I was just talking about in terms of “if you were the only human-level intelligent dog, living among humans.” I would suspect that the physical inability to properly communicate (by lack of the ability to enunciate the same quantity of sounds) would be felt as a hardship. If there was a whole community of intelligent dogs, and they mostly associated with each other, certainly they would feel better–though still they would probably want and use any tools they could get to achieve the same amount of communication abilities as humans possesed, even for just among themselves. With a brain capable of abstract thought, you would be at quite a loss with no way to communicate those ideas.
Personally, I would posit that a society of intelligent beings that did not have a way to communicate abstract ideas, beyond what simple body-language can communicate, would regress over the generations if not forced through further engineering to stay intelligent. …Perhaps not all the way back to simple doghood, but at least some loss of the ability to formulate abstract ideas would probably occur.
The dogs would find a way to communicate, if they were intelligent. Apes and whales have extremely complex language systems based not only on sound but on body language. I think intelligent dogs would quickly (within a few hundred years) develop a language based on barks and movement. I agree, though, that it would be very lonely if you were the only intelligent dog on Earth.
Aside from the worry about what this would do to the ecosystem (though since we’re talking about domestic animals, there isn’t much of one), I don’t see anything wrong with trying to make animals more intelligent. I think the Earth could use a few more sentient species, personally (the sake of diversity, the ability to view consciousness through different types of brains), though I would be concerned that humans would use our legacy as top species for the last few thousands of years to enslave, discriminate against, or just generally treat badly the new human-level sentients that might arise. If we’re going to create these new beings, we have to have a plan in place for how we’re going to treat them once it’s determined that they’re sentient. Considering how terribly we treat the other self-aware species that are already here, maybe intelligent dogs shouldn’t be subjected to us.
Great. Now companies will be able to outsource tech support to an entirely different species. “They’ll work for peanuts!”
More like bananas and love 'em liver treats. 
Chimps have long been known to mourn lost relatives, to a point of self-neglect. Jane Goodall reported of a young male chimp (the last child of a female) who remained with the mother after her death, neglecting his own health and eventually dying. Koko (the famous gorilla) mourned the loss of her first pet cat, and indicated (via sign language) the desire for a replacement. When she picked a new kitten, she specifically reject several that looked like the old cat and picked one that looked different, clearly indicating that she understood the old pet to be gone for good.
These indicate (although not explicitly) that the primates understand death and mortality not just as a transitory concept but as a permanent loss. Whether they can foresee their own mortality is another question (and, despite all the morbid poetry and prose produced by humanity, one that applies to people as well), but the certainly understand that creatures around them will eventually pass and have at least a rudimentary ability to understand death and remorse. The same observation can be made of some other mammals as well, of course, indicating that they have far richer internal lives and comprehension of past and future than commonly thought.
Stranger
I’m familiar with all those observations, but it’s a big stretch to go from “realizes something is gone” to “realizes something is dead”. I don’t think you’d find many primatologists who would agree that chimps understand death.
What more is there to understanding death than “he is gone and won’t be coming back?”
The “he won’t be coming back” part. There is no evidence that apes understand this.
Stranger: And seeing the love and compassion childless people have for their pets, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a commercial market for this as well
? Not to join the jump-on-Stranger movement here, but it’s news to me that childless people care more about their pets than non-childless ones.
That’s okay, go ahead and jump on me. I’m used to the abuse.
That wasn’t what I intended to imply at all; rather, that a lot of people who can’t have or don’t want children elect to lavish the same level of attention on a pet instead and might appreciate a dog who is intellectually more capable of responding.
Of course, the same could be true of people who have children AND pets. I’m just figure that childless people are more likely to be willing to spend extraordinary resources on a pet, whereas a parent will focus on providing for the child. Not having children (nor, currently, pets) I’m speaking from a strictly academic point of view.
Stranger
True, and I should know better than to have drawn that conclusion. Unfortunately with all of the studies of ape intelligence, language, etc, the researchers do not take into account that infant ape mental development appears to track that of human children until the child begins speaking. After that the human’s development continues while the ape’s slows to a stop (Vygotsky, 1978; Bickerton, 1990). To the best of our knowledge, an ape can no more understand concepts like death than can a toddler of two or three, just as a signing ape like Koko, despite many years of intense training, appears limited to discussing things of interest to a child of two, like food and toys, in very simple phrases.
Well if we are talking about the ecosystem, it certainly would effect it in a major way. You seem to overlook the fact that humans ARE part of the ecosystem, a massive change in the natural balance would certainly have unpredictable results. Your concerns for equal rights is an example, if intelligent animals were added to the mix it would certainly HAVE to displace humans in one way or another. This can be seen today in the world as highly skilled jobs are being lost in first world countries to third world countries. Have you not seen or read the planet of the apes?
You make more of an argument against senitient animals with your concerns in your email. If there is no logical reason to create seninent animals, I can’t see how it can be justified, considering the problems it would create.
Of course I mean no disrespect to our new dog overlords. Hail Dogs.
So, our economy would literally go to the dogs? 
I just want to make dogs smart enough so they can sit around a table playing poker. Then, you could have a picture in the background of a bunch of guys playing poker. It sounds like a perfect setup for an anime parody. Maybe you could call it, “Gooddoggies”.
“What, I’m funny? Funny how? Funny like a chipmunk? I’m here to make you bark? I’m a ****in’ ground squirrel? Exactly how I am I funny?”
Stranger
I’m not disagreeing with your statement, but expanding on it a bit: Chimp babies clearly outpace human babies in motor skills, which puts us a slight “disadvantage” early on. But the biggest differnce is in brain growth patterns. Chimps, like other mammals, have an inflection point in brain growth at birth-- there is the rapid fetal brain growth, and then much slower post birth growth rate. Humans, OTOH, contninue to exhibit typical mammalian rapid fetal brain growth well into the first year after birth. It’s as if our gestation period, measured by brain growth, was more like 20 months rather than 9.
So, human and chimp babies may exhibit similar behaviors in the first year, but what’s going on under the skull is quite different.
Interestingly, this brain growth pattern can be used to understand something about the lifestyles of our extint ancestors. From what data there is available, Homo erectus of about 1.8M years ago appears to exhibit brain growth closer to the ape pattern than the human pattern (although still somewhat more “advanced” than the ape pattern). We can expect that early Homo erectus children grew up much faster than modern human children, and proabbly didn’t have as long a learning period.
Your humor will be rewarded by our future dog overlords…
But it is those sneaky AI computers that we really need to watch out for…
Of course we aren’t disagreeing–we’re quoting the same studies!
But I am learning that doesn’t necessarily follow. How two people can reach diametrically opposed conclusions from the same data annoys me.
October 9, 2008, 2:41 a.m. EST: The Straight Dope Message Board becomes self-aware.
Well…just make sure you keep Arnold Schwarzeneger in the loop then.
In a panic, Ed Zotti tries to pull the plug. SDMB fights back…
Stranger
“Are we not men?”