I was under the impression that dolphins give each other names. If so, I see no reason to suppose that they couldn’t figure out that some human had given them a name as well. The problem here is that I don’t think that people communicate with dolphins with words.
@ Blake: Never mind, I found it. Your definition of “the dog knows his name” requires the dog to know language well enough to understand the word as a concept meaning him. The way I was understanding that same phrase was that the dog recognized the sound of his name and would respond appropriately. Using your definition of the phrase, the dog can clearly not “know his name”. I have no problem with that.
This
And as I have said already jellyfish, vegetables and bacteria also recognise stimuli and respond appropriately.
Given that, how is such a definition useful, meaningful or even applicable to the question asked by the OP?
Do you seriously argue that a cabbage knows its own name? Because a cabbage can certainly recognise a stimulus and would respond appropriately.
Or does the definition hinge upon “sound”. In which case you will be arguing that a deaf person does not know their own name.
Nope, dolphins make unique sounds that other dolphins can use to identify them, but the whole point is that those sounds are *never *used by any other dolphin. IOW they are the exact opposite of a name, they are a unique sound that an individual only uses to identify itself and that is never used by others. In contrast a name is a unique sound that is used by others to identify an individual, and that is rarely used by the individual itself.
In reality dolphin calls are no more names than are human faces or zebra stripes. They are all unique identifiers, but nobody would call the stripes on a zebra or a human face a name.
Blake, explain to me why some of my parrots not only respond to their own names, but will use the human-assigned names for the other parrots in the family flock. So, for instance, when I had a cockatiel named Rocket and a lovebird named Junior, Rocket used to use the word “Junior” in reference to the other bird, usually when when couldn’t see Junior and was actively searching for him.
I get that you’re saying that parrots don’t use language as humans do, because they don’t. However, I think you’re off base when you think there is NO comprehension going on here. Birds, dogs, and cats can clearly come to associate “this collection of signals means X” and respond in context, and not as a kneejerk conditioned reflex, either. I can tell my parrots “go to your cage” and most of the time they will do so, having been trained to do exactly that, but sometimes one will refuse while the others cooperate, and sometimes all three will avoid doing it. You would dismiss this as failed conditioning, but you refuse to consider that animals might have some sort of preference that leads to stubborn refusal such as we see in humans from toddlers to adults.
It’s not like people respond perfectly, either - we are all familiar with someone deliberately ignoring a speaker. We don’t say a toddler has zero language capability because of their poor understanding. We don’t describe people obeying a verbal command as “simply responding to a conditioned stimulus”.
Your view permits no thought or preference in the animal whatsoever, it treats the animal as a complete automaton They’re not. They have preference, from foods to companions. While they may the same same response to the same signal that response one day may be more brisk and immediate than another - the animal clearly knows how to respond, but the “tone” of their response differs. How do you account for a dog that, when you offer to play fetch with a ball, ignores the ball and brings you a frisbee to throw? (I had a dog that used to do that) The dog certainly seems to be saying “OK, let’s play, but let’s use a frisbee instead of a ball”. No, of course the dog doesn’t say it like that - for one thing, dogs can’t speak - but your communication of “let’s play” does seem to be receiving a counter offer of a specific item to play with in preference to the one offered.
Perhaps you are uncomfortable with using the word “language” in context with animals - fine, use “communication”, because that’s what’s going on, not simply a collection of mindless, trained reflexes.
It’s an anecdote. I really can’t address it because there simply isn’t enough information. The simplest *explanation *is simply that it never happened and that you anthropomorphising. The only way to actually gauge whether this happened would be to record all instances of the bird’s use of the names, all their uses of other words and then correlate that with their positions at all times. Since I doubt that you did that there is no actual evidence that this happened.
And that is the problem with anecdote. There’s nothing really to address beyond the fact that you claim that it happened. OK, I accept that you make such a claim, unfortunately that is as far as we can go.
If you believe that your birds actually do this then, once again, I encourage you to get down to your local research centre, and you will have a scientific paper on your resume within a month. If you already have a degree and want to enrol in a post-grad research program you can probably have a research Master’s degree within 19 months. Because clear proof that birds not only have unique names, but recognise the names of other and will also adopt names *from humans *would blow many scientific debates wide open.
No, that is not in any way accurate or correct.
The scientific establishment considers it incredibly unclear. The one thing that *all *etholgists and neuroscientists agree on is that if animals have that level of comprehension it is very murky and hard to establish with any degree of certainty.
Claiming that the issue is clear when it contradicts literally 100% of all professionals int he field is going way to far for GD
I do not *refuse *to consider it. I have considered it and I *know *that there is absolutely zero evidence for such a claim. Beyond that, all the consideration that can be given to it at this stage is how to collect evidence that it is so. Any other consideration is on par with considering that your birds may be telepathic.
We don’t say that of animals either, so I don’t quite know what point you are trying to make.
No, that is because it is trivially easy to distinguish experimentally between a human’s response to a verbal command and their response to conditioning. I described one such technique above.
That is in stark contrast to animals, where I have yet to see a single experiment that provides evidence that can not be just as readily explained through simple conditioning.
IOW we don’t describe people in that way because what people are observed to do is not compatible with that hypothesis.
Utter nonsense, and completely irrelevant to boot.
So the dog doesn’t use words to say this, and it doesn’t understand the words that you use.
So how exactly does any of this relate to whether animals recognise their own names? I am sure you are trying to make some relevant point, but I have no idea what that point is.
Since nobody even used the words “reflex” or “mindless” in this thread before this post, I have no idea what point you think you are making here. I assume you are trying to construct some sort of strawman.
Burn baby, burn.
This is very high on the BS detector as people use the same system to hear their name, you call out bemmis and Dennis replies ‘Yea what do you want’.
A former cat of mine who when outside playing and not ready to come in, if I were to call her by her name she would come so I can see her, meow at me so I can hear her, and then run off and play some more. It was quite obvious that she was letting me know that she heard me, and letting me know she is OK, but there was no ‘reward’ for her response as such as she ran back to play, and her running back to play was sometimes frustrating as I wanted her in.
Who am I going to believe my cat who know her name or researchers I don’t know telling me about my cat who they don’t know. This is a strong case for when your personal experience allows you do disregard such ‘research’ and shows how faulty researched studies can be.
Really?
Cite!
The hypothesis says that this animal has been conditioned so that when it hears the sound of its name it will be rewarded, and so it responds to the sound.
And you think that this anecdote * contradicts *that?
You *yourself *admit that the cat only **responds **to the **sound **because it expected a reward, and when the reward was not forthcoming it left. You could have got exactly the same response by banging a can of catfood with a spoon. It’s the perfect example of how the animal has no understanding of its name.
Seriously?
In GQ?
On the SDMB?
You are going to respond "Who am I going to believe, the peer reviewed science or my subjective, emotion laden responses to my kitty?
:rolleyes:
Our dog’s name is Captain. Sometimes on military shows or what not (and Star Trek) somebody on the TV will yell “Captain!” He perks up and looks at the TV.
Excellent case study, since it shows that he react to the word and allows allows us to examine how he reacts without any non-verbal stimuli and to words used by people who are unaware of his name.
So how does he react when someone simply says the word “Captain” in normal conversation?
In other words, because I have no degree and no one has ever published a paper on this it can’t possibly exist?
“Anecdote” is not the same as “lie” or “hallucinate”, which is basically what you’re accusing me of doing.
While I am a fan of Occam’s razor, I’m not sure how you leap from “Broomstick’s anecdote” to “simplest explanation is she’s deluded”. Perhaps a better response from you to the stimulus of my anecdote is “the traditional explanation is that it never happened and you are imaging something that doesn’t exist.”
Perhaps we should stop listing new comets, because so many of them are discovered by amateurs these days without credentials rather than official scientists with degrees.
One problem, however, is that people such as yourself would never accept any proof unless an animal was one hundred percent consistent all the time, with no error or use outside of a narrowly defined use. And people don’t even do that! Just ask any child with siblings about mom or dad’s use of names - there are any number of comedians trying to rehash the time a parent couldn’t remember a kid’s name, or spewed out “Mary-Tom-Sally-Joseph” at a single kid, or called a kid by the wrong name… I suppose by that we should conclude people don’t have names.
So any study will have to take into account a certain “error rate” as being natural, as even the language experts - humans - don’t use language perfectly all the time. Humans forget people’s names, and use the wrong names for a person, quite frequently. Yet you won’t accept less than perfection from the animals. That makes no sense.
Well, of course it’s difficult - we are insisting, in the case of parrots, that they use human speech which is quite difficult for them to replicate accurately given how very different their vocal apparatus is. Humans, likewise, have difficulty replicate bird noises for the same reason. That, right there, is a significant barrier. FIRST you have to establish a communication method that both parties can actually use.
While I agree that the Koko experiment had a lot of issues, one breakthrough was using sign language instead of trying to get an ape to talk, which had been the prior method used. Koko did show apes can use sign language as a form of communication, even if you wouldn’t necessarily call it a use of language.
Likewise, your dog physically can’t say “I want to go for a walk” but he can bring you his leash, which communicates the same thing. No one, however, is saying that the act of fetching a leash is a use of language. It’s communication, but not language.
So, if we can acknowledge that animals can communicate not only with their own species but also human beings it gets to be less reasonable to say they’re just responding as trained. Sometimes, the animal initiates the communication and it’s the human that responds.
I guess the question I have is when does communication move from “just communicating” to language?
Dr. Hashalaba (who worked with Koko) is somehow not a professional? Dawn Prince-Hughes, with a PhD, who recognized the bonobi Kanzi was using ASL signs (not as a language, but definitely knowing some signs), is somehow not a professional? Irene Pepperberg is not considered a professional? I thought she was properly credentialed scientist, was she stripped of her degrees and position while no one was looking? Mind you, Pepperberg didn’t say Alex the Parrot used language per se, but that he used words to communicate which is not quite the same thing. I can learn a few words or phrases in a foreign language to obtain a result without actually knowing what those words mean or how to parse the foreign grammar. Don’t mistake what the popular press says for what the researcher is actually claiming.
Apparently your claim that “100%” of professionals agree on this is inaccurate. Unless, of course, your definition of “professional” has more to do with “toe-ing the dogma line” than credentials.
By the way - what are YOUR credentials in this matter?
You know that, absolutely? How? Divine revelation? All I see you doing is flat out refusing to consider any evidence. Granted, my observations are those of an amateur, but you are equally dismismissive of actual work by actual scientists attempting to prove a different viewpoint.
Yes, it is true Alex the Parrot was not always cooperative. (Frankly, this will not come as a surprise to anyone who has ever owned a parrot - they can be quite stubborn, willful creatures) His response rate was only 80% accurate, on average. You can look at that and point out he was wrong 20% of the time, how awful, and concentrate on that, or consider that 80% accurate is significantly better than chance guessing, so some form of communication must have been occurring.
I don’t have an issue with your statement that evidence is weak, or that something isn’t proven. What I do have an issue with is your absolute statements using terms like “100%” for things that are not that absolute (such as your claim of absolute universal agreement among “professionals”, a term which you did not even bother to define so I went with the assumption you meant someone with a degree in the subject, which would include people like Irene Pepperberg who clearly would NOT agree with your statement and thus invalidates your claim of 100%). I have issue with your insistence that because something isn’t proven it somehow does not exist. We have not yet discovered everything there is to know, so absence of evidence continues to NOT be proof of nonexistence. I can see that so far no claim has produced evidence that convinces YOU, however, that does not mean your dismissal somehow proves those claims are wholly inaccurate. You demand a very high level of rigor in evidence and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but if 100% accuracy rate in identifying objects, color, and number is required to prove a parrot understands the words it uses then, well, humans couldn’t pass that requirement either. We’ve all miscounted or misspoken at some point, or lost interest in a repetitive task. Why are you insisting on holding animals to a higher standard than humans can achieve?
Define what you mean by “simple conditioning”. Do you mean “classical conditioning”?
YOU have not seen a “single experiment”… do you work in the field? Do you have credentials? Because if you do that would be interesting to know but right now, as far as I know, you’re just another layperson on the internet. In which case your opinion and your belief really carries no more weight than mine does.
I think it has more to do with human bias, with our culture’s traditional regard of humans as special and somehow magically not animals ourselves. A lot of what people do on a daily basis could easily be explained as conditioning to stimuli, from getting up when the alarm clock goes off to a dozen other things. A lot of what we do in response to other’s verbal communications approaches automatic - “Hello, how are you?” with an *automatic *response of “I’m fine” for instance.
Huh? Where did THIS come from? I thought we were discussing the matter, not going for a winner take all contest. Really, I do not understand the level of hostility you are projecting in that statement. Do you somehow view a different viewpoint as a threat to be met with fire? How… odd. But really, that smacks more of religious dogma than a scientific search for knowledge. Truth can withstand questioning, it’s false dogma that requires fire to obliterate heresy and inconvenient evidence of inaccuracy.
Well, obviously it depends on the name. If it’s distinct enough from the other sounds, a foreigner certainly could recognize it, and I imagine a dog could, too. I know this because when I watch the news, often reports from the Middle East begin with a man speaking in Arabic or whatever for a few seconds before the English translation begins, and often it sounds like “Blah blah blah Cairo” or whatever.
And you may be drawing too much distinction between recognizing a name and responding to a sound pattern. A name is a sound pattern. Surely you wouldn’t argue that a wolf can’t tell a sheep from a cougar of the same size, even if both are silent, but those are just “light patterns.”
Subscribing to my new favorite thread.
I tentatively raise my hand from the back of the classroom to say, "As with Broomstick’s and kanicard’s anecdotal evidence, I too, believe that my dog can recognise her name. Her behaviours indicate that the sound that refers to her she recognises as her name; it is a wordused by other people and she uniquely associates with herself. When it is used in conversation with other people, she will look up; if she’s alseep she will wake. It seems that also she recognises the names of other people, e.g. if I say, “We’re going to George’s” she will lead the way to Georges (unleashed). When we arrive, though his wife will be there, she will walk directly to George first. She is familiar with the names of everyone in her sphere. In a group of any number of people, I, or anyone can say to her, “Mark’s looking for you” and she’ll go to Mark.
The mention of names of people in absentia will provide a response. I can say to her, “I saw your friend Simon today,” (someone she is particularly ‘fond’ of) and she will wag her tail. That very same sentence structure with the name of the one person she displays no ‘attachment’ to whatsoever will have her walk away."
I am in no position to, and nor do I have any intention whatsoever of trying to discredit what you say, Blake; I’m simply interested in knowing how you explain those behaviours.
I accept that it is all anecdotal. Other than having you live with me for a week or two, or giving me some kind of experiment to run on her that would be to your satisfaction, if you can presuppose, for the sake of the exercise, it’s true, I’m really interested in knowing what behaviours like that mean from your perspective.
Well, he doesn’t respond when the TV uses it in a non-exclamatory style. “The enemy captain is not responding to our signal” gets nothing. He does respond if we’re just talking about him - “Man, Captain was terrified of that thunderstorm” but then again we often look at him while talking about him.
ETA - he also has no problem identifying his name when he is called it by unfamiliar people, even people with accents or lisps.
No, because you have no empirical evidence that the event occurred there is no way that it can be addressed beyond acknowledging that you have shared this anecdote with us. Nobody is saying that it can’t exist, simply that there is no empirical evidence upon which to discuss it.
In the same way that people have come in here and proclaimed that they have talked to God or seen UFOs. There is no response to such anecdotes beyond pointing out that they are anecdotes, that they do not constitute evidence and that there are simpler, well documented explanations that are consistent with the science
Ahh, no. No more than I accuse people who see flying saucers or ghosts of lying or hallucinating. Just as I would not accuse someone who claimed the she saw the sun going round the Earth of hallucinating.
I am not accusing you of anything. I am pointing out that the human mind has a horrible track record of establishing the truth. That is why people genuinely saw the sun orbiting the Earth for hundreds of thousands of years. It is why thousands of people genuinely see ghosts and UFO every single day.
And that is why we invented rational discourse and scientific enquiry. To overcome those limitations of the individual human mind by insisting that any evidence must be able to be be seen by all. If evidence can’t be seen by all then there is no real basis for discussing it beyond pointing out that it is unreliable and may well never have occurred.
Why would that be better than simply pointing out that it is an anecdote?
You don;t seem to have any grasp on what empirical means. Amateurs are just as capable of collecting empirical evidence as professionals.
But you just try to get a comet listed based solely on the anecdote “I saw a new comet”, with no empirical data on exactly where and when you saw it and under what conditions and no way for anybody else to verify your claim. As you can see, even in naming comets you need empirical and replicable data. And it doesn’t matter one whit whether you are professional or amateur; anecdotal data is simply valueless.
Ahh, no, that is a load of dingo’s kidneys.
First off I won’t accept any proof at all. Science doesn’t believe in proofs. Proofs for mathematicians. scientists operate in the real world.
What I will accept is evidence. And scientists don’t demand 100% consistency in evidence. They simply demand that it be empirical, replicable and and shown to be not the product of chance. The classic example of this is medicine. No drug will cure any disease with 100% consistency. However they can all be shown to be better than chance 95% of the time based on empirical evidence. That does not mean that they cure 95% of cases. Many of these drugs are known to only cure 2% of cases. But they are still universally accepted
Nope. We would only conclude that if they could not get the name right with better than chance accuracy.
Yep, absolutely correct. And all studies do take that into account. 100% accuracy is not required. 1% accuracy would be perfectly acceptable. Provided that 1% was better than what you would get through random guesses then it would be perfectly acceptable. And of course if you can’t do better than random guessing then there is no evidence that you are not randomly guessing.
[quote]
Humans forget people’s names, and use the wrong names for a person, quite frequently. Yet you won’t accept less than perfection from the animals. That makes no sense.[/qupte]
It makes no sense because it isn’t true. You just made it up out of whole cloth.
Nooo.
The question at hand is whether animals *are *using our communication method an extremely limited way to encode a description of themsleves. If we can establish that they can’t use our communication methods to encode a description of themselves, then that by itself is the answer to the question.
There is no need to find any other methods because the question at hand is their ability to use *our *method.
So they can use a specific language, but you wouldn’t necessarily call that a use of language.
I am so glad you cleared that up for us. 
Which is exactly what I said long before you even entered the thread.
It is indisputable that *trees *can communicate not only with their own species but also human beings.
Does that make it reasonable to to say that trees know their own own names.
If not, please explain why not?
I explained this at length above. Please don’t waste my time by asking the exact same questions that have already been answered at length.
I have no idea what meaning this list of names is supposed to convey. It has absolutely no relevance at all to the sentence of mine that you quoted prior to posting this. So I assume you have made some sort of editing error. Perhaps you can clarify in your next post
No, it is perfectly accurate.
Ahh, no, by keeping abreast of the literature.
No, I just refuse to consider irreproducible, anthropomorphic anecdotal evidence. for reasons that I have already elaborated on.
No, I am not.
First off no actual scientists disagree with me.
Secondly the only actual scientist referenced in this thread has been Pepperberg, and I explained at length why I dismiss her work, with citations. If you wish to dispute those reasons or the citations then by all means do so.
No, it was not. I already explained this at length. It was 80% when two out of three responses were dismissed as not being relevant and when “trials in which Alex refused to attend to experimental material and/or fixated on irrelevant issues were discarded”. The fact that Pepperberg steadfastly refuses to release full transcripts of the experiments, and that the few transcripts that are available all show this sort of selective interpretation makes her work largely valueless.
But hey, if you want to believe in Pepperberg’s work, great. Plenty of people believed in Koko and Clever Hans too. Pepperberg herself never claimed that Alex can understand words.Pepperberg herself expresely denies that LAex ever used language. Pepperberg herself has expresely stated that it would be almost impossible to establish that an animal can use language at such a low level. So all of Pepperberg’s work and comments agree 100% with what I have said.
A guide dog will sit at a red light 100% of the time. the fact that Alex makes the noise "red’ when he sees a red cloth only 80% of the time is neither impressive nor evidence that he knows his own name.
Good. Quote for me where Pepperberg has ever disagreed with my statement. Because I can easily quote where she agrees with it:
“to my mind the relationship between human language development and studies on intesrpecies communication is unclear.. such language like behaviour is not necessarily equivalent to human langiage and in many cases direct comparisons are impossible.”
So please quote for me where Pepperberg has said that birds can ** **come to associate “this collection of signals means X” and respond in context. I look forward to this.
Which is something I have never even implied, much less said, much less still insisted insisted on.
You are now just making this shit up about me.
When you are ready to apologise for that, answer my questions, provide the references that I have asked for and read the thread so that you do not repeat questions that I have already explicitely answered, I will continue to engage with you.
Oh, I see, Blake - I disagree with you, provide counter examples, ask for YOUR credentials, and you simply go off in a corner to pout and refuse to “engage” with me. OK…
I fail to see where I have anything to apologize for, quite frankly, so don’t hold your breath.
Firmly in Blake’s corner (not that anyone cares). I may even have a wee man-crush.
I understand where everyone else is coming from…I have seen behaviors similar to what you describe in my own and others’ animals. But Blake’s right; it’s all anecdotal. And whether or not he professed any qualifications, it seems to me that he’s probably an expert in this field.
At the very least, he’s the only person here looking at these phenomena scientifically, and that’s enough for me.
No, as I explained at length above, it is not.
The simplest explanation is that it’s a combination of the Clever Hans effect and confirmation bias.
Your dog leads the way to the destination after hearing you speak it? That’s not particularly surprising. Any dog can be conditioned to fetch slippers on command and any sheepdog can be conditioned to learn signals that mean left, right, forward, backwards, fast, slow, close, wide etc. Horses are notorious for learning to travel their owner’s normal routes. So putting those two together so it’s no great leap to imagine a dog being conditioned to take a certain route on hearing the name. Having said that, I think it is just as likely to be the Clever Hans effect. The dog is taking subconscious cues from you.
Your dog goes to person that you name? A tractable dog can be taught this trick in about 30 minutes. It’s no different to training the dog to get your slippers or fetch its leash. A cue becomes associated with an object. The dog doesn’t care whether the object is a person or a shoe. More importantly the dog doesn’t care whether the cue is a word, a gesture or object. You could just as easily train your dog to go to Mark every time you light a cigarette. That clearly does not mean that your dog thinks that Mark’s name is the action of lighting a cigarette, which in turn clearly demonstrates that this is not evidence of understanding names. this is very basic operant conditioning. The textbook example of operant conditioning is Pavlov making dogs salivate when he rand a bell. Your dog isn’t doing anything different.
The dog always looks up when someone uses his name? That is almost certainly either confirmation bias or due to subconscious cues.
Your dog wags its tail when you mention someone the dog has an attachment to? Nope, the dog wags its tail when you mention someone that you think she has an attachment to. You think the dog should be happy, and the dog becomes happy because it reads your body language. Again, the clever Hans effect
You can run basic experiments on these really easily.
Make up a list of destinations for your walk. Before you go for walk tell somebody else where you are going, then leave the room and have them tell the dog “We’re going to X’s” where X is a random person on the list. If you like you can make a recording of you saying all these things and get the person to play it back, that way your dog has exactly the same information. Since you now have no idea where the dog has been told you go, it can not read your body language. Now go for a walk and see where your dog “leads” you. Do this say, 5 times, and you will soon know whether it is the Clever Hans effect.
Believe that your dog looks up during uses of his name? Take some random sentences from the Google using a common name like “John” and substitute your pet’s name. Ask some friends and co-workers to read the sentences while you record them. Stand well back from the dog and play the recording back. Note whether she looks up.
Believe that your dog looks happy when she hears the name of a friend? Say the same sentence in a sad voice while looking sad. Then say the sentence with the name of a stranger, but in a happy voice. Ask someone who does not know these friends to say that they saw them, and that they saw other random names.
None of these experiments are complex and none of them should cost you any money. If you really want we can ask Dopers to upload recordings of themselves saying the things you want said.