This analysis seems right to me, but I think you’re wrong to compare the sperm whales to Koko. It seems a priori much more likely that a given animal’s sounds carry meaning, than it is that any given animal can be made to use human language.
Whale noises must communicate some information, or they wouldn’t evolve to make those noises, so we’re just haggling over the information density. Conversely, if gorillas and chimps were capable of learning complex sign language for communication, we’d expect them to evolve/culturally develop such a language.
(Though whales might just be saying “I am large and over here” so the information density may be very low)
Conversely, if gorillas and chimps were capable of learning complex sign language for communication, we’d expect them to evolve/culturally develop such a language.
We’ve seen an extreme counterexample with octopi, which can be taught some very impressive skills that they don’t pick up in nature because they aren’t sufficiently social to develop them over the course of multiple generations. I think it’s within reason that gorillas could have the ability to learn more complex language than they use, so long as it’s not economical for them to spend time teaching their offspring those complexities as opposed to teaching them other things.
I will say that I’m very skeptical of Koko, though, for other reasons.
“Conversely, if gorillas and chimps were capable of learning complex sign language for communication, we’d expect them to evolve/culturally develop such a language.”
I haven’t read much about the whole Koko situation, but my understanding is that part of the claim was that Koko was *unusually* adept with language.
A priori, if language comes “packaged for free” with some other high order cognitive functionalities that for whatever reason can only be maintained in a small proportion of chimps (maybe calorie availability, increased risk taking behaviour or something else), then it seems perfectly plausible that the capability for language would be present in some proportion of chimps >0 but below the critical threshold for language formation.
Alternatively, it also seems possible that the process of creating grammar is more difficult than the process of producing language in an already constructed grammar. In this case you could have a pretty high proportion of animals capable of producing language after instruction, but incapable of inventing language.
This is a great point with regards to how plausible the various scientific animals communications claims actually are, but to my eye, the CETI people look motivated in the same way as the Koko people or your local crazy cat lady.
This analysis seems right to me, but I think you’re wrong to compare the sperm whales to Koko. It seems a priori much more likely that a given animal’s sounds carry meaning, than it is that any given animal can be made to use human language.
Whale noises must communicate some information, or they wouldn’t evolve to make those noises, so we’re just haggling over the information density. Conversely, if gorillas and chimps were capable of learning complex sign language for communication, we’d expect them to evolve/culturally develop such a language.
(Though whales might just be saying “I am large and over here” so the information density may be very low)
We’ve seen an extreme counterexample with octopi, which can be taught some very impressive skills that they don’t pick up in nature because they aren’t sufficiently social to develop them over the course of multiple generations. I think it’s within reason that gorillas could have the ability to learn more complex language than they use, so long as it’s not economical for them to spend time teaching their offspring those complexities as opposed to teaching them other things.
I will say that I’m very skeptical of Koko, though, for other reasons.
“Conversely, if gorillas and chimps were capable of learning complex sign language for communication, we’d expect them to evolve/culturally develop such a language.”
I haven’t read much about the whole Koko situation, but my understanding is that part of the claim was that Koko was *unusually* adept with language.
A priori, if language comes “packaged for free” with some other high order cognitive functionalities that for whatever reason can only be maintained in a small proportion of chimps (maybe calorie availability, increased risk taking behaviour or something else), then it seems perfectly plausible that the capability for language would be present in some proportion of chimps >0 but below the critical threshold for language formation.
Alternatively, it also seems possible that the process of creating grammar is more difficult than the process of producing language in an already constructed grammar. In this case you could have a pretty high proportion of animals capable of producing language after instruction, but incapable of inventing language.
This is a great point with regards to how plausible the various scientific animals communications claims actually are, but to my eye, the CETI people look motivated in the same way as the Koko people or your local crazy cat lady.