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

[Eric]

I've never read any linguists who talk about other species communication.

Oh.

You and Mr. Tea sound like Saussure-lite, and I wholly disagree with the assumption that language precedes thought. "Thought" is the illusion of self or consciousness produced by electrical impulses in a brain or nervous system of an animal.

Do you think babies don't "think" because they can't yet speak/don't yet have access to language? I think they can and do.

are you reading the things I am writing? I have not made any of these claims. ``you and Mr Tea'' indeed.

btw I like `Saussure-lite'. so casually dismissive.

In birds, it is widely studied and well established that their own little "warble-yelp-warble" strings of sounds DO have meanings like "there is a predator in the bushes that is large"--which I don't see as being any more or less "complex" than Mary likes Jon.

yes fine. these facts are known. the issue isn't about the complexity of the meaning conveyed, it's about whether the substrings have distinct meanings of their own. no research has shown this.

also note that the article you posted has nothing to do with this particular issue, though it is interesting. it has to do with learning strategies, not how strings relate to meanings.

 

[Eric]

What makes you so certain human language isn't a set of responses to particular stimuli??

I believe Chomsky answered this question in his `Review of Skinner ...' back in was it 64? It's been awhile so I can't summarize the arguments here though. But what would make you think it was?

 

[nomadologist]

Edit: nomad, you'll notice I haven't said I think language is a prerequisite for thought, just that it's likely to be a prerequisite for complex conceptual thought. And frea (in your example) is most definitely an emotion, rather than a thought, isn't it?

But emotions are all wrapped up in human language and thought, too. And my point was that birds could very well be stimulated into having "thoughts" about predators after hearing another bird talk about predators. Maybe birds picture a predator as a mental image, or think of past experiences with predators. Evolutionarily, there is every reason for birds to have thoughts, to help them survive.

Human language evolved as a survival mechanism, just like every trait of any animal did.

 

[nomadologist]

I believe Chomsky answered this question in his `Review of Skinner ...' back in was it 64? It's been awhile so I can't summarize the arguments here though. But what would make you think it was?

Because everything that happens in biological life is mechanically bound by something like a system of "stimuli and response"

 

[Eric]

The perfectly empirical bit of that post is that dogs make different sounds depending on their mood, as do many other animals - while still other animals use visual displays, pheremone signals and so on. In fact dogs use all of these (as do humans, whether we realise it or not). The admittedly unempirical bit is my supposition that dogs' vocal sounds do not constitute verbal communication, and I would say that I think they probably don't, because the simplest explanation for their behaviour is that they don't. Why would a dog need 'words' for "hungry", "happy" etc. when it has at its disposal a set of easily understandable non-verbal signals, combining both sounds and other sensorial stimuli, to put across messages like "I'm hungry!", "I'm happy!" and so on?

What I had in mind was your statement `what would dogs have to communicate anyway?' The hidden assumption is that they have no more complex thoughts than being hungry, happy, etc., which may or may not be true. This is something we have as yet no way to empirically verify.

Which leads to the next point: if dogs really did have a language in some way equivalent to a human langauge, then why should any two dogs that haven't grown up together in the same family or pack 'speak' the same language? Surely there would be many different canine languages, just as there are many different human langauges?
I don't know if anyone has ever done an experiment on this, but I bet two dogs that have never met could be shown to communicate just as easily with each other if they came from different parts of the world as if they came from very nearby (and would therefore, according to the dog-language hypothesis, 'speak' a similar dialect). Whereas a hypothetical alien anthropologist would be able to see that two humans behave very differently together when they speak a language in common than when they don't.

Interestingly enough, some species of birds do have regional dialects. I don't know if they impede communication or not or if anyone has tried to test this.

 

[nomadologist]

Oh.



are you reading the things I am writing? I have not made any of these claims. ``you and Mr Tea'' indeed.

btw I like `Saussure-lite'. so casually dismissive.



yes fine. these facts are known. the issue isn't about the complexity of the meaning conveyed, it's about whether the substrings have distinct meanings of their own. no research has shown this.

also note that the article you posted has nothing to do with this particular issue, though it is interesting. it has to do with learning strategies, not how strings relate to meanings.

Can you name some linguists that talk about non-human communication for me? I'd love to read them.

What are "substrings"? Let's not use terminology as if it's scientific if it isn't.

Did you read the article?? The findings are that birds learn their language JUST LIKE HUMAN INFANTS DO OURS.

 

[Mr. Tea]

First, it has been tested, and different species of birds have different songs that communicate what humans call "linguistic" principles.

What about human language is not a "hard-wired instinctive response"? It's probably THE MOST hard-wire instinctive response in humans.

You misunderstand me - I'm talking about different song-messages within different populations of the SAME species, which would show that differences are 'culturally' acquired, rather than genetically determined. In the same way that (different) human languages are.

Also, I absolutely believe that language in general is a hard-wired instinctive response in humans - that's mainly why we have such big brains compared to other primates - but no individual language is hard-wired. What language you speak is determined by the language your parents speak and the area where you grow up; indeed, humans can make a conscious effort to learn additional languages as they grow up or even once they've reached adulthood. What i'm saying is, are there many different mutually-unintelligible languages 'spoken' by birds of the same species? (Almost certainly not, I would say.)
Whereas (I suspect) the different calls birds have to attract mates, warn of predators etc. are probably hard-wired, even if, in some species, particular tendencies to articulate the song one way or another may be learned.

 

[Eric]

Because everything that happens in biological life is mechanically bound by something like a system of "stimuli and response"

I see, you meant language use, not language itself.

You might say that a giraffe's eating of leaves high on the tree is the result of a stimulus, but you would not probably want to say that its having a long neck is, which is the way I took your claim.

I don't know how mechanical our uses of language are. The system would have to be very complex. But why not?

 

[nomadologist]

What i'm saying is, are there many different mutually-unintelligible languages 'spoken' by birds of the same species? (Almost certainly not, I would say.)
Whereas (I suspect) the different calls birds have to attract mates, warn of predators etc. are probably hard-wired, even if, in some species, particular tendencies to articulate the song one way or another may be learned.

But I think the multiplicity of human languages has more to do with the fact that human evolution wasn't exactly "linear", and that languages evolved and developed as wars happened, people migrated, etc. Although there are many many different languages for humans, most of them ultimately have common roots in something like Ur-Sanskrit.

I would not be surprised if differenst species of birds have different languages that the others don't understand, and I wouldn't be surprised if the birdsong of one species varies regionally and is mutually unintelligible within that species.

 

[Mr. Tea]

What I had in mind was your statement `what would dogs have to communicate anyway?' The hidden assumption is that they have no more complex thoughts than being hungry, happy, etc., which may or may not be true. This is something we have as yet no way to empirically verify.

Well I'm fairly sure they don't sit around for hours discussing linguistics, anthropology, neurology and behavioural psychology. Although, of course, I can't prove that.

It's debatable whether dogs even have a sense of self, since they are unable to recognise their own reflections and will behave just as if there is another dog present. Whereas elephants (a quick Google says) can recognise themselves.

Interestingly enough, some species of birds do have regional dialects. I don't know if they impede communication or not or if anyone has tried to test this.

Yes, I've heard this too, and it seems to belong in the same category as the cultural tool-using among separate chimp populations. It'd be worth taking baby birds from one 'dialect' group and having them fostered by birds in another to see whether the differences are truly learned or genetic in nature.
if they are genuinely acquired, then that's an interesting human-like feature of their behaviour, although as I said above it certainly doesn't imply the use of sounds to convey conceptual thought, which is what I mean by a true language.

 

[nomadologist]

I see, you meant language use, not language itself.

I'm curious: what would the difference be? What is "language itself" outside the use of language? A system, right? Of abstractions. I'm sure if you laid out birdsong as an abstract system it would be highly complex and nuanced in its own way.

 

[nomadologist]

Well I'm fairly sure they don't sit around for hours discussing linguistics, anthropology, neurology and behavioural psychology. Although, of course, I can't prove that.

It's debatable whether dogs even have a sense of self, since they are unable to recognise their own reflections are will behave just as if there is another dog present. Whereas elephants (a quick Google says) can recognise themselves.


Yes, I've heard this too, and it seems to belong in the same category as the cultural tool-using among separate chimp populations. It'd be worth taking baby birds from one 'dialect' group and having them fostered by birds in another to see whether the differences are truly learned or genetic in nature.
if they are genuinely acquired, then that's an interesting human-like feature of their behaviour, although as I said above it certainly doesn't imply the use of sounds to convey conceptual thought, which is what I mean by a true language.

"conceptual thought" is "true language"? huuuhhh?

 

[nomadologist]

Well I'm fairly sure they don't sit around for hours discussing linguistics, anthropology, neurology and behavioural psychology.

Many would say that our abnormally large brains with abnormally active frontal lobes/cortexes are maladaptive evolutionarily. If dogs or other animals don't discuss what you clearly think of as "higher" or more "complex" subjects, it's because they've evolved differently (perhaps more efficiently) and don't have to...

 

[Mr. Tea]

"conceptual thought" is "true language"? huuuhhh?

Read the whole sentence: "use of sounds to convey conceptual thought".

 

[Mr. Tea]

Many would say that our abnormally large brains with abnormally active frontal lobes/cortexes are maladaptive evolutionarily.

Am I reading that right? "Maladaptive"? Compare how many people there are in the world, to how many people there "should" be, based on our size, lifecycle and position in the food chain. If you take this ratio as a measure of how successful a species is (and I can't think of a better one off the top of my head) then humans are by far and away the most successful species ever, hands down, no contest.

 

[Eric]

Can you name some linguists that talk about non-human communication for me? I'd love to read them.

You might try Hockett as the classic reference. He has something to say about differences between human and other communication systems. He proposes some properties of various communciation systems. an example (that incidentally dog `language' seems to lack): displacement, the property of being able to `talk' about objects distant in time or space.

What are "substrings"? Let's not use terminology as if it's scientific if it isn't.

OK. I don't know what you mean by the comment exactly but substrings are just pieces of a sequence of symbols, in this case words.

Did you read the article?? The findings are that birds learn their language JUST LIKE HUMAN INFANTS DO OURS.

Yeah, so what? I learn to walk much like a cow does but that doesn't mean I have four legs. The same learning system doesn't imply the same content.

 

[Eric]

I'm curious: what would the difference be? What is "language itself" outside the use of language? A system, right? Of abstractions. I'm sure if you laid out birdsong as an abstract system it would be highly complex and nuanced in its own way.

it certainly would, but this way is different in some qualitative sense from human language

 

[Eric]

But I think the multiplicity of human languages has more to do with the fact that human evolution wasn't exactly "linear", and that languages evolved and developed as wars happened, people migrated, etc. Although there are many many different languages for humans, most of them ultimately have common roots in something like Ur-Sanskrit.

Most people think that what is hardwired is the capacity to learn human language-type systems, and that only. Languages vary more or less at random within certain constraints.

I would not be surprised if differenst species of birds have different languages that the others don't understand, and I wouldn't be surprised if the birdsong of one species varies regionally and is mutually unintelligible within that species.

It would be very surprising if (very) different species of birds could communicate amongst each other.

 

[nomadologist]

Am I reading that right? "Maladaptive"? Compare how many people there are in the world, to how many people there "should" be, based on our size, lifecycle and position in the food chain. If you take this ratio as a measure of how successful a species is (and I can't think of a better one off the top of my head) then humans are by far and away the most successful species ever, hands down, no contest.

You have to be kidding. Ever talk to a population analyst or read about overpopulation? Humans have overpopulated the earth by billions, and the effects are obvious everywhere. What about the global climate crisis that our unsustainable lifestyle has perpetrated on the world and every ecosystem in it?

 

[nomadologist]

Read the whole sentence: "use of sounds to convey conceptual thought".

I did read it, and I think it's ridiculous to think that our way of having or perceiving concepts is a necessary precursor to "language" or even better "true language".