From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!tdatirv!sarima Tue Nov 19 11:09:00 EST 1991
Article 1196 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!tdatirv!sarima
>From: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Animal Intelligence vs Human Intelligence
Message-ID: <255@tdatirv.UUCP>
Date: 4 Nov 91 21:18:07 GMT
References: <1991Oct24.234823.7560@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com> <37443@shamash.cdc.com> <1991Oct31.235402.12739@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com> <1991Nov1.152428.2760@en.ecn.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: Teradata Corp., Irvine
Lines: 17

In article <1991Nov1.152428.2760@en.ecn.purdue.edu> krom@en.ecn.purdue.edu (Kevin M Krom) writes:
|Just my $.02 here, but tool making and using behavior isn't the highest level
|of thinking, abstraction is.  Most humans do not reach the level where they
|can start thinking in abstractions until their early teens, but they can 
|make and use tools well before.  Whether or not a chimpanzee (etc...) is
|capable of abstraction is a question I'll leave to the experts.

Well, assuming that you are rigth about humans, then chimpanzees probaly do
not reach this level.  The general concensus is that the adult chimp has
a reasoning ability comparible to a 5-6 year old human.  There is nothing in
event he most generous interpretation of the Washoe experiments to alter
this concensus. Even the story about the do-do sounds remarkably like a
five year old.  (Though perhaps some of the hunting behavior seen in wild
chimps may suggest a slightly higher value, of perhaps an 8 year old).
-- 
---------------
uunet!tdatirv!sarima				(Stanley Friesen)


