Is there a major objective difference between our species and every other animal?

Is there a major objective difference between our species and every other animal?

  • Yes

    Votes: 13 59.1%

  • No

    Votes: 9 40.9%
  • Total voters
    22
E

Eric

Mr Moraigero
yes---but it's also a fact that tall people have difficulty walking through small doorways, as I recall unhappily every day in this country (japan).
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Speaking of facts, it's true about the vending machines with schoolgirls' knickers in them, isn't it?
 
E

Eric

Mr Moraigero
actually tall vs short for large populations seems to = just a question of diet. eating more meat etc makes people taller---cf. the change in population height in japanese youth, and the changes happening in china (rich part).

this means we can restate this debate in terms of third vs first world or whatever term you like. tall people (= Europeans, rich diet hence tall) did in fact commit genocide on short people (= colonized peoples, poor diet hence short). now we have a license to get angry about using the terms `tall' and `short' after all.

thank god for that!! (another controversial statement)

(ps yes this was intentionally obnoxious, maybe I have given up on returning the thread to rational discussion)
 
E

Eric

Mr Moraigero
Mr. Tea said:
Speaking of facts, it's true about the vending machines with schoolgirls' knickers in them, isn't it?
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havent seen any of these for awhile, but maybe they are still around.

I think people sell them direct over the internet now (?)
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Eric said:
havent seen any of these for awhile, but maybe they are still around.

I think people sell them direct over the internet now (?)
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Bah! :mad: Another example of globalisation leading to reduced regional diversity...
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
FROM THE WIKIPEDIA ENTRY ON BIRDSONG:

Research on parrots by Irene Pepperberg demonstrates the innate ability for grammatical structures including the existence of concepts such nouns, adjectives and verbs.[28]
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N

nomadologist

Guest
Mr. Tea said:
That's not the same thing at all. The feudal societies of mediaeval Europe were pre-industrial but clearly post-tribal, agricultural and (in places) urbanised.
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Sure. I like longer descriptions with more qualification. I really don't care if you want to use "primitive". I said I don't like to, that's all.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
While the previous sentence mentions the inherent difficulty of such studies, and the range of possible interpretations of results. The 'Language' article says "The term "animal languages" is often used for nonhuman languages. Linguists do not consider these to be language". Sounds like a lot of evidence could probably be found to support one view or the other, with suitable interpretation.

Even if it could be shown beyond reasonable doubt that verbal language exists among animals, you could ask why, in that case, there does not exist in any other species a cummulative culture, whereby each generation not only inherits knowledge and habits (memetic information, if you like) from the previous one, but builds on that knowledge and habits, giving rise to a culture which can grow, mutate and evolve in a manner somewhat analagous to biological evolution.
 
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Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Like this?
homers_brain.jpg
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
The day "linguists" discredit anything scientists determine will be a cold day in hell.
 
E

Eric

Mr Moraigero
nomadologist said:
Show me by whom and where and I'll believe you!
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fair enough. and to be honest I overstated my case---what people agree is that she has not demonstrated that Alex the parrot has got human-like language capacities, though it does have some higher cognitive capacities. This is not surprising because this was the goal of her research. But the results were overstated in the media as often happens: `Scientist Discovers thta Parrots Can Talk!!!!'

(Compare cases of chimpanzees being `taught to speak English,' none of which were real successes; though most could learn some signs (ASL was the best medium), none could learn syntax/grammar. This is the point I have been trying to push here.)

Yeah. I can't remember specific references now. I'll do some searching when I have more time. But I don't know that I'll find much more than I just said.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Eric said:
This is not surprising because this was the goal of her research. But the results were overstated in the media as often happens: `Scientist Discovers thta Parrots Can Talk!!!!'

(Compare cases of chimpanzees being `taught to speak English,' none of which were real successes; though most could learn some signs (ASL was the best medium), none could learn syntax/grammar. This is the point I have been trying to push here.)
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Yeah, I know, this is one of my biggest pet peeves!! In the media people constantly overstate the success of research--or even just plain misinterpret results--of mediocre research.

I am mostly making a "devil's advocate" argument about bird language here, because I think it's interesting that there's even enough evidence for something like bird grammar to make it a feasible subject of debate.

I really don't know whether I think they will ever proove it, but it does seem to make sense to me intuitively--why wouldn't other species have something like language?
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Eric said:
Whatever that means. Since linguistics is the science of language, hopefully someone would give them some credit.
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Linguistics is interesting formally, but I doubt biologists would allow linguists to claim to "discredit" their research into a given species' capacities...
 
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