criteria as an aid (twice).

Perhaps silly and simplistic and I agree bats are not fish. I tend to take a pantheistic approach to things. Bats and Fish are cordates and vertebrates. Fish can fly and bats can swim.