I have a personal slogan regarding this issue: “All intelligence is perceptual intelligence”. Humans are excellent at perception and very poor at decision-making. We use our strong perceptual capacities to make up for the deficits in our planning system. This belief is based on introspection—I am able to predict very accurately, for example, that a certain configuration of photons really represents a vending machine, and if I insert a coin in the right place (another hard calculation), a soft drink will come out. In contrast to the confidence with which I can perform these perceptual feats, I have no strong opinion whether buying a soft drink is really a good idea.
Are you sure that this perception is not just due to your very small sample size of intelligent entities?
In any event, I’m not even sure given the comparisons to other species. Chimpanzees in some respects are better at some aspects of visual perception than humans.And corvids can learn to use vending machines, in some cases with minimal direct prompting from humans. But we can make much more sophisticated decisions than they can. And we can benefit from using complicated language to communicate what other humans have learned. It seems that perception of the sort you mention is not what makes us very different.
That brings up another of my personal beliefs: human intelligence differs from animal intelligence only in quantitative respects: we have more memory, more neurons, a longer developmental phase, etc. Falsifiable prediction: if you took some chimps (or dolphins or dogs), bred or genetically engineered them to increase their brain size and developmental period so as to be comparable to humans, they would have no trouble learning human language.
But we can make much more sophisticated decisions than they can.
Also, my guess is that our best decision-making abilities come from reusing our perceptual powers to transform a decision problem into a perception problem. So when an engineer designs a complex system, he does so by using drawings, schematics, diagrams, etc that allow the decision (design) problem to be attacked using perceptual apparatus.
Credit for the falsifiable prediction—which has in fact been falsified: elephants have larger brains than we have, and a similar development period, and they can’t learn language.
It’s clear that our decision making abilities do reuse perceptual machinery, but it’s also clear that some additional machinery was needed.
Elephants and whales both certainly have communication systems. So do dolphins, wolves, canaries, mice, ants, oak trees, slime molds etc. That’s not the same as language.
That seems like a joke to me, but sure, if you define the term “language” that way, then elephants and whales don’t have it. What whales do have is a complex communication system which supports dialects and persistent culture.
Is there evidence that elephant communication supports dialects and culture?
Is there any consistent research being done on language modes of other species? Especially cephalopods.
Learning to have a conversation with a cephalopod ranks first on my list of “things that might be worth dropping everything to pursue that I personally would have a greater than 1% chance of actually accomplishing.”
I have a personal slogan regarding this issue: “All intelligence is perceptual intelligence”. Humans are excellent at perception and very poor at decision-making. We use our strong perceptual capacities to make up for the deficits in our planning system. This belief is based on introspection—I am able to predict very accurately, for example, that a certain configuration of photons really represents a vending machine, and if I insert a coin in the right place (another hard calculation), a soft drink will come out. In contrast to the confidence with which I can perform these perceptual feats, I have no strong opinion whether buying a soft drink is really a good idea.
Are you sure that this perception is not just due to your very small sample size of intelligent entities?
In any event, I’m not even sure given the comparisons to other species. Chimpanzees in some respects are better at some aspects of visual perception than humans.And corvids can learn to use vending machines, in some cases with minimal direct prompting from humans. But we can make much more sophisticated decisions than they can. And we can benefit from using complicated language to communicate what other humans have learned. It seems that perception of the sort you mention is not what makes us very different.
That brings up another of my personal beliefs: human intelligence differs from animal intelligence only in quantitative respects: we have more memory, more neurons, a longer developmental phase, etc. Falsifiable prediction: if you took some chimps (or dolphins or dogs), bred or genetically engineered them to increase their brain size and developmental period so as to be comparable to humans, they would have no trouble learning human language.
Also, my guess is that our best decision-making abilities come from reusing our perceptual powers to transform a decision problem into a perception problem. So when an engineer designs a complex system, he does so by using drawings, schematics, diagrams, etc that allow the decision (design) problem to be attacked using perceptual apparatus.
Credit for the falsifiable prediction—which has in fact been falsified: elephants have larger brains than we have, and a similar development period, and they can’t learn language.
It’s clear that our decision making abilities do reuse perceptual machinery, but it’s also clear that some additional machinery was needed.
Elephants may have a language—of sorts:
“Elephant ‘secret language’ clues”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8527009.stm
Whales almost certainly do. Their auditory systems are amazing compared to our own.
Elephants and whales both certainly have communication systems. So do dolphins, wolves, canaries, mice, ants, oak trees, slime molds etc. That’s not the same as language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language defines “language” as being a human capability.
That seems like a joke to me, but sure, if you define the term “language” that way, then elephants and whales don’t have it. What whales do have is a complex communication system which supports dialects and persistent culture.
Is there evidence that elephant communication supports dialects and culture?
Is there any consistent research being done on language modes of other species? Especially cephalopods.
Learning to have a conversation with a cephalopod ranks first on my list of “things that might be worth dropping everything to pursue that I personally would have a greater than 1% chance of actually accomplishing.”