From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!generic.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!dhw68k!bkariger Tue Nov 19 11:08:47 EST 1991
Article 1171 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: bkariger@dhw68k.cts.com (Brian Kariger)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Animal Intelligence vs Human Intelligence
Message-ID: <1991Oct31.115348.24704@dhw68k.cts.com>
Date: 31 Oct 91 11:53:48 GMT
Organization: Wolfskill & Dowling residence; Anaheim, CA (USA)
Lines: 45

ard@cs.bham.ac.uk (Antoni Diller) writes:
>Western man has a poor record in his encounters with so-called
>``savages'' (Columbus didn't do much for America, killing how many
>thousands of ``savages''), so I don't think he will be a good
>influence on chimps.  From what you say, we've already taught them
>how to lie.  What next?  How to kill?

Whether or no Columbus killed ``how many thousands of `savages' I'll
not comment on, but I must take exception to your conclusion that
humans have taught chimps how to lie. Your reasoning seems to be:

* ``We" have taught certain chimps (``human") sign language.
* ``[O]ur language contains a lot of presuppositions and
  assumptions", i.e. ``lies"

* ``[S]o by teaching chimps human language we are indoctrinating
  them with our values"; i.e. ``we" have taught them ``how to lie".

Primo, I think you are confusing two different kinds of untruth and
calling them both ``lies". When the original poster wrote that
``Wahoe used to ... tell LIES", I take it that Washoe intended to
misrepresent (something). But the kind of misrepresentations that
the [...-von Humboldt-]Sapir-Whorf hypothesis are about are not
intentionally misrepresentive as are Washoe's lies.

Secundo, you seem to imply that chimps don't already know some way
of lying (or killing), and this is of course patent nonsense. Homo
sapiens has no exclusive claim to ``lying"; see T. A. Sebeok's
"Notes on Lying and Prevarication" in his _Contributions to the
Doctrine of Signs_.

Aside from the nominated topic, perhaps we both agree that the
plight of the native peoples of the Americas is tragic, and the use
of chimpanzees as soldiers would be deplorable.

_____________________________________________________________________
BPK <> bkariger@aunix.fullerton.edu

``I have several times argued, at some length, that the unity of
personality is in some measure illusory, that our ideas are not so
entirely in the grasp of an _ego_ as we fancy that they are, that
personal identity differs rather in degree than in kind from the
unity of ``public opinion" and gregarious intelligence, that there is
a sort of identity of dynamic continuity in all intelligence."
--Charles S. Peirce, _The New Elements of Mathematics_, IV:ix ff.


