There is no doubt that that is the case with Clever Hans, but it has yet to be demonstrated with Alex. It is certainly possible, but to argue that it is definitively the case isn’t right. If you don’t want to believe that animals have any capability of language, then there really isn’t any level of evidence that will convince you. I simply can’t prove that Alex wasn’t working on cues from his handler.
It doesn’t have to be demonstrated. The experimenter must show it is not the “Clever Hans effect”, and in fact, that’s one of the criticisms of Alex. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
When a Stage magician or Skeptic can easily duplicate a so-call “psycics” claims, then it’s up to them to prove they are doing it without sleight of hand/trickery, not the other way around.
We call this “science”.
Not sure if it qualifies as language, but dolphins and some whales refer to each other by name in a way. They each choose a certain sound that identifies themselves and they will call and respond to specific other members of their species, even at a substantial differece.
As far as Alex goes - the research done with him was science, not a carnival sideshow. I’d imagine they tried to control for such influences. It’s not hard to believe he was capable of what he seemed to be - in popular culture, parrots merely mimic people randomly - but in reality they can come to learn what those vocalizations mean and use them appropriately. Parrots are surprisingly smart - especially in the areas of social interaction.
Thank you. That is what I wanted to say. What I said might lead us to argument inappropriate in this forum. Perhaps, and if, we want to continue this we ought to close this thread and open another in Great Debates.
Unfortunately, it is a very poor use of the scientific method. Any hypothesis is valid until it is disproven. You can throw out all psychic strawman arguments you want. If scientists always assumed that nothing is possible until it is proven, nothing would ever be discovered.
We call this “research”.
This is exactly the same as my dog bringing me its food bowl when it is hungry. Or bringing me its leash when it wants to walk. Or pawing at the door and whining when it wants to go out. Absolutely no difference at all. And my dog isn’t unusual in doing those things. Most dog owners will tell you their dog has learned to make specific muscular movements when they want something.
This isn’t something novel. It’s something that scientists have been well aware of as long as there have been scientists. Alex isn’t doing anything novel or even interesting when he moves the muscles attached to his syrinx in a specific pattern when he is hungry. No more than when my dog moves he muscles attached to his leg bones.
These are just muscular actions. They are in no way evidence of the parrot speaking the English language. Speaking a language has a very specific meaning. It requires more than simply learning to making certain muscular actions under certain situations. If that is all that you require for your definition of speech then the only animals that can’t speak are sponges. Everything else from jellyfish through to duck billed platypus can speak, if all that you require is that can learn to produce certain movements in response to certain physiological states.
“Understanding” and “ideas” are loaded terms. If you are using understand simply to mean that they can recognise the word and respond appropriately, I agree. There is certainly evidence that parrots can react to stimuli like shape, material, or color by making muscular movements it has learned to associate with those stimuli.
Once again, this is no different to what scientists have always known that dogs and many other animals can do can do. How do you think that hunting dogs, for example, manage to guide there owners if they couldn’t react to stimuli based on shape, material, or color and communicate which stimuli it had recognised? There’s nothing novel here.
If by understand you mean they understand the way that humans do, that they have sufficient theory of mind to comprehend that the same or similar concept exists in the speaker’s mind as well as their own; that we have no evidence for.
And if by idea you mean that they link the word for a texture with a memory symbol of that texture and with related symbols; that we have no evidence for.
There’s two ways to take that.
In the sense that parrot is making certain muscular actions when it sees certain textures it certainly isn’t unknowing mimicry. But I don’t believe that there was ever any popular belief otherwise. Everyone who has ever owned a parrot, or indeed most other pet tetrapods, knew that they could be easily taught to make certain actions in response to stimuli. A gun dog for example can be readily trained to point or bark in different ways for different prey species, or even different ages. The dog clearly understands complex concepts based on the shape, colour, texture or movement of the prey and will make specific muscular actions in response to those stimuli that allows it communicate with the handler. But no one ever thought otherwise, certainly not scientists. And of course nobody would ever call that speech. Yet for some reason when the muscular actions produce a sound that mimicks sounds in our language people want to declare it language.
I’ll adopt the logical position until I see some evidence that this is use of language, as opposed to simply making muscular actions in response to stimulus or emotional state which all animals do.
The other way to take it is to say that yes, it is unknowing mimickry. The parrot doesn’t know that the word “velvet” evokes a certain texture in the human mind any more than a dog “knows” that pointing low with a high set tail means “antelope fawn” to a handler. The animals are making actions that they have learned are appropriate to make when they encounter specific stimuli. There is a huge gulf between that and the knowing use of human language.
I reject his more outrageous claims, as I reject most of Koko’s handlers claims. I endorse wholehearteldy what I have seen published in actual scientific journals. That work says that Alex can not speak any human language. For example he states quite clearly that “we could not claim that he acoustically represented labels as do humans with respect to phonological categories and understood that his labels are made of individual elements that can be recombined in various ways to produce new ones” and that “Alex’s abilities are clearly not isomorphic with human language,” That says it all: the way Alex used sounds fails one of the most fundamental tests of human speech and Alex did not use human language.
Alex was a very clever mimick, and he gave us some very interesting insights into the way that mimicking birds extract sounds form their environment, but nobody, even Pepperberg, claimed there was any scientific evidence for claiming that Alex could speak English. That ridiculous claim has only been made in non-scientific contexts, such as this thread.
“Chimpanzees, gorillas, dolphins and parrots can even understand and use human speech, gestures or symbols in constructions of up to about three words. But even after years of training, none of these creatures develops verbal skills more advanced than those of a three-year-old child.” http://richarddawkins.net/article,3051,Animal-Intelligence-and-the-Evolution-of-the-Human-Mind,Scientific-American
Since no three year old child can speak any human language and since no human language could function with constructions of three words or less your claim that some animals can speak human language is clearly nonsense.
Starwman much? I never claimed anything even remotely like either of those statements, so why would I bother to reference them?
Now are we please have those references that I requested for your claims? After all this is supposed to be GQ, not MPSIMS.
Most people agree that God created humans. Who cares what most people agree on? As Cecil Adams says, we don’t take votes on the facts around here.
And the facts are clear. Alex’s handler states quite clearly that Alex’s use of speech fails one of the most basic standards of human language and that it is not the same as human language.
Then you are disagreeing with the science on the subject.
That’s right. It has clearly gone down. If you look at writings from 100+ years ago there was general assumption many animals had all sorts of wondrous intelligences and emotional abilities. The aforementioned work of Darwin where he enthuses over the intelligence of earthworms because they can select the right leaves to line their burrows is a classic case in point. Other contemporary works enthuse over the intelligence of spiders in spinning webs or the intelligence of ants.
As animal intelligence has been studied in more depth we have come to realise just how rigid and instinctive most of these behaviours are, and how little intelligence is involved. There’s no doubt to someone familiar with pre-20th century views on animal intelligence that the evaluation has gone down greatly.
I don’t know about parrots specifically, but certainly work has been published on corvid mathematical ability for the best part of 100 years
I am not and never have made any argument at all regarding mathematical abilities, so please can the strawmen. There’s quite enough baseless nonsense being talked here about language and intelligence without broadening the scope to include mathematics, which is even harder to evaluate.
Absolute nonsense. God created man is an hypothesis that has never been disproven. By your argument it is a valid scientifc explanation, an argument that is rejected by every scientist in the world AFAIK, and the US SUprmene Court just for good measure.
In actual science a hypothesis is considered valid until it is disproven and while it supports the observations and while it remains open to falisfication or remains the simplest and most consistent explanation.
By rejecting Dr. Deth’s simpler explanation and refusing to explain how your extraordinary and complex hypothesis could possibly be falsified you’ve ceased to engage in good science.
Cite. Seriously, I want to see evidence that parrots come to learn what their vocalisatiions mean, any more than a dog comes to relaise what pointing in a certain manner means.
That’s an extraordinary claim, one that no reseracher has ever made AFAIK, and one that will require some truly extraordinary evidence. Quite frankly I have difficulty imagining how you would even attempt to demonstrate it. It devlishly difficult to demonstrate what words mean to humans, and we can feely communicate with each other. To make such a claim for an animal is very… courageous.
No, they aren’t.
It’s important to distinguish between communication and language. The latter is a subset of the former. Many (if not most) animals can communicate at some level. And some have been able to use human sounds (or gestures) to communicate. None has been shown to engage in language. Not chimps, not parrots, not dolphins, not any animal.
What’s that smell? What’s that smell!!?! IT’S BACON!!
We said John Mace.
Communication is not language.
Speech is not language.
Animals can communicate.
Some animals can speak.
Some animals may even have their own langauge
No science has ever suggested than any animal can speak any human langauge.
Yet for some reaaon that claim has been made and defended multiple times in this thread with no evidence yet forthcoming.
Meh. Not only do I not buy that pigs (or any animal) know they are going to die, I seriously doubt they have any sense of mortality (their own or otherwise) in the first place. That would imply consciousness, abstract reasoning and/or analytical thought… no way.
We start with a hypothesis, then we test it,* by repeatable means,* which arrives at a theory. The Alex experiment was fine as a hypothesis, but failed in the testing- *by repeatable means.
*
Thus as a Theory, it is invalid.
Although Blake is being fairly absolutist, and I am willing to give into a few “maybes” and “perhaps”, he is correct.
Wait, you absolutely lost me here. Forget the animals: are you saying that human three year olds don’t use language?
Then one of our disagreements is on the definition of language which I will concede. You can reject Dr. Pepperberg’s claims if you like, but as far as I know, she is the one holding a PhD in animal psychology. I’m gonna trust her over some internet dude that hasn’t demonstrated any knowledge at all.
Your saying Alex only used words once, or are you saying only one parrot did this. I’m willing to be wrong, I’m not willing to reject my hypothesis that has barely been tested. Given the scrutiny this research undergoes, I expect it will be a long time before we know the answer.
I’m with CaerieD here. From my child’s health check at 20 months:
“Using full sentences, singing and counting.
Aware of simple numbers, knows shapes and colours.”
This was not stated as being unusual, but merely that she was meeting developmental norms.
While I’ve got no opinion either way on animal awareness of mortality (that I’m willing to defend here) I have to dispute the claim that 3 y/o’s don’t use language. I was involved in early childhood development. By three years old, a child should be using language extensively as a learning tool. Most (but, of course, not all) will be starting to use words between 1 year and 18 months, adding words at an exponential rate. They will have understood basic language for some time before then.
While not every child speaks coherently by three, it’s very unusual for a child not to be using language at all.
It is you who are rejecting Dr. Pepperberg’s claims. As I have already stated quite clearly, with supporting quotes from the man himself. Pepperberg wrote quote clearly that what Alex does failed one of the most basic tests of language use and is not the same as language use in human. It is you who say otherwise. On that pioint I agree with pepperberg entirely .
Note that the claim was that no animal at all has ever managed to reach a higher level verbal ability than a three year old. IOW at best they manage what a child of 36 months might. Nobody has ever claimed that any animal could actually compete with any three year old human verbally. For example it is obvious that no animal “Understands most simple questions dealing with his environment and activities”. The claim was simply stating that they can manage some of the same verbal tricks as a three year old humanwith some degree of success.
As for the rest of the question, “use” is too vague a term to be meaningful here.
I am saying that human three year olds don’t speak a language such as English or Cantonese. Paul made the ludicrous comment that some animals speak such languages.
Here is a list of language milestoines for 3 year olds. Here is the list for four.. At three a child can not identify colours, pronounce words correctly , express abstract concepts or describe the uses of common objects to give some of the more obvious limitations.
Language requires, for example, structure and syntax and an ability to convey meaning about relationships between objects which three year olds, and by extension all animals, lack the ability to do.
I’ll put it this way. If an adult’s ability with English was such that they could use no more than three words at time, couldn’t pronounce most sounds, usually failed at attempts to use plurals or tenses, couldn’t describe relationships such as “before” or “faster”, would you say that they could speak English? I can essentially use Mandarin to that level after just a few weeks, but I wouldn’t say I could speak the Mandarin language by any strecthing of the definition.
Let me first say that I mostly agree with what you’re saying in this thread; however, Dr. Irene Pepperburg is most certainly a woman. I just find it funny that you argue so stridently and clearly attempt an authoritative stance, yet somehow missed this obvious fact.
Reminder. Board rules permit use of the sig file only once per thread.
Gfactor
General Questions Moderator
Woman, actually.
I fear this have moved to Great Debates, and propose we move the conversation there.
I already conceded the definition of language. I was missusing the term. I am not rigorously familiar with Dr. Pepperbergs research, nor will I bother to make myself so for an internet conversation that some people are taking a little too seriously. Actually, on reading your previous diatribe, I see that we disagree on less than I thought except your use of the scientific method.
You see Blake, often there is more than one acceptable hypothesis, and scientists are not always in agreement about which hypothesis is simplest. Someone that beleives that God created man, clearly feels that that is the simplest explanation. Those people would likely argue that abiogenesis is akin to throwing legos in a cement mixer, and it is much simpler to assume some entity did it. I would argue that the early Earth was an ideal environment for producing complex organic molecules for life and could hardly imagine it not happening just by chance.