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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Bohandas]

Crosspost from WTF thread

Today i discovered that mortification of the flesh is an effective temporary means of controlling toothache pain

[TheBiggerFish]

Crosspost from WTF thread

Today i discovered that mortification of the flesh is an effective temporary means of controlling toothache pain

...

...Interesting.

[Orange Wizard]

Huh, neat.

[TD1]

So lately I've read about animals that can understand and even speak English. For instance, there's a parrot that can tell the difference between colours, and even if there is no colour. And then I thought how my dog sits when I say sit, and how it finds my dad when I say "go find dad," no matter where he is on the farm.

I was just wondering how that ties in with people saying humans are so much better than animals because they can speak, make music etc.

Also how it ties in with the Biblical notion of human stewardship - if there's such a thin line, then why be stewards?

[FearfulJesuit]

So lately I've read about animals that can understand and even speak English. For instance, there's a parrot that can tell the difference between colours, and even if there is no colour. And then I thought how my dog sits when I say sit, and how it finds my dad when I say "go find dad," no matter where he is on the farm.

I was just wondering how that ties in with people saying humans are so much better than animals because they can speak, make music etc.

Also how it ties in with the Biblical notion of human stewardship - if there's such a thin line, then why be stewards?

That's not speech, that's responding to a fixed stimulus. Saying "sit" and commanding a dog to sit is a learned behavior and fairly intelligent, sure, but it's not terribly different from learning to run away from the howl of a predator, or to respond to another bird's mating call. We've tried to teach apes sign language, and although they're smart enough to have a triple-digit vocabulary, it's still a far cry from

Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you

to



The latter has a defined structure, dependency relations, and is built upon very well-defined and complex notions of constituency and phrase structure. The former has the semantics, but it doesn't have any of the syntax, so it isn't language.

(NB for the linguists out there: I actually think X-Bar is very much a half-baked theory that succeeds mostly in making whatever language you're writing your dissertation on look like English, no matter how ugly you have to make it look. But I think it should go without saying that the structures of Cree, Mohawk, or Choctaw would be even less transparent to a gorilla than that of ASL.)

[Bohandas]

Indeed. Th4DwArfY1's point seems to fall into the old trap of being easily impressed; ironically an emotion more often invoked by people arguing in favor of biblical traditionalism/literalism.

[TD1]

I'm not saying that animals have advanced language on par with human language. We seem to be built for language in a way that animals are not - and yet under some circumstances notions are passed from human to animal. "Sit" causes the dog to sit.

I think it's less a question of me being overly impressed, and more one of you being under impressed. That an animal can recognise a colour and then give the associated word for that colour shows a rationale and understanding which is the basis of our own language. You may talk of advanced semantics, go into individual morphemes and phonetics, but that association is the heart and only true purpose of language. The transfer of ideas - even (or perhaps especially) abstract ones such as colour. So yes, most animals did not evolve with a mind to advanced language. But that association between word and meaning shows that it's not beyond the realm of possibility that animals may eventually develop better language skills. It's almost like saying rudimentary speech in a child is not real language - it is. It transfers ideas, albeit not in an advanced form.

Fortunately for us we have evolved for language. Presumably, and for obvious reasons, speech helped us survive. But it's highly based on age - there's a critical stage during which those advanced meanings must be learned or what we come out with is "give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." Semantically speaking, they can learn words. Syntax...not so much. Some morphology if you're lucky. And yet we don't call them animals.

Language should not be the barrier which defines human or animal - it's a trait which we, as a species, have developed. That does not mean that we're somehow the ultimate species, or that we're no longer a species on par with all other species.

[Adragis]

Our dog sits when we click a little clicker.
It's a Pavlovian response IIRC.

[Arx]

I'm not saying that animals have advanced language on par with human language. We seem to be built for language in a way that animals are not - and yet under some circumstances notions are passed from human to animal. "Sit" causes the dog to sit.

I think it's less a question of me being overly impressed, and more one of you being under impressed. That an animal can recognise a colour and then give the associated word for that colour shows a rationale and understanding which is the basis of our own language.

Technically, yes, I guess. But then, my sister has an acacia tree bonsai that folds its leaves at night. It recognises a change in the light and performs an associated action. It can't learn anything else, of course, not in its own generation, but it reacts to a stimulus.

Yes, the line is finer than it sometimes seems. I'm not sure what that changes, though.

[TD1]

It changes a lot. Biblical accounts would have you believing in a clear cut line. Here is animal, here is human. One is made in God's image, and therefore naturally superior. This (arrogant, I would say) notion of superiority is often backed up by our use of language as an exclusively human trait.

Besides which, your acacia tree is somewhat different from this (Link to Wikipedia):

Before Pepperberg's work with Alex, it was widely believed in the scientific community that a large primate brain was needed to handle complex problems related to language and understanding; birds were not considered to be intelligent as their only common use of communication was of mimicking and the repetition of sounds to interact with each other. However, Alex's accomplishments supported the idea that birds may be able to reason on a basic level and use words creatively.[4] Pepperberg wrote that Alex's intelligence was on a par with that of dolphins and great apes.[5] She also reported that Alex seemed to show the intelligence of a five-year-old human, in some respects,[3] and had not even reached his full potential by the time he died.[6] She said that the bird had the emotional level of a human two-year-old at the time of his death

[Arx]

It changes a lot. Biblical accounts would have you believing in a clear cut line. Here is animal, here is human. One is made in God's image, and therefore naturally superior. This (arrogant, I would say) notion of superiority is often backed up by our use of language as an exclusively human trait.

Which Biblical accounts are you thinking?

[TD1]

Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

[Arx]

Well, in that case the line isn't clear-cut. There isn't even a line, really. We're just the best at tool use, the best at complex communication, the best at higher reasoning.

[TD1]

There is a clear line - there are animals, then there are those "made in God's image" who rule them.

Also, how does the opinion that

we're just the best at tool use, the best at complex communication, the best at higher reasoning

not create a line between "best" and "not-best."

Although, the boyoh who wrote this seems to disagree, I will admit:

Ecclesiastes 3:18-21
I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?

This seems to be individual opinion though - "I said."

Luke disagrees:

Luke 12:24
Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds!

How many Christians would say there isn't a division between man and beast, anyway?

[wierd]

Actually, the (sadly now dead, birds have shorter lifespans than people) african grey parrot, Alex, seemed able to understand and invoke complex, and even abstract understanding of spoken language, and was not mere pavlovian conditioning, or mere stimulus/response and or babble.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXoTaZotdHg

Then there's the whole bag of worms involved in dolphin echograms that strongly resemble language...