Getting ready to communicate with Martians?

Here is a story for you:

N'kisi is a captive bred, hand raised Congo African Gray Parrot. He is 4-1/2 years old, and his species has a life span similar to humans. He has received teaching in the use of language for 4 years. He is now one of the world's top "language-using" animals, with an apparent understanding and appropriate usage of over 700 words. Aimee intuitively taught N'kisi as one would a child, by explaining things to him in context. (This goes beyond typical interactions with a "pet", involving many hours per day of teaching and conversations.) He is treated as a member of the family. N'kisi was not trained like a performing animal, and does not just mimic or use speech "on cue". Instead, he has been allowed to develop his own creative relationship to language as a means of self-expression. N'kisi speaks in sentences, showing a grasp of grammar in formulating his own original expressions. He is capable of actual conversations. He often initiates comments about what we are doing, feeling, looking at, thinking, etc, which is how we discovered his ability to read minds. N'kisi often demonstrates telepathy in spontaneous situations, and also communicates love, compassion, and a keen sense of humor. http://www.sheldrake.org/nkisi/

The working hypothesis for the Crows.net Project is that the American crow, Corvus brachyrhynchos , is a highly intelligent species, with fully developed language and culture.

http://www.crows.net/project.html

[Отредактировано Jacek K., January 27, 2004 3:52 PM]

Sorry, but I'm not amazed by this purported use of language. The transcript doesn't suggest more than mechanical use of stock phrases ("Look at the …", "You could …") with perhaps a single word tacked onto the end. There's little reason to conclude that the parrot ascribes any meaning to those phrases, let alone the particular meaning that we ascribe to them. The claim of "self-expression" on behalf of the bird seems very dicey.

What this person tried to pass off as a pun looks much more like defective use of the "language" that the bird supposedly commands.

The reports of "telepathy" remind me of the nineteenth-century horse that was said to be able to perform arithmetic calculations. Ultimately it was observed that the horse was merely responding to a cue that its owner would give–unawares–when the correct answer was displayed.

Reports of English-speaking parrots and ASL-speaking gorillas make a big splash in the popular press. People who have examined the data, however, know that no animal has yet exhibited anything close to human language.

Scott

What about the "highly intelligent American crow," Scott? There are people, mostly in America, who spend all their time communicating with what they consider part of their own cosmic being. Too bad many of them do not take part in any other communication. Strange is This World...

Jacek

[Отредактировано Jacek K., January 29, 2004 10:11 AM]

What's bad about that? I don't particularly care to hear a lot of claptrap about corvine intelligence, to tell the truth.

Scott

Hi Jacek and Scott,

I personally appreciate a kind of warm relationship between a man and his camel or his horse when they've been crossing together the desert for 60 days, and I appreciate the gratitude of a dog towards his patron and his king of fidelity..

But love given to an animal should always be in a second position after love to other fellow human beeings.. Therefore the excess of feelings towards pet is really not my trip..

Salaam,

Ouadoud

Hi, Ouadoud,

I agree. The whole business of "animal rights" reflects an appalling sense of priorities. Tens of millions of human beings starve to death every year, and a few people with full stomachs want to make noise about meat and leather.

Scott

A more sceptical point of view on Sheldrake and N'Kisi:

http://www.e-skeptic.de/150201.HTM

and, for those who are interested, one of Irene Pepperberg's papers on experiments with an African Grey named Alex, which explore the intelligence and language-using abilities of this species in a manner which is both scientific and reproducible:

http://www.silvio-co.com/cps/articles/1994/1994pepperberg1.htm

Irene (who was an aviculturist for many years and still hand-rears the occasional baby parrot)

I strongly disagree with you, Scott. It is not a matter of priorities. Those who, like me, love animals, understand that they have to be helped. Period. But this help does not come "at the expense" of anyone, much less at the expense of starving human beings.

Now, concerning those millions of humans beings that starve to death every year, how do you suggest that they should be helped? Do you think that not caring about animals or , much worse, abusing them -in its most varied forms-, would make a difference or would provide food for those who starve?

Bertha

[Отредактировано Bertha S. Deffenbaugh, January 29, 2004 1:34 PM]

Hello Ouadoud,

Love is a feeling, and thus cannot be mind-controlled. No law can tell people who they have to love first or second. Besides, those who really have a "huge heart" can love every living creature on this planet. What does "love in excess" mean? How is love measured? Like money?

["Huge heart" goes within inverted commas simply because I think our heart has no loving ability at all and that our feelings come from somewhere else, which I do not intend to talk about right now.]

Bertha

[Отредактировано Bertha S. Deffenbaugh, January 29, 2004 1:29 PM]

Irene, thanks for the links. The work on Alex (which I had known of) is much more valuable than this business of the putative telepathy and self-expression of N'kisi, which seems to suffer heavily from confirmation bias and a generally unscientific approach.

Bertha, I don't approve of the abuse of animals. I was delighted some years ago when some jerk who had driven his car into some Canada geese in a parking lot just for kicks got slapped with a fine in the tens of thousands of dollars. (I might have ordered about four hundred hours of community service at an animal shelter as well.) I do, however, think that humans are more important than animals, and I don't see much of a place for animal-rights activism in a world in which human rights, even such basic ones as nutrition, are so little respected. No, I don't like to see a dog being beaten; but as long as human children and adults anywhere in the world are suffering the same abuse, canine rights will not be on my agenda.

Scott