Reflectorites
On Thu, 9 Mar 2000 18:01:16 -0600 (CST), Wesley R. Elsberry wrote:
[...]
>SJ>... Alex, an African gray parrot, is unlike any other
>>animal: he can talk. When he says, "come here!" he really
>>wants his owner to come here. That is remarkable to the
>>scientist studying him, Irene Pepperberg of the University
>>of Arizona. ... [This is a big
>>problem for those who claim that chimps and gorillas can
>>talk. If the claim is that chimps can really use sign
>>language because they are closest to humans, then what is
>>the explanation for a *parrot* who talk as well, if not
>>better? I saw a parrot sing "Happy Birthday" in an
>>opera-singer voice at the Singapore bird park but I no one
>>claimed that it knew what it was singing. Parrots are just
>>very clever mimics and human beings are very good at
>>training them and reading into their pets' behaviour their
>>own human feelings. Maybe this exposes as an
>>anthropomorphic delusion the whole field of talking apes?]
WE>Stephen says that a parrot that can communicate is a problem
>for ape communication studies. His conclusion does not follow
>from his premises, but this is not unusual in these little
>bits of commentary. It is obvious that other support than
>close phylogenetic ties have to be made for the reasons that a
>parrot can handle interspecies communication showing concept
>understanding.
It might help if Wesley first of all try to understand what his opponent was
*really* saying before he attempts to refute him. I said nothing about "that
a parrot that can *communicate* is a problem for ape communication
studies" (my emphasis). Of course parrots can "communicate". Parrots,
dogs, cats, and all animals AFAIK can "communicate" with members of
their own species by cries, barks, meows, etc, and maybe even with
members of other species?
The real question I raised "is whether chimps and gorillas" and parrots "can
*talk*" (my emphasis). An Associate Professor in Linguistics on the other
List I was on (I cannot give his name so don't ask), said in response to my
same post on that List:
"...she would have to prove a lot to show that the communication of Alex
the Parrot is the same kind of communication in human language which
uses combinatory elements at the morphological and syntactical levels
which not only refer to things in the real world, but also things in the
"unreal" world as well as symbols that refer to other symbols."
WE>Why this might impact ape communication
>studies is something Stephen does not explicate.
I actually asked a *question*: "If the claim is that chimps can really use
sign language because they are closest to humans, then what is the
explanation for a *parrot* who talk as well, if not better?"
Maybe Wesley can have a try at answering it?
WE>Why should a parrot be able to handle concept understanding
>and interspecies communication? The interspecies
>communication part is made possible via mimicry, but mimicry
>alone does not explain the whole set of phenomena. For
>explaining that, more needs to be known about African grey
>parrot ecology and social interactions. One of Pepperberg's
>graduate students, Spencer Lynn, was recently in the field in
>Africa with a research team looking into the ecology and
>behavior of African grey parrots in the wild.
I have no problem with "interspecies communication". My problem was the
claim that animals can *talk*. My cat meows for his food and I can
understand what he is communicating. My wife claims he has different
meows for different things, but I can't pick it. A parrot might actually learn
that the mimicked words "polly wants a cracker" caused food to be offered
and then says those words in order to get food. But that does not mean
that the parrot knows what the words actually mean. If it doesn't, then it is
not talking as humans talk to each other.
WE>I've met Pepperberg and Alex, and spent some time at the lab
>in Tucson watching the research going on. Irene Pepperberg is
>a careful researcher whose methods include extensive
>documentation and analysis of all interactions when Alex is at
>his "work" station (the back of a lab chair). Alex scores
>about 80% correct on various types of questions put to him.
>This level of performance is far above chance. I knew Spencer
>Lynn from his time at Texas A&M University at Galveston, where
>he took part in the large-scale assessment of sperm whale
>abundance and distribution in the northwestern region of the
>Gulf of Mexico (the GulfCet project, funded through Minerals
>Management Service). These people are very capable
>researchers, and I find Stephen's flippant assessment of their
>activities to be close to libelous.
First, since when is questioning a scientific claim "libellous"?
Second, if Wesley took the trouble to actually read my comments above, to
out what I actually said (as opposed to what he wants me to have said), he
would discover that in my comments I said nothing about "Pepperberg and
Alex", at all!
WE>If Stephen thinks that he can form a novel cogent and valid
>critique of Pepperberg's work, I encourage him to pick up some
>of her publications and try it out. Otherwise, Stephen is
>(as usual) blowing smoke.
See above. I was not actually making a "critique of Pepperberg's work".
My comments were directed at the "field of talking apes".
Any "smoke" that Wesley is experiencing is probably from his own
spinning wheels!
Steve
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"When speaking here of Darwinism, I shall speak always of today's theory
that is Darwin's own theory of natural selection supported by the
Mendelian theory of heredity, by the theory of the mutation and
recombination of genes in a gene pool, and by the decoded genetic code.
This is an immensely impressive and powerful theory. The claim that it
completely explains evolution is of course a bold claim, and very far from
being established." (Popper K., "Natural Selection and the Emergence of
Mind," Dialectica, Vol. 32, Nos. 3-4, 1978, pp.339-355, pp.343-344)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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