Date: Sat, 19 Jun 1999 22:29:02 +0200
From: Mario Vaneechoutte <Mario.Vaneechoutte@rug.ac.be>
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Paper on chimp culture
Aaron Lynch wrote:
> At 09:23 AM 6/17/99 -0400, Mark M. Mills wrote:
> >At 11:15 AM 6/17/99 +0200, you wrote:
> >>The only difference between man and animal is symbolic language. Again
> >this is so
> >>self evident that I expect that someone will discover this within a few
> >years and that
> >>he/she will make it to the cover page of Nature: "Hey, the difference
> >>is that we can talk! Incredible finding, isn't it?".
> >
> >I respectfully disagree with you on this point. While the point remains
> >controversial, there is a large body of work supporting assertions that
> >chimps are quite competent with symbolic language.
>
> Some years ago I read an article or synopsis about spoken language in wild
> chimps. The investigators recorded the calls that chimps made when there
> was a snake present. When the chimps themselves made such calls, the other
> chimps began looking carefully at the ground. When the recording was
> re-played by humans with loudspeakers, the chimps again began searching the
> ground around their feet. Similar calls worked for predators from above. (A
> keyword search should be able to track down the original article.) This
> would count as spoken language or proto-language (depending upon how
> strictly one defines "true language.")
I guess you are referring here to East Africanvervet monkeys who have separate
calls for pythons, martial eagles and leopards.(Seyfart,R.M. & D.L. Cheney.
1992. Meaning and mind in monkeys. Scientific American 267 (6): 122-128.)
> What wild chimps seem to completely
> lack that humans have is written language.
If this is the only difference than this would mean that we are different from
chimps only since 5000 years.
> They can, however, learn special
> written languages from humans. (Note that certain parrots can also learn
> elementary spoken language from humans. An edition of PBS Nature convinced
> me last year that they comprehend much of what they say, but I suspect this
> has been studied more formally as well.)
>
> The present article in Nature is certainly not the first discovery of
> culture in chimps, but merely demonstrates cultural diversity as well as
> systematically cataloguing a variety of cultural traits. By demonstrating
> cultural diversity, the authors work supports the theory that complex
> learned traits cannot be attributed simply to genetic factors alone. That
> point might be important in an era when some hard-core sociobiologists and
> evolutionary psychologists attempt to attribute as much behavior as
> possible to genetically based instinct.
Yes, these evolutionary psychologists finally started discovering Darwin and
are making sometimes very silly hypotheses. Pinker is making somehow the same
mistakes, IMO. It is simplistic application of darwinism, IMO.
>
>
> --Aaron Lynch
>
> http://www.mcs.net/~aaron/thoughtcontagion.html
>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit