“We feel that it is important to invite the Cetacea, the oldest sentient race on the planet, to our Earth Day celebration and share their songs with the universe,” Michael Hyson, the institute’s research director, said in a news release.
I am wondering if there has been any official recognition of the sentience of whales and dolphins, or of this comment is worded more in terms of the wishes of the speaker. I suspect the latter (and more so after visiting their website).
The institute in question is the Sirius Institute in Hawaii. Their website ( http://www.planetpuna.com/faq.html ) also states “It is known that the dolphins (and presumably the other Cetacea) have a complex language - with up to a trillion ‘words’ possible using at least 4 simultaneous sound sources.” which as a linguist I find interesting yet unsupported. I’d love to read articles about a recognised cetacean language, but as far as I know nothing has been documented. The website has some interesting claims with researcher names attached, but I didn’t see any real checkable references. Many of the ‘conclusions’ on the website seem like handwaving - “this suggests,” “we conclude,” “this appears,” “this implies,” etc.
Yeah, but I bet none of them whales and dolphinses could get out of the Crimson Room!
What worries me is that Michael Hyson clearly hasn’t seen the Star Trek films and all the mess the earth gets into when that Whale Probe turns up. And he calls himself a research director!! :roll:
There is (or was) a researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa called Lou Herman who was conducting a study on dolphins’ ability to learn language – he had several dolphins over the years, some of which were learning an auditory language (beeps and buzzes) and some that were learning sign language. One thing he found was that dolphins could understand syntax: if you said, “Phoenix, go to the ball and then the hoop, and then touch the frisbee,” Phoenix would touch the objects in the tank in that order. If you changed the order, the dolphin would follow suit. Pretty impressive.
I saw him give a number of talks in the 1980s, and I remember he said at one point that Akeakami, the dolphin that was learning the sign language, was also learning to imitate the auditory language that Phoenix used, and he speculated that Akeakami might at one point start giving commands to Phoenix. Dunno if that ever happened, but it was something to contemplate.
Anyway, if you do a Google search on Louis Herman you’ll find lots of material on this topic.
I believe that Koko the gorilla and her large vocabulary
in sign language is thought to be a hoax. Chomsky visited
Koko (and Penny Patterson) and wrote a piece for the
NYRBs, which I’ve never been able to find–but the idea
is that Patterson is counting all sorts of senseless
behaviour as linguistic. Apparently when deaf experts
in sign language check videos of Koko, it doesn’t add up.
As to the sentience of animals, sure they’re sentient.
There is something it’s like to be a porpoise, or a dog
in pain–they feel and perceive and have emotions.
The behavioural evidence is very powerful and
they have the brains to do it. We have a good deal
of the same neurological equipment.
As to their intelligence, sure they’re intelligent.
Pigs, dogs, chimps, gorillas, African grey parrots, aren’t stupid.
But as to the ability to generate sentences with a syntax,
we shall have be very careful about jumping to conclusions.
Cognitive scientists sometimes hypothesize that us humans
aren’t so much smarter than other primates, but we
have a syntactic module in our brains, it may not be
located in one particular place, that gives us linguistic
ability, expecially the ability to have a syntax that
generates lots of sentences and to speak and understand
sentences never spoken before, like this one.
That ‘organ’ interfaced with a native intelligence that
isn’t so much terribly higher than that of apes,
makes human intelligence. Interesting theory of
‘cognitive architecture.’
Interesting. But it could be argued that Phoenix hadn’t understood the sentence at all, but had learned three signals for “ball”, “hoop” and “frisbee”, and just strung them together. I believe chimp studies have found the same thing. Hypothetical example: “Bring the ball to John” would likely have the desired results, probably because the chimp would know what “ball” and “John” represented, and it would be more reasonable to try to bring the ball to John than to bring John to the ball.
I wonder what would have happened with Phoenix if the request had been “go to the ball, and then before you touch the frisbee, touch the hoop”.
I always thought that it was living in water that kept dolphins from evolving.
On land, just getting from point A to point B is a problem requiring some sophisticated machinery, and corresponding brain machinery. Land mammals ended up with hands, and I think hands are a prerequisite for evolving intelligence. Just because of their capacity for manipulation and general problem solving, as long as you have developed the brain for them.
That’s exactly what I was saying. If you told Phoenix to go to the ball, then the frisbee, then the hoop, she did those three things in that order. If you said, go to the hoop, then the frisbee, then the ball, she did them in that order.
The dolphins very quickly learned the words (or signs) for ball, hoop, frisbee; that was a no-brainer (even dogs have little trouble with that). But their understanding of syntax was unexpected. You could argue that there might have been a subtle trainer effect with the dolphin that was learning the sign language (since the signs were given by human trainers who could have been giving unconscious cues, although I think they were blindfolded), but the auditory instructions for Phoenix were given by a machine.
I had a border collie, Max, who, whenever I would try to take
him to the pen in the backyard, would run away.
One day I decided to lure him to the pen by holding
a doggie treat in my hand.
As we went out the back door, Max looked up, saw
the treat in my hand, ran 30 feet to the pen,
went inside, turned around, sat down, and waited eagerly
for the treat.
I don’t think this is a mere anecdote. Max could
do this sort of thing. Border collies are like that.
Consider his strategy–Max knows that I want him to go
to the pen, and he realizes that I will give him the treat
if he goes to the pen. He wants the treat.
So he goes so as to get the
treat.
Max knows he exists, because he can’t have this strategy
unless he can think of himself. I don’t mean this is
proof, but it’s a highly plausible explanation.
Often with dogs like Max I felt I was dealing with
a creature about as INTELLIGENT as I am under the
circumstances in which we were acting, but
he lacked linguistic ability–which meant that
he couldn’t think about a lot of things I could.
A lot of our own behavior is Pavlovian too. My brother used to have a parrot named Barnyard (so named because he smelled like one). The first time I met Barnyard, I was eating chinese food…Barnyard climbed up on my shoulder, looked me in the eye and said, “Mmmm, that good?” That was just his way of asking for a bite. He had learned, in a simple Pavlovian way, that if he said “Mmmm, that good?” he would be offered a bite of whatever was on the plate. Not much different than a 3-year old kid saying, “Mom, I’m hungry.” I think in cases like this it’s not so much that the bird is acting like a human, it’s more that we humans often act like birds – our behavior is less complex than we think.
Barnyard did some other things that were less easily explained, though. One time my brother recorded Barnyard talking, and then a few days later played the recording on his stereo. Barnyard ran over to the speakers and looked at them intently, and then said, “How’re you doing, Barnyard?”
Another time he was upstairs shredding a box of pencils into little yellow splinters and flinging the erasers at the windows (a favorite but forbidden pastime), and when my brother (who was in the basement) yelled up to Barnyard to check on what he was up to, Barnyard replied, “You bad, bad bird!” Clearly he recognized he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.
oh - I know there are some very smart dogs out there, I’ve owned a few myself. I do NOT own one now!
Wyley walked into the piano leg again last night. We’ve had Wyley for 4 years now (he’s 7, we adopted him) and the piano has been there the whole time. He, on average, will walk into it about once a week. He can see fine. He’s not running full tilt through the house when he does this. He’s just mosying along and BAM - he hits his head on the piano leg. Will just stand there with a dumb look on his (ok, he ALWAYS has a dumn look on his face) - then move a little to the right to get through the doorway.
Buster has never figured out that a squirrel can go from one tree to the next (he’s 7, too - we adopted him at 9 months). He’s stood under a tree “waiting” for that squirrel for over a half hour He also attempted to climb a tree once - got about 10 feet off the ground with his legs wrapped around it, then realized what he was doing and froze. I had to coax him down (yes, a dog that wouldn’t come back down a tree!).
They do know how to tell time - if you aren’t moving in the direction of the kitchen at 3:30pm, they will come and remind you it’s dinner time for them. And Buster is really good at hearing the differences in cars, he can hear them from about 1/4 mile away and goes to the door to wait for Tom, Nate or me.
But they aren’t the brightest bulb in the doggy world. And for as big of heads that they have, you’d think there was more in there than air!!!
There’s a great article on Orcas in last month’s National Geographic. It discusses their communication a bit, as well as other sea mammals ability to understand the difference in Orca “speak”. Apparently, there are Orcas that only eat sea mammals, and Orcas that only eat fish - and seals/sea lions and such can tell from the Orca song which kind is which.
Being the vain humans we are, we get caught up in what we call language. Language is simply our way of communicating (since we were blessed with vocal cords that could produce speech), but communications can be via sound, sight (including sign language) and touch. My two dogs communicate extensively with each other - visually and with sound and smell. They have games they play that my wife and I have observed only occur in certain places and have set rules.
I heard Jane Goodall speak a year or two ago - about cultural patterns in chimp groups. Apparently, the sounds and signs used by different groups to communcate vary significantly.
I don’t think we’re saying the same thing, though… In your first sentence (upper quote box), the correct touching order was ball, hoop, frisbee, which is the same order that the nouns appeared in your sentence. But in my sentence, the correct touching order and the noun order are different: touching order ball-hoop-frisbee but noun order ball-frisbee-hoop. I’ve added in bold font to highlight the different section.
I agree that if you changed the noun order then the animal’s response will change to match, assuming it recognises those nouns as pertaining to particular objects. But if you don’t change the noun order, and instead rely on syntax to communicate the changed intention, I wonder what would happen.
