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Article 1162 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: ard@cs.bham.ac.uk (Antoni Diller)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Animal Intelligence vs Human Intelligence
Message-ID: <1991Oct30.091241.9820@cs.bham.ac.uk>
Date: 30 Oct 91 09:12:41 GMT
References: <4627@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> <37311@shamash.cdc.com> <1991Oct24.234823.7560@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com>
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In article <1991Oct24.234823.7560@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com> dave@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com (David Gray) writes:
> [Stuff deleted]
>
>Feh. Humanocentrist!
>
>Washoe (a chimp taught sign language) used to 'non-automatically'
>(whatever that means) tell LIES.
>Other chimps used to solve puzzles. (using tools). These are both
>FAR into the domain of (3).
>
>Howzabout if you review the literature, before making such
>claims. Fair enough?
>

Hey, who's the humanocentrist?  This is HUMAN language the chimps are being
taught.  The work of many philosophers has shown that our language
contains a lot of presuppositions and assumptions (the Sapir--Whorf
hypothesis), so by teaching chimps human language we are indoctrinating
them with our values.  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?  I reckon the military are very
interested in intelligent animals.  They'd make ideal suicide soldiers
with less outcry than for human dead.

A.R.Diller@cs.bham.ac.uk


