http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040610/D83468OG0.html
Research Finds Dogs Understand Language
This is totally spooky, especially the part where the dog reasons by exclusion to learn a new word.
As an enthusiastic carnivore, do I have to lower the threshold of restraint ?(I don’t eat primates)
And Ray Charles has died too young.
Moderator’s Note: What’s that, girl? Timmy’s fallen down the well again?!? No!–There’s a thread in GD whose title doesn’t make the contents very clear! Well, I’d better edit that, then!
What is this “we” thing? Most of “we” don’t eat dog.
While I hate to fall back on popular culture, I believe it was one very wise Jedi who once said, with much accuracy, “the ability to speak does not make you intelligent.”
WOOF!(EDITORS, PFOOI)
woofwooofwooof!!(everyone’s a critic nowadays)
woofwoof, woowoowoofwoof(it was SUPPOSED to be a teaser…)
We always knew that dogs could learn words, which is what that article talks about - it’s just the number that is of interest. Knowing and responding to these individual sounds is not an understanding of language. It’s just as easy to train a dog to stand when you say ‘sit’ and vice versa as it is to train them the correct way.
Well, remember that you are the one teaching the language. It’s not your dog’s fault if you lie to him, and then say nyah, nyah, nyah you dunce, your not sitting, that thing is called standing.
that said, what they describe is PRECISELY understanding what language is; the dog has created an abstraction named:toy names, which he is able to map to a set of objects as a class (toys) within which he has an empirical screen (have I seen this toy before) and then he closes the circle to make the abstraction into specific instructions.
I say we shouldn’t eat’em.
btw, I live in chinatown, autres temps, autres moeurs.
They’re doing nothing of the sort. It’s straightforward conditioning (heard of Pavlov?)
I should elaborate - there’s too many variables. Particularly the tone of voice, which could be conditioned as a ‘fetch’ command no matter what words were being said.
I think this is the most coherent post I’ve ever seen by you. O_o 
Curious; this isn’t my field. What makes it not conditioning for us to relate a word to an object or feeling, but makes it so for a dog?
It’s early in the day…
Gorillaman check this site http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995101 for more information on how this goes beyond Pavlov conditioning.
The dog associates a novel word with a new toy in a group of learnt toys, and in a later experiment still associates the same word with the same toy in a group of some known and some unknown toys.
precisely the aforereferenced construction of an abstract class from the empirical conditioning.
next the ability to manipulate those abstract classes (note the superimposition of the screen of the dog’s past interaction with the class, “toys”–ie, not the specific toy or word associated with it. it’s the GENERALIZATION (there, is that enough caps for a while…) that ;makes it jaw dropping.
so now he has a class constructed out of empirical associations, and he has a second class, constructed out of his FUCKING MEMORY, (PRECIOUS BLOOD OF THE SACRED BABY JESUS,SAVE US!!
and through REASONING, (holy shit!) he knows which toy matches the new word.
And gorillaman is not impressed?
See, those primates give themselves airs…
What the thread title should say,
I still maintain that there’s gaping holes in the experiment. For example, what happened if a name not associated with any toy was called out?
And I still maintain that tone of voice would be crucial. The tone of voice can indicate ‘fetch’ by itself - and if there is no connection between the sound and the toys the dog knows, then fetching the unfamiliar one would make sense.
And even if I’m wrong on the above points, the dog’s still a long way from ‘understanding language’.
And then, how does “understanding language” relate to intelligence and not eating something?
that’s exactly what they did. they called out a name the dog had never heard for a toy he had never seen. he came back with the right one.
con respetto, did you read the cite?
Intelligence has nothing to do with tastiness. Indeed, ingesting may just be the highest form of flattery.
We learned fairly quickly that Iraqis understood language, but this didn’t keep us from beating the crap out of them with some regularity.
We knew that negroes understood language, but you’ll notice it took a civil war to make us quit using them as farm equipment.
We know that women understand language, but some places still won’t promote 'em above middle management.
None of which has anything to do with eating them, though.
(stands clear and ducks for the inevitable offcolor joke…)