Sasha Chislenko wrote:
> At 02:17 AM 00/01/10 , Fred Chen wrote:
>
> >Animals can display signs of self-awareness and consciousness. They do not
> >possess all the mental faculties that humans have that we may take for
> >granted. For example, as mentioned by Bruno, introspection and
> >inquisitiveness.
>
> Is inquisitiveness different from curiosity that is common to all
> animals? Is introspection an analysis of internal states that is
> implicit in anything alive, and as an explicit topic suggested to
> humans most often brings angry and "Huh?" reactions?
Here I meant inquisitiveness to mean asking "Why?" I thought introspection to
mean deep thought by oneself, but I am not sure if this is what Bruno originally
intended to mean.
>
>
> > But the hard evidence for being human lies in written and
> >symbolic language and the ability to generate permanent records using this
> >language. Most animals are physically incapable of writing, e.g.,
> >quadrupeds.
>
> Come one, who cares about writing - it's just one particular kind of
> symbolic expression. Most animals, starting from bacteria, heavily
> rely on symbolic communications, both genetically and culturally
> programmed. Check www.paleopsych.org
I accept that language, whatever the form, can be translated by symbolic
mappings; here I meant 'symbolic language' to mean explicitly 2D characters or
shapes or pictorial images in their abstracted form. To avoid future confusion,
I'll use 'written language' to refer to this from now on.
>
>
> > A substitute for written language could be a very good memory
> >capacity for communication by sound (oral language). The limitation of oral
> >language is that it is inherently one-dimensional, while written or
> >symbolic language is two-dimensional.
>
> Incorrect and irrelevant, IMO. Writing is actually three-dimensional,
> counting the necessary thickness of ink, but it's irrelevant - it's
> still reproduction of consecutive speech. Which is consecutive because
> it used badly designed output channels. Images are inherently
> two-dimensional. All animals see in 2-D. Mating rituals are 4-D
> symbolic communicative processes.
>
> Most humans are better at some symbolic processing methods than most
> animals, but I don't see any quantum leaps.
Non-written symbolic processing such as speech (or sex) does not inherently
leave permanent physical records of the message being communicated for posterity
to follow. So bacteria or dogs cannot produce books, or art, or computer code in
permanent media, at least to my knowledge. Apes seem the closest to being human,
and this is consistent with the evolutionary path, yet there is no ape
literature either.
So why the focus on written language ability (as something that could be
uniquely human) and what it may entail?
All living organisms have many things in common and exhibit lots of analogies in
their behavior, no doubt. I wasn't disputing that. My own (sudden and
anthropocentric) focus on what makes humans different from other creatures
really stems from the (now questioned) allure of the anthropic principle, as
well as some probabilistic considerations (Why would it be more probable to be a
conscious human than a conscious ant (if there were such a thing as ant
consciousness and had equivalent 'measure' to human consciousness)?). And, as
you point out, these differences, while they may be quite significant, aren't
quite so clear-cut. I am in the process of pondering these differences (somewhat
aloud).
Fred
>
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> Sasha Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
Received on Mon Jan 10 2000 - 20:37:42 PST