‘Not’ and its many permutations
theamericanscholar.org
‘Not’ and its many permutations
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Re: ‘Not’ and its many permutations
#2[deleted]
Re: ‘Not’ and its many permutations
#3In a disagreement over the use of “not”, if neither party changes their mind, it is considered a “tie”.
Re: ‘Not’ and its many permutations
#4In a disagreement over the use of “not”, if neither party changes their mind, it is considered a “tie”.
That's knot funny.
Re: ‘Not’ and its many permutations
#5[deleted]
Re: ‘Not’ and its many permutations
#6"Not" is the beginning of language and rational thought. There is not "not" in the pre-verbal animal mind. There is not "not" in emotion. There's aversion and other "negative" emotions, but these are present and positive (in the sense of existing, not being defined by absence.) One is "filled" with disgust, for example.
Re: ‘Not’ and its many permutations
#7"Not" is the beginning of language and rational thought. There is not "not" in the pre-verbal animal mind. There is not "not" in emotion. There's aversion and other "negative" emotions, but these are present and positive (in the sense of existing, not being defined by absence.) One is "filled" with disgust, for example.
This is not true. Pre-verbal animals like wolves know the difference between rabbit in hole and rabbit not in hole. Raining and not raining. Pack and not pack. Food and not food.
In coyotes, it is the absence of pack members in communal howling that triggers hyper-fertility.
In arboreal primates, they tend to have three threat vocalizations (air, tree, ground) and one "no threat" modality.
I don't think it's nearly as clear as you're suggesting. There is even evidence of the use of mathematical 0 in animal cognition and communication.
Formal verbal communication seems more a matter of physical capability than cognitive capacity. Giving animals the ability to speak with sign language (Koko the gorilla, RIP) or buttons (like Bunny the talking dog) has shown that animal cognition isn't nearly as distinct from human cognition as has been thought.
What makes humans special is sophisticated verbalization, opposable thumbs, and being the ultimate endurance/persistence predator.
Re: ‘Not’ and its many permutations
#8"Not" is the beginning of language and rational thought. There is not "not" in the pre-verbal animal mind. There is not "not" in emotion. There's aversion and other "negative" emotions, but these are present and positive (in the sense of existing, not being defined by absence.) One is "filled" with disgust, for example.
This is not true. Pre-verbal animals like wolves know the difference between rabbit in hole and rabbit not in hole. Raining and not raining. Pack and not pack. Food and not food. In coyotes, it is the absence of pack members in communal howling that triggers hyper-fertility. In arboreal primates, they tend to have three threat vocalizations (air, tree, ground) and one "no threat" modality. I don't think it's nearly a…
Well I did say "the beginning of language and rational thought", eh? And you're picking some very intelligent animals as counter-examples. :)
I wouldn't be surprised or disappointed to find out that non-human intelligence is more common than previously suspected.
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> What makes humans special is sophisticated verbalization, opposable thumbs, and being the ultimate endurance/persistence predator.
Aye. FWIW, I would add to that list the capability for recursive and self-reflexive thought.
Re: ‘Not’ and its many permutations
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not true. Pre-verbal animals like wolves know the difference between rabbit in hole and rabbit not in hole. Raining and not raining. Pack and not pack. Food and not food. In coyotes, it is the absence of pack members in communal howling that triggers hyper-fertility. In arboreal primates, they tend to have three threat vocalizations (air, tree, ground) and one "no threat" modality. I don't think it's nearly a…
Well I did say "the beginning of language and rational thought", eh? And you're picking some very intelligent animals as counter-examples. :) I wouldn't be surprised or disappointed to find out that non-human intelligence is more common than previously suspected. - - - - > What makes humans special is sophisticated verbalization, opposable thumbs, and being the ultimate endurance/persistence predator. Aye. FWIW, I wo…
There are three well known talking animals from YouTube and tiktok - Stella and Bunny (dogs) and Billi (cat) - that regularly exhibit evidence of reflection and recursive thought. Bunny has made poop jokes, talks about dreams (night talk,) and understands time abstractions like morning, afternoon, night, before, later, tomorrow, today, and yesterday. Billi schedules pets and toys, and complains if her humans don't wait, and so on.
My own dog has 30 buttons, and picks up new words and abstractions without explicit training. I've used 3 to 5 word sentences with him for 2 years, with great results. He's started using "outside water" in recent weeks to indicate he wants to pee outside, or "potty" for number two, where potty was all it was before. I give complex instructions, 2 to 4 deep, using 20ish named toys, like "take zebra to box, bring shark to me, then sit."
One thing I'm noticing is that while all the cognitive tools humans use seem to be present, they're shallow. There's not as many layers to the experiences they're communicating, and sophisticated abstractions might be impossible for them.
It looks like the animal internal narrative is a kind of "living in the moment" type of existence, whereas even 2 year old humans have a multi-layer internal narrative, including deception and fantasy, which is the biggest divergence I've seen so far between animal and human.
Any particular facet of cognition seems to be there, it just looks like humans process more deeply and broadly.
I think if you give an elephant, horse, dog, cat, or parrot a neuralink implant and a 1000+ word vocabulary, by the time the animal is 4 or 5 it'll communicate with a mature understanding of its vocabulary. Elephants and dolphins might be able to tell stories.
At some point the buttons will have to become cheaper, or a better animal interface will be needed for talking pets to become more common. I hope I live to see talking pet "classes" and animal education become mainstream. I think there will be a cultural shift toward more empathy and better treatment of pets.
https://youtube.com/c/BilliSpeaks
https://youtube.com/channel/UCEa46rlHqEP6ClWitFd2QOQ
https://youtube.com/c/hungerforwords
And: https://fluent.pet/products/they-can-talk If you want buttons for yourself.
Re: ‘Not’ and its many permutations
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I did say "the beginning of language and rational thought", eh? And you're picking some very intelligent animals as counter-examples. :) I wouldn't be surprised or disappointed to find out that non-human intelligence is more common than previously suspected. - - - - > What makes humans special is sophisticated verbalization, opposable thumbs, and being the ultimate endurance/persistence predator. Aye. FWIW, I wo…
There are three well known talking animals from YouTube and tiktok - Stella and Bunny (dogs) and Billi (cat) - that regularly exhibit evidence of reflection and recursive thought. Bunny has made poop jokes, talks about dreams (night talk,) and understands time abstractions like morning, afternoon, night, before, later, tomorrow, today, and yesterday. Billi schedules pets and toys, and complains if her humans don't wa…
What you're doing with your dog is amazing (I was wrong above, I am a bit surprised!)
> I hope I live to see talking pet "classes" and animal education become mainstream. I think there will be a cultural shift toward more empathy and better treatment of pets.
I think you might be putting the cart before the horse. It seems to me that if we develop more empathy and kindness towards animals we would naturally find out how to communicate with them; and contrariwise, if we learn to make them talk before we learn empathy and compassion we'll almost certainly just enslave them (more than we do already.)
You know the folks who live near orangutans say that they know how to talk, they just don't do it in front of humans because they don't want to be made to work.
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I think what you really discovered or developed with your dog is your own perception and intelligence. I don't mean that the dog isn't intelligent and understanding you. What I mean is that, if your dog can do this, then I would assume that most dogs can do this (no offense or disrespect intended, you might have Doggie Einstein, eh?) and therefore the limiting factor (for communicating with dogs) ins't the dog, it's the intelligence and perspicacity of the humans involved, eh?