GeoTheo

1. animals can't make choices in the same sense we can. We can choose to do that which we don't want to do and want to do what we do not choose to do.
These has been called "second order desires".
Animals do not posess them. An example would be the desire to quit smoking, while still smoking.
Or the disire to cheat on ones spouse while remaining faithful. Because of this humans can engage in moral or ethical discussions with each other on what is the "right" thing to do ignoring our own first order desires.
2.Animals cannot engage in long term planning. they are restricted to the present world of perception.
3. This relates to number 1. Since animals do not posess second order desires, they do not relate to each other as we do. They do not recognize "rights" in others and therefore do not have a sense of "justice" as we do. People are social but we are different than social animals like chimps because of this.
We negotiate with each other. This requires a set of assumptions animals cannot make.
1. Both parties in the dialogue must be "rational"
able to give and accept reasons for action and and recognize the the distinction between good and bad reasons, between justified reasons and mere excuses.
2.Both parties must be free (capable of second order desires) able to make choices, intentionally able to persue their goals and accept responsibility for the outcome.
3.Each party must desire the others consent and be prepared to make concessions in order to obtain it.
4.Life saftey and freedom must be accpted as being ivoliable in order for this negotiation to take place otherwise you can only have war.
5. Each party must understand and accept obligations, for example the obligation to accept agreements.

Is this the type of interaction seen among social primates, among themselves and among competing groups?
Do they have a sense of property rights or does might always make right?
I know they occasionally kill each other and others in the group seem saddened by this. But is their a sense of "moral indignation"?
Do they believe the murderer was "wrong" Are there plans for revenge? No. because they do not posess the ability to consider the abstract concepts involved.

Dr S

(GT) 1. animals can't make choices in the same sense we can. We can choose to do that which we don't want to do and want to do what we do not choose to do.
(S) A few weeks back Koko hurt a tooth on a piece of frozen fruit. It hurt her for the longest time.
Ndume, our male, having seen this took his favorite treat-a fruit juice mix we use- and even though it was really hot, and he really wanted it, he gave it to her.

(GT) 2.Animals cannot engage in long term planning. they are restricted to the present world of perception.
(S) Squirrels bury nuts, dogs bury bones. Ants work only for the future, bees don't live to eat their own honey. Bears gorge themselves to prepare for hibernation. It just goes on and on.
(GT) 3…They do not recognize "rights" in others and therefore do not have a sense of "justice" as we do.
(S) All animals that live in groups have a group dynamic. The individual has a certain ranking in the pack and their rights and responsibilities reflect that rank
(GT) We negotiate with each other. This requires a set of assumptions animals cannot make.
(S) Chimps and gorillas negotiate all the time. I know one who trades nuts for kisses.
Visit a dog park sometime and you can watch the pets negotiate with each other fulfilling every one of your 5 qualifiers.
(GT) Is this the type of interaction seen among social primates, among themselves and among competing groups?
(S) Yes.
(GT) Do they have a sense of property rights
(S) Ever try to take a dogs bone away from him?
(GT) or does might always make right?
(S) The good of the pack is what dictates what is "right"
In dogs and fish we call it "animal behavior" in humans the same thing is called "morals."
(GT) But is their a sense of "moral indignation"?
(S) Yes. Animals that are not have behavior that is supportive of the pack (moral) are driven from it.
(GT) Do they believe the murderer was "wrong" Are there plans for revenge?
(S) All of the great apes, all of the larger toothed Cetaceans, dogs, wolves, bears, some of the big cats and African elephants have been known to seek revenge.

Face it GT you are just another animal on a planet filled with animals. You should learn more about them and not assume so much. The subject is really interesting.

GeoTheo

Dr. S
Let me put this as delicately as possible:
ARE YOU FOR REAL?!?!!????
If you think squirrels and ants (ants for crying out loud!) engage in long term concious planning I really have to doubt your credentials as an animal behaviorist. Are you a real scientist?
I learned about the difference between concious reasoning and instincts in my general biology class. You really thinks squirrels have any choice in the matter of gathering nuts?
Ants?
Why do you think moths fly into light bulbs and bug zappers?
Do you think they do it because they are depressed?
I realize primates may approach humans in many capacities and if you really are a scientist working in that feild, you should be qualified to speak on that. But you really don't sound like a scientist to me. You seem to have less scientific knowledge than many of the forum participants here. Not that I claim to have any qualifications, but I smell a rat. Your dialogue with DoubtingDidymous on the other thread seemed to reveal a lack of knowledge of primatology on your part.

Dr S

(GT) ARE YOU FOR REAL?!?!!????
If you think squirrels and ants (ants for crying out loud!) engage in long term concious planning
(S) You said, "long term planing" now you've changed it to "conscious" because you want to make it exclusively human. Do you think a bird builds a nest because it wants to sit down that very minute? How much of it is "conscious" is debatable but it is long term planning none the less.
(GT)I really have to doubt your credentials as an animal behaviorist. Are you a real scientist?
(S) I'm not an animal behaviorist, and yes I am a scientist. Why would you prefer my writing to be more technical and dryer?

(GT) I learned about the difference between concious reasoning and instincts in my general biology class. You really thinks squirrels have any choice in the matter of gathering nuts?
(S) Then it's time to take a new bio class. Instincts ain't what they used to be, they haven't been since the 80's.
Yes squirrels have choices when they gather nuts. How many to get, where to put them, how to find them in the future all comes down to reasoning. The animals of this world are not a bunch of automatons.

(GT) I realize primates may approach humans in many capacities and if you really are a scientist working in that feild, you should be qualified to speak on that. But you really don't sound like a scientist to me.
(S) If I'm writing papers I can be as boring as you please. At the moment I'm trying to get gorilla shit out of the sole of my Rockports. So I'm not going to take offense, I'm too distracted. As long as the major donors are convinced that I'm a scientist you can think what you want.
(GT) You seem to have less scientific knowledge than many of the forum participants here. Not that I claim to have any qualifications, but I smell a rat.
(S) Not that you claim any qualifications but you claim qualifications.
What do you think that humans are completely unique? Created by God in his image to have dominion over the beasts of the field?
Humans are a species of primate. We are simply mammals. The qualities that we posses are unique to us only in the matter of degree to which we posses them-not in the possession. This same is true of every other animal on the sphere. We are all related.
Your notion that animals are completely instinctual is something left over from the past. Of course animals can think. Even little ones like squirrels have enough mental capacity to learn mazes and solve pretty complicated logistical problems. (Try putting up a squirrel-proof bird feeder sometime.) Any animal that stores food is planning for the future. The degree to which such planning is the end product of conscious thought would vary from species to species. And frankly we have no way of measuring it.
This is something that is coming to light in zoos across the world -the need for mental stimulation in captive animals.

Last July I was at Columbia U in NYC taking a look at their ideas for "enrichment." They had put them to the test at the "Congo" exhibit in the Bronx Zoo and were working on a new project for the dolphins at the out dated Brooklyn Aquarium. There is still in the planning stage a construction project called the Maui Ape Project. A combination study center and sanctuary. It will be built (fingers crossed) where the Maui Tropical Plantation is now in Waikapu. It will house chimps, orangutans and gorillas rescued from the bush meat trade. U of H will be behind it and hopefully CU will help (which is why I was there).
Why you need enrichment is if you decide that animals are purely instinctual, as they did at the beginning of the last century, then there is no problem at all with sticking them is a small cage. But they do think, and therefore they suffer when put in sterile environments. I remember eons ago when I first got into this business a female white rhino who was kept in a concrete enclosure with a dry moat at one end that had been built by the WPA. She rubbed her horn against the concrete wall so long that she wore the whole thing off till it bled. We all told ourselves that it was instinctual. She just did that because she had no need of it in captivity.
Thinking back I can't believe we were so blind. She had no mental stimulation, living alone in a concrete box and she had become a neurotic mess. She was compulsively doing herself harm.

I find this idea of "Supremacy of Humans as a species" ridiculous.
What insecurities could prompt the need to feel you were "better" than all the other species? We are different from them only because our bodies are slightly different in shape. It can do some things better-like think and talk because of its morphology. It can do some things worse for the same reason.
You think that gives you "Supremacy" over the other animals? Ha! That gives you responsibility for their wellbeing. If you're the best animal there is then it is up to you to take care of the rest.

DireStraits

DrS. said: Why you need enrichment is if you decide that animals are purely instinctual, as they did at the beginning of the last century, then there is no problem at all with sticking them is a small cage.

DS OR worse. When a newbie in a drug research lab saw what was being done to chimps there, making them suffer unnecessarily, he asked the director why he was testing the drugs on chimps.

"Because they are so much like us biochemically and in so many other ways."

"Well if they are so similar to us, why are we treating them like this?"

There are many, and I thing GeoTheo is one of them, that far from being stuck in the 1980's, have not moved much out of the Certesian view of animals that they are not much more than machines because they do not have souls. I think a lot of it comes from certain readings of Genesis I as well. God gave dominion over all the animals, and there are some that think that since Man was created last that that fact alone means Man is obviously the pinnacle of creation.

For a long time the tree of evolution depicted Man at the top. Nowadays, scientists think more in terms of the evolutionary bush, with each branch reaching out to a occupiable niche, none more exalted than any others.

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Doubting Didymus

I would like to point out that that discussion was not about primatology (which I know next to nothing about), but about hominid evolutionary history and selection theory, which are areas I am greatly interested in.

It is not neccesary that Dr S have a comprehensive knowledge of evolutionary selection theory in order to work in what seems to be a highly practical area of the scientific enterprise. You should not discount his expertise in primatology based on any small misunderstandings in other (almost unrelated) fields.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: Doubting Didymus ]</p>

ksagnostic

Funny you should say this. As a volunteer, I ran an enrichment peogram for five years based on developing enrichment preference profiles for individual chimpanzees and orangutans. We also tried to discern group preferences. They definitely make choices, and their choices were consistent as individuals. Group preferences were much more difficult to determine. In other words, just what you would expect of a group of intelligent beings making their own choices as individuals.

First of all, your examples all related to idiosyncratic human cultural issues. Non-human animals do not, for the most part, live in human societies, so how do you compare a human who desires to quit smoking with a non-human animal for whom smoking is as relevant as walking on the moon? The same for marriage.

Secondly, animals have shown the ability to defer immediate preferences for longer term gain. Interestingly, in the case of chimps, according to some of Sarah Boysen's research results, they do much better if such a choice is expressed in symbols. For example, a chimpanzee can learn the rule that if I choose more, somebody else gets more, and I get less. However, the chimpanzees in question are able to do this with arabic numbers, but not the actual items. Which brings us to point number three.

Non-human animals can not generally tell us what they are thinking. Dr. S and those few people who work with language trained animals may have the experience of asking their subjects questions about what they are thinking, and having those questions answered, at least to some degree. But that, of course, is very rare. How can an ape or any other intelligent creature tell us when they are doing something when they'd rather be doing something else? You probably thought I missed the point when I discussed the patterns of choice making among chimps, but the point was that that pattern of choice making was discovered simply by observing their behavior. But that's all we can do. We can't read their minds. Therefore, for anyone to definitely say that chimps or other non-human animals don't have second order desires, or act contrary to their own internal desires or wishes, is at least premature. Have I seen chimps share preferred items with others? Yes I have (but admittedly very, very infrequently), but I have no way of knowing why they do so.
So why do chimpanzees in the Tai forest pick up rocks and carry them several miles to crack nuts? Similar apparently planful behavior is seen in a number of bird species, particularly corvids. I have myself seen chimpanzees make circular patterns (including linked circles) on the exhibit floor with straw, and restore them when someone else messes it up (as invariably happens). They are gathering straw from all over the exhibit (and since we have linked indoor/outdoor exhibits) that includes some traveling.

One name, two books. The name, Frans deWaal. The books, CHIMPANZEE POLITICS and GOOD NATURED. I have been observing chimpanzee behavior according to the guidelines of the ChimpanZoo program for 13 years. I have seen a lot of behavior that indicates that chimpanzees have definite behavioral expectations for one another. Is it full blown morality? No, but again, the question in these discussions usually comes down to "are humans different in kind, or only in degree?" I think it's in degree. And again, how can we expect chimpanzees to encode their expectations for one another in detail without language? But, the relationships between chimpanzees are definitely complex (and incidentally, chimps have definitely been observed to inhibit behavior depending on who is around, which would at least be on the continuum with "second order desires").


All of the behaviors you report above require fairly detailed linguistic communication, which other species lack. I would agree that language is a species specific human behavior (which, incidentally, does not mean that the behavior is entirely inaccessible to other species), but by your line of argument most of the people I work with as a speech-language pathologist working in augmentative/alternative communication also would fail to qualify as human. However, some of them are perfectly capable of doing the sort of definition and negotiation you are talking about if they are given the tools to do so! Such is also probably true of non-human animals with sufficent brain development, slow maturation, and long lifespan.

Begging the question a little bit here? Again, such expectations on the part of other species would have to occur on an individual basis, and unless they had an accessible method of expressing such expectations symbolically to one another, they could not go into much detail between individuals. But, that does not mean that the ability is not there! That is a seperate question.

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: ksagnostic ]

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: ksagnostic ]

[ September 05, 2002: Message edited by: ksagnostic ]</p>

GeoTheo

Here is a sample of some conversations between Penny and Michael and Koko.
<a href="http://www.freecitymedia.com/KokoText.html" target="_blank">http://www.freecitymedia.com/KokoText.html</a>
They seem a lot more ambiguous than you portray.
How could Michael possibly sign:
"When I was an young gorilla in the congo. I was riding on my mother's back while crashing through the forest.My mother was killed by some poachers. They cut her head off in front of me."

But then years later when he obviously knew more signs, Penny asks him about a dream and he says.
things that barely make sense.

GeoTheo

Here's some of Kokos brilliant dialogue on dreams:
FCM Question to Koko: What do you dream about? Do you dream of other jungles?

PP: What do you dream about? Do you dream of other jungles?
Koko does not respond.
PP: What kind of dreams does Koko have?
K: Know dream good.
PP: Koko has good dreams.
K: Nipple.
PP: Do you dream about jungles, forests, trees?
K: Nipple.

These trainers seem to show a lot of interpretation in very hard to decipher dialogue, always giving the interpretation that would make the gorilla look the most like a genius.
No mention of Michaels nightmare
just a very simplistic dream of somthing about squash. That no one seemed to be able to figure out. They seem to ask very leading questions also.

GeoTheo

This article reminds me of someone talking about a mentally handicapped child. They obviously love the child and see him or her in a very positive light. They often attribute intelligence that may not be there. I know this because I work with the developmentally disabled. I'm talking about the profoundly retarded that cannot speak or even walk. I think it is a positive thing for the parents to see then this way and talk to them as if they can understand, but on the other hand I think they are projecting.
Obviously Penny is very close to Koko but seems to project a lot. Even existential thought. Her explanation would be that existential thought is hard to express so it comes out non-sensical.
A simpler explanation is that the gorilla did not understand the question.