Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id NAA03552 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 6 Jun 2000 13:21:32 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31017458AC@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: more on animal 'languages' Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000 13:19:33 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Hi everyone,
I just saw a piece in the the Times Higer Education Supplement (THES),
2/6/200, pp 20-21.
It's basically a short promo piece for Harvard University's Marc Hauser,
whose Wild Minds is out soon.
Anyway he has this to say about animal and human communication:
'The capacity to communicate symbolically is a specialised tool. Yet when
we compare this capacity with that in humans, even young children, we see
striking differences. Whereas all the symbolic signals produced by animals
are restricted to a few contexts, humans have the capacity to refer to
anything, either imaginary or real, and to objects and events encountered in
the past, present and future. While a good ethologist can predict what an
animal will communicate in a given context, even the best linguist will have
difficulty predicting what a human will say when he or she sits down at a
restaurant or queues for a pint at the pub. For, unlike humans, animals do
not seem able to combine their vocalisations or gestures into strings that
create new expressions with new meaning- they do not produce sentences.
To say that some animals have a capacity for symbolic communication while
others do not is not an endorsement of an intellectual hierarchy with people
at the top. On the contrary, the revolution that we are witnessing in
studies of animla cognition is a testament to a new brand of
open-mindedness, one that embraces both the similarities and differences in
the way animals think.'
This seems reasonable enough to me.
Vincent
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