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Search for non-Human Intelligence

Er, hold the phone, Jackson.

"We have to understand that we are not the only beings on this planet with personalities and minds," said keynote speaker Jane Goodall, who outlined her observations on a range of chimpanzee behaviors, from barbarity to altruism. "Even if science can't prove everything about animal sentience, it's high time we gave them the benefit of the doubt."
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Emphasis mine.

Jane... love ya to death, but sometimes it's possible to get too close to your subject. This article ought to link directly to a psychology page explaining the phenomenon of anthropomorphization.
 
Humans can't even give other humans the benefit of the doubt.

I wonder how long until busybodies start forcing gorillas to pay taxes and participate in mandatory state-run health care plans.

"Mr. Bananaluvr, you haven't had your nest inspected yet. Please allow us in or we will have to arrest you. No, come back! Shoot him, boys!"


No, seriously.


No, seriously. Humans can't even let other humans live peacefully without jamming their noses into someone else's business.
 
Charley, after reading this in my local paper this morning:

(AP)House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on Thursday blamed Terri Schiavo's death on what he contended was a failed legal system and he raised the possibility of trying to impeach some of the federal judges in the case.
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I wonder if the search for Human Intelligence still needs to be conducted....
 
Charlie Monoxide said:
It may be closer than we think ...
Discovery News

Charlie (smarter than a monkey?) Monoxide
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I cant understand why is "absurd" (scientifically) that every other animal (mammals at very least) have more or less the same feelings that us. Why cant they? We share the same evolutive mechanism and common ancestors.

Truth is that this is the legacy of Judaism and Christianism, "god" made humans "like him", divine in nature, and the rest of the animals are "inferior" because they dont have "a soul". :rolleyes:

So, if any skeptic is trully a skeptic, this religion based assumption should be seen as what it is, a mere religious concept.
 
By coincidence, I read an article the other day that said many mammals laugh, although it wasn't clear what they were laughing at. The laughing animals ranged from Chimpanzees to rats.

Sorry. No link. It was just a few days ago, so try google news if interested.
 
The problem with questions like "Can animals feel?" or "Are they sentient?" The answer is too frequently presented in binary terms.

It probably isn't that simplistic. Chimpanzees may have a higher level of self-awareness and feeling than dogs and dogs have higher level of self awereness and feeling than mice, etc.

I agree with Bodhi Dharma Zen that this binary view of humans and animals is based on monotheism. Unfortunately, this binary paradigm seem to have carried through sometimes in some scientific thinking.
 
There was a great PBS show with Alan Alda that demonstrated the many ways in which various animals possessed to varying degrees self awareness, cognition, etc. None as yet has been demonstrated to have the range of abilities that humans have.

It is this demonstrable uniqueness that proves that humans are created differently and therefore we would expect that the force or forces that created humans to share a common trait with humans that being purpose and deliberateness. The inference that must be drawn from that deliberatness is that a single factor is at work here. In other words it could not be multiple entities and must certainly be possesed of abilites beyond the random and chaotic.
 
RandFan said:
It is this demonstrable uniqueness that proves that humans are created differently...
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There is nothing "unique" about humans, unless you are implying also that elefants are unique or giraffes are unique. We are animals, exactly like the rest of the fauna.
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
There is nothing "unique" about humans, unless you are implying also that elefants are unique or giraffes are unique. We are animals, exactly like the rest of the fauna.
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I'm simply pointing out that the uniqueness of humans is unique in its uniqueness. More importantly the inescapable conclusions of such unique uniqueness is deliberate.
 
Re: Re: Search for non-Human Intelligence

Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
I cant understand why is "absurd" (scientifically) that every other animal (mammals at very least) have more or less the same feelings that us. Why cant they? We share the same evolutive mechanism and common ancestors.
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It's not necessarily absurd, but it's also at best unsupported and at worst highly, highly unlikely. We also share the same evolutive mechanism and common ancestors with the blue whale -- but we certainly don't have the same mass, swimming ability, ability to withstand pressure, or ability to hold our breaths for a long time.

In terms of "feelings," in some cases we can actually look at the parts of the brain that (in humans) correspond to the various feelings and capacities, and unsurprisingly, we find that there are neuroanatomical differences. We can also do behavioral studies and, again unsurprisingly, we discover that there are a lot of behaviors that humans display that rats (for example), don't.

A simple example of that is concept-of-self. Gallup's 1970 mirror test shows that chimpanzees can recognize themselves in a mirror. So can humans, and gorillas, and dolphins. But not cats. Despite the evolutionary similarity, cats don't recognize themselves. "Absurd" or not, this is the way the experiments turn out, so it's the way I have to vote....
 
RandFan said:
I'm simply pointing out that the uniqueness of humans is unique in its uniqueness. More importantly the inescapable conclusions of such unique uniqueness is deliberate.
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I would avoid sentences like that in the future. They tend to cause pimples and permanent facial tics.
 
Bodhi Dharma Zen said:
Well, the uniqueness of giraffes is unique in its uniqueness. Isnt'?
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Yes, but not uniquely unique the way humans are uniquely unique. Further the fact that we are created by deliberate forces is proof our uniqueness.
 
RandFan said:
Further the fact that we are created by deliberate forces is proof our uniqueness.
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And your evidence for this so-called "fact" is ....?
 
Re: Re: Re: Search for non-Human Intelligence

new drkitten said:
A simple example of that is concept-of-self. Gallup's 1970 mirror test shows that chimpanzees can recognize themselves in a mirror. So can humans, and gorillas, and dolphins. But not cats. Despite the evolutionary similarity, cats don't recognize themselves. "Absurd" or not, this is the way the experiments turn out, so it's the way I have to vote....
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Did you ever realize that this test would show blind people to lack self-awareness too? There are also some spatially-impaired, sighted humans who articulate through verbal language a strong understanding of the self that cannot distinguish one face from another. You have to look at other criteria to pass this kind of judgment on an organism. The mirror test is not exactly a convincing argument.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Search for non-Human Intelligence

Batman Jr. said:
Did you ever realize that this test would show blind people to lack self-awareness too?
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I did indeed, but I was smart enough to even-handedly exclude demonstrably pathological cases from all of the samples, of whatever species.



There are also some spatially-impaired, sighted humans who articulate through verbal language a strong understanding of the self that cannot distinguish one face from another. You have to look at other criteria to pass this kind of judgment on an organism.
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... starting with the question of whether or not the particular organism being studied is a representative instance of the general class of organisms you want to infer over.


The mirror test is not exactly a convincing argument.
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Then explain why non-pathological humans, non-pathological chimps, and non-pathological dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror, but non-pathological elephants, cats, dogs, and African parrots cannot. I suspect that Dr. Gallup would be interested in your reasoning as well....
 
RandFan said:
That we are uniquely unique. NON QED PRO AFD
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Let's see. You can tell that we are uniquely unique because we are created.

And you can tell that we are created because we are uniquely unique.

Well, I was almost convinced until I found the following proof.

We are not unique because RandFan is wrong
And RandFan is wrong because we are not unique.
OMNIA GALLIA IN TRES PARTES DIVISA EST
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Search for non-Human Intelligence

new drkitten said:
I did indeed, but I was smart enough to even-handedly exclude demonstrably pathological cases from all of the samples, of whatever species.




... starting with the question of whether or not the particular organism being studied is a representative instance of the general class of organisms you want to infer over.



Then explain why non-pathological humans, non-pathological chimps, and non-pathological dolphins can recognize themselves in a mirror, but non-pathological elephants, cats, dogs, and African parrots cannot. I suspect that Dr. Gallup would be interested in your reasoning as well....
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My point is that the faculties of a pathological, self-aware human may constitute the non-pathological in other species. Animals that cannot recognize themselves are only demonstrating that they don't have the necessary ocular or spatial sophistication to do so. Saying that they don't have a concept of the self is picking the more complex explanation for the phenomenon.
 
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