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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 10:57:38 AM | "Can I have an ice-cream for my birthday?"
... Having seen a televised discussion regarding the anthropomorphic nature of apes, it was alleged that the above words were 'signed' by one of our closest relatives.
If this is true... If even one ape has the potential to communicate (with a little education) and display understanding of past, present, future, empathy, show deductive thinking, express complex emotions, etc.. Is it not the correct thing to then allow 'all' apes certain rights? Obviously not human rights...but rights that put an end to them being experimented on in labs.....
'If' they percieve the world and feel emotion like we do, how can we justify using them as lab rats?
What do you think?.. | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 11:12:56 AM | Reports of ape intelligence are highly misleading. I've seen it stated over and over that some apes have the language capacity of a 6 year old human. This is blatantly false. Hang around a 6 year old. They are quite intelligent and can carry on quite a conversation. There has never been an ape with this level of language.
Apes have attained the VOCABULARY of 6 year olds. Vocabulary is far different from language. Apes are just associating words with objects. Parrots can do this. When the phone rings, my parrot says "hello".
When i hand my bird a cracker, he says "cracker". Not a big deal.
There's nothing wrong with doing scientific studies on apes. We do scientific studies on humans every day. Its just a matter of how they are treated during these studies. If they are treated well, and not put through undue physical pain, then study away.
The idea that we should free all animals is a poorly thought-out one. If treated properly, captive apes have a better lifestyle than wild ones. In the wild, animals are constantly avoiding predators, competing for food, fighting, dealing with extreme weather.
My parrot would not survive 24 hours in the wild. As far as birds go, he's treated like a king. A wild bird is CONSTANTLY alert for predators. It can be the same with an ape. Treated properly, an ape can have a better life than in the wild. Even in the care of scientists.
Most people have a mental image of an ape in a 3 foot by 3 foot cage with wires coming out of its nose and half its brain exposed. In reality, many lab apes are kept in large habitats with other apes and toys and trees, etc.
Some lab apes are treated badly. But the ethics question is not whether we should still be allowed to study these apes. Its a question of how to treat them during the study. | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 11:19:42 AM |
What do you think?..
I think any living organism has a right to life. This would even include plants. As humans, who have to sustain ourselves with plants of necessity, it is not morally wrong to "kill" plants. Where plants are not available, and meat must be used as food out of necessity, again it is not morally wrong to kill animals for food. It is wrong, however, to prefer "thinking" food over unthinking, or less thinking food, so I find it morally wrong and quite abhorrent that we raise, often torture and kill cows, pigs, sheep, etc. because we like a good steak.
This of course makes me the ultimate hypocrite, because I continue to thoroughly enjoy a good cut of meat. My only claim to any ethical authenticity is that I admit my hypocrisy freely (rather than rationalize it to work to my "moral advantage") and at least have the decency to feel kinda bad about it.
When it comes to animals like apes, whales, porpoises, etc., it would seem they are not as far "below" us as we would like to believe they are. It even appears there is some evidence for a morality in their behaviour (in many cases, like some whales, I suspect a higher moral standard than that of humans). Whether my suppositions are right or wrong, I think if we don't want to consider ourselves a bunch of callous murderers, we have to grant them the benefit of the doubt, which means grant them at least some of what we call human rights. Nothing so absurd as say, the right to vote in elections in a society to which they do not belong, but the standard rights that ought to be granted to any organism, such as the rights to life, liberty, etc.
This of course means that experimentation is not an option. We do not have the moral authority to mistreat them in any way. | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 11:49:23 AM |
This of course means that experimentation is not an option.
this is a broad statement. I would say that cruel experimentation is not allowed. Opening their skulls and having them in a cage with their brain exposed is not allowed. Cutting off their fingers (which was done in the past to test plasticity of the motor cortex in the brain) is not an option. This is what we are picturing in our heads.
But why would all experimentation be off limits? We experiment on humans every day. | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 12:10:37 PM | It is wrong, however, to prefer "thinking" food over unthinking, or less thinking food
I couldn't disagree more with this statement. There is nothing at all wrong with eating animals. Animals do it every day. We are omnivores after all. I don't see anything wrong with raising animals in captivity for the purpose of eating them either. I only see something wrong with mistreating them in any way or making them suffer unnecessarily. Is it immoral for a tiger to kill and eat a gazelle? It's no more immoral for me to kill and eat a deer or a cow...pig, chicken, fish...whatever. I'd starve to death if I had to live on plants.
As to the question of the OP. I agree with Greg's assessment. | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 12:39:07 PM | Greg14229..//Apes are just associating words with objects. Parrots can do this. When the phone rings, my parrot says "hello"//
...And a polite parrot he sounds like too ;).. I believe that Francine Patterson worked with a gorilla named Koko. The work she did with koko suggested that the gorilla used language and basic sentances in a meaningful way.. She asked for a kitten to have as a pet. She was given one and promptly gave her kitten a name. She was given a camera that she could take pictures with. She would take pictures of herself and her pet kitten. Knowing roughly 1000 signs and understanding approximately 2000 spoken words, she could take 'very' detailed instruction and act accordingly (as long as a 'Don King-like dictionary talk' wasn't used with her).
She was observed combining signs that she knew in order to explain new visual experiences..
Not having a sign for 'ring', Koko combined the two signs-'finger' and ''bracelet'.. Calling 'rings' from that point onwards, 'fingerbracelets'.
She also combined two signs when refering to herself as an 'animalperson'. If the observations of Koko were not staged in anyway... Could that not be seen as using language?
If I use sign language and I sign the following... -me-want-icecream-birthday-please-... Is that not an attempt at structuring an ordered sentance? | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 1:15:23 PM | Ape intelligence is exaggerated by the media. But scientific studies show a different story.CSICOP fellow Thomas Sebeok, Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the University of Indiana, told ABC News On-Line that claims of Koko's ability to communicate using human-like language are "nonsense."
But you dont have to take his word for it. Here is a partial transcript of a question and answer session with Koko, as moderated through her trainer:
Question: Koko are you going to have a baby in the future? Koko signs: Pink
Patterson explains: We had earlier discussion about colors today.
Question: Do you like to chat with people? Koko signs: Fine nipple.
Patterson explains: Nipple rhymes with people, she doesn't sign people per se, she was trying to do a "sounds like..."
Question: Does she have hair? Or is it like fur? Koko signs: Fine.
Patterson explains: She has fine hair.
Question: Koko, do you feel love from the humans who have raised you? Koko signs: Lips, apple give me.
Patterson explains: People give her her favorite foods
This conversation is extremely revealing It is an absolutely classic, textbook case of a trainer seeing what they wanna see . And here is what others have to say:
TIME magazine dubbed Koko's internet chat session a "Dada exercise" noting that Penny Patterson as interpreter used "some pretty impressive logic to expand her simian friend's limited communication skills."
"Linguists note that Koko's signs fail to produce the syntax of young children's phrases, and cannot be considered actual language. They also question why the flashes of human-like intelligence allegedly displayed by Koko and other primates have not been observed in the wild. For example, Koko uses paints to create what her handlers claim are pictures of her surroundings and representations of memories from early in her life. Curiously though, primates in the wild have yet to be observed displaying similar picture-making ability.
While little of the reseach on Koko has been published in scientific journals, her trainer Penny Patterson has taken to the popular press and electronic media to publicize mainly anecdotal accounts of her research success with Koko."
Here is another sign that Koko's trainer is crazy, as quoted from Wikipedia:
Koko has been involved in a number of sexual harassment lawsuits.[11] At least three former female employees have claimed that they were pressured into showing their breasts to Koko. They alleged that Patterson encouraged the behavior, often interpreted Koko's signs as requests for nipple display, and let them know that their job would be in danger if they "did not indulge Koko's nipple fetish." Koko has been known to playfully grab both male and female nipples without warning or provocation. Patterson claims that Koko uses the word "nipple" to refer to humans because it sounds like "people".[12]
All claims of harassment have been permanently dropped as of November 21, 2005 after the foundation and the parties involved reached a settlement.[13]
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 1:46:34 PM | Greg, you sound like your out to get Koko :)..
I agree, it's all very subjective. Everybody has their bad days, I'm sure Koko has them too. Over protective trainers would most likely get deeply attatched to such an animal; wanting to read into certain behaviour and see things that weren't there.
Let's not assume that all apes are not capable of language and culture because of an inconclusive conversation with an unfocused Koko.... I remember when I used to go to the dentist as a child.... I was bribed with sweets in order to stop kicking him.... Put something of interest infront of me like a computer console however....
......then I would focus with suprising results..... | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 2:19:21 PM |
We experiment on humans every day.
Human experimentation without the informed and willful assent of the subject(s) is a crime. The fact that it is still happening doesn't make it right. I have no problem with either human or animal experimentation, so long as "informed" and willing assent is given. This DOES however create a problem with animals, as the "communication" is questionable at best.
I can understand killing animals for food as a matter of necessity, but feel doing so as a matter of preference is simply wrong. If it is wrong to kill people for food, why is it not wrong to kill animals (or at least animals more closely related genetically to people than say, plants)? There is also the matter of wasted energy. It takes far more energy per gram of protein to raise cattle for food than to grow crops, or eat "bugs", so in the interest of economy, why don't we do that?
Animals do it every day.
That is correct and it isn't immoral because they do it as a matter of necessity. A tiger can't plough fields, or plant & grow crops; for that matter his digestive tract isn't even optimized for plants, so a tiger trying to live on granola probably wouldn't survive long. The tiger is not a moral agent. We are, so it is our burden to act justly if we want to consider ourselves morally superior to things like tigers, who are forced by evolution to live by the laws of nature (where we have the option of living by natural law).
I don't see anything wrong with raising animals in captivity for the purpose of eating them either.
Suppose it turned out that we were being raised by a race of aliens with 900 IQ's, who had a sweet tooth for us. Would you still find nothing wrong with the idea? What if they slaughtered us "humanely"? | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 2:32:47 PM | I agree, it's all very subjective.
but it shouldn't be. Language is an objective phenomenon. Its testable. If the monkey truly had language we could test it in an objective and quantitative way. But every time a linguist has looked at Koko the results have been similar to the transcript above. Its only subjective because its not true.
Before you respond, ask yourself this: Are you arguing out of logic, or because the belief that monkeys are smart is a cherished one to you? Something akin to faith?
Suppose it turned out that we were being raised by a race of aliens with 900 IQ's, who had a sweet tooth for us. Would you still find nothing wrong with the idea? What if they slaughtered us "humanely"?
you are anthropomorphizing. Humans have cognition, hopes, dreams, aspirations. Animals exist in the moment. An animal does not understand that something is taken away from it when it dies. People understand the loss, thats the difference. | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 2:40:54 PM |
Animals exist in the moment. An animal does not understand that something is taken away from it when it dies. People understand the loss, thats the difference.
If I'm anthropomorphizing, you are making value judgments based on what?...Your beliefs? How do you KNOW that various animals don't understand, or that they have no moral agency, or that they live only in the moment? How can you generalize what may or may not be true of an individual species to the entire animal kindom? How is that not specism? | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 3:36:49 PM | 'greg'..//Before you respond, ask yourself this: are you arguing out of logic or the belief that monkeys are smart is a cherished one to you? Something akin to faith?//
Firstly, I'm not arguing anything, hopefully we are discussing.. If you read my posts, I leave room for doubt. I save my faith up for when I play the lottery.
What I am 'suggesting' sits well with my own logic. My conclusion that apes are 'clever' is reached by my having a keen interest in watching the way they behave, use tools and develop complex observable relationships that they form within their own small groups. Watching them solve problems leads me to believe that they are indeed 'clever'.... They have potential.
Their interactions and behaviour mirrors our own so strikingly that to suggest they aren't 'clever' is to not of observed them properly when they are put into a situation that requires thinking to get out of...
Perhaps you could define your use of the word 'clever'?
'greg', what have you seen in the behaviour of apes that would suggest they are not 'clever'?.. | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 3:39:34 PM |
Reports of ape intelligence are highly misleading. I've seen it stated over and over that some apes have the language capacity of a 6 year old human. This is blatantly false. Hang around a 6 year old. They are quite intelligent and can carry on quite a conversation. There has never been an ape with this level of language. I used to think this about some foreigners - until I learned their language.
My only claim to any ethical authenticity is that I admit my hypocrisy freely And mine would be accepting that, if a shark takes a chunk out of me, it has a perfect right to do so.
It takes far more energy per gram of protein to raise cattle for food than to grow crops I hear this all the time, but remember growing up in a place that was almost impossible to grow ANYTHING in the garden..... Surrounded by fat sheep and cattle happily munching grass across the boggy hills. What are the Lapps gonna grow instead of reindeer?
Ever tried to keep a squirrel out of a bird feeder? I've spent hours watching them figure out how to beat my efforts to keep them away. About the only thing they haven't done is stolen my toolbox and built a ladder! - My pet cat doing back-flips to show off to his 'girlfriend'. And fish will swim up to me if I'm diving with a camera, but stay far away if I have a spear with me. I don't understand why someone who argues so well in favor of evolution wouldn't recognize that emotions and thinking evolved too. Everyone seems to have their own argument for humans being 'special' and 'spontaneously' developing purely human characteristics.
Most people have a mental image of an ape in a 3 foot by 3 foot cage with wires coming out of its nose and half its brain exposed. And few people have mental images of people in gunsights, bombsight, dusty mines destroying their lungs and all kinds of other environments which kill and maim. Human rights? Nature doesn't confer rights - humans invent them - and adjust them to suit their own ambitions - including salving their own conscience.
Cutting off their fingers (which was done in the past to test plasticity of the motor cortex in the brain)is not an option. More often done on monkeys which split off the primate evolutionary tree well before apes. You'd understandably still have an argument against such experiments but where do you draw the line? This, or similar work stimulated the develpment of Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy to help stroke patients recover more fully. I'd argue the same consideration for dogs - but what about their contribution to convert diabetes from a deadly disease to an easily treatable one?
As for the great apes, there's efforts to help them (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v437/n7055/full/437027a.html) and this is the start to an article on ape research, although I couldn't figure out how to access the entire article. http://altweb.jhsph.edu/publications/journals/atla/33_2/Hagelin%20p1%2033.2.pdf | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 3:55:57 PM |
Over protective trainers would most likely get deeply attatched to such an animal; wanting to read into certain behaviour and see things that weren't there.
It is called projection. People do it all of the time, to animals and to each other. We studied it in our Ethics class.
An example: Suppose my children and I have a dog. My children go out of town to visit the grandparents for a week. In the meantime I notice my dog is calmer in his behavior. I begin to think my dog is missing my children. The truth is I am missing my children. The dog may be calmer, because there is less stimuli. When my children return, our dog jumps around and acts "happy" to see them. But maybe our dog is responding to additional stimuli, and is behaving according to instinctual "pack" tendencies.
Just throwing it out there, brightspark... :) | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 4:27:51 PM | 'greg'..//sit in their own sh*t, attack little kids, smear faeces in their hair, rip an innocent womans face off, bite//
I'm not sure what the above behaviour has to do with a lack of cleverness...but I'm sure your aware that humans indulge in that shocking behaviour also... That sort of behaviour can be found in people that frequent prisons.
'greg'..//My use of the word clever; is the ability to show reason or to interact with others using meaningful language. It hasn't been shown//
CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY: Clever (adjective)- having or showing the ability to learn and understand things quickly and easily.---(this has been shown in apes)
I can't direct you to a valid scientific paper... I don't claim to base my 'intuition' on the intelligence of apes on anything but my own experiences of observing them. I think they are accomplished problem solvers. I think they are clever.
Edit: Diva, I see how projecting heartfelt emotions can get in the way of interpreting an animals behaviour.. I think it's an endearing quality that animal lovers display.. It still doesn't take away from the intelligence that dogs display... Or apes for that matter! :) | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 4:39:09 PM |
no valid testing done on animals of any kind has ever shown evidence for abstract thought, such as life vs. death
I think it's a kind of piss poor view to think that because something doesn't "act" the way we would to a given stimulus that it must necessarily be so inferior as to be considered no more than an exploitable resource, or a toy for our pleasure. Can you not see that sentience is a matter of degree, not an absolute have or don't have? Do you not see emotions in animals? Don't you think they have feelings? If they do, how can you be so sure that they have no abstract thought? (and whether or not they do, is that a valid criterion by which we should "assess" their value as beings?) Is it because they don't think the way we do that we discount their thinking altogether as valueless and no indication of "true" (human) sentience?
I thought we had come a little further than "God gave us dominion over the animals" and "They don't feel pain like we do so it's OK."
Just because a few studies show that they don't attend funerals for their friends, or send sympathy cards is no justification to treat them as property, nor is it a valid reason to suppose they have no feelings (like love for instance), or are incapable of reasoning with respect to time, etc.
Don't underestimate the intelligence or emotions of "animals." After all, most of them are smart enough to not waste time in front of the idiot box, which to me is an indication of superior intelligence. | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 4:57:22 PM | Thank you greg, *blushes*. However you do not know me in the physical sense. :)
I think it's a kind of piss poor view to think that because something doesn't "act" the way we would to a given stimulus that it must necessarily be so inferior as to be considered no more than an exploitable resource, or a toy for our pleasure. I agree with this statement. is it because they don't think the way we do that we discount their thinking altogether as valueless and no indication of "true" (human) sentience? They don't think like human beings. It doesn't mean that their thinking is valueless. Studies have shown that people who have animals often live longer. I say "have" rather than "own". That introduces, into this discussion a question of values... | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 5:15:40 PM | Animals have emotions analagous to ours. It is obvious to any pet owners and more and more so obvious to scientists as well.
I was just speaking about apes with my friend at work, she spent a good portion of her life in Africa working with Gorilla habitat preservation efforts there. She was a surrogate mother to baby gorillas. Wonderful, touching stories, almost like touching an alien species.
Personally, I believe that homosapiens have gone too far in declaring themselves special, especially in the emotional sphere, where clearly, we see development seriously lagging.
We are much like animals.
Animals are much like us.
Life can be cruel.
Hopefully cell cultures and computer models will continue to reduce our need to subject animals to needless cruelty.
(that was a dumb sentence... reduce our need to subject to needless... man I need to go to bed) ;o) | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 5:23:15 PM | @Dukky..
I like the idiot box.... I know, I know, I'm a bad monkey.
'greg'..//as humans we have discovered relativity, quantum mechanics and cancer treatments but somehow we completely miss ape intelligence??//
As an individual, I haven't discovered any of those things. Does that mean I'm not intelligent? If by being intelligent you mean apes aren't because they cant cure cancer, well..... with that high standard of the definition I would quite agree. I'm not saying that apes are equal in intelligence to us. I think they are intelligent though.
'greg'..//what type of things do they understand?//
....don't look at me.. You'll have to 'sign' the trained, intelligent ones and see if they give you an answer ;) | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 5:23:22 PM | Apes have an inferior intellect to us. They do not reason the way we do, nor do they have abstract thoughts (according to what we've observed and studied so far). I'm not sure why understanding this truth equates to animal cruelty somehow
I wasn't accusing you or anyone else specifically of any sort of animal cruelty, nor was I trying to set up a straw man. I was only trying to point out that even scientific testing with regard to animals is loaded with a parochial bias that reflects our all-too-human attitude of assumed superiority.
I'm trying to make the point that different does not equate to inferior. Even in testing of animals, we look upon their behaviours in dispassionate, mechanistic terms, yet almost in the same breath, with respect to humans we suddenly feel differently, as though we are somehow special, or more than the sum of our parts. What gives us this alleged superiority over animals? Whatever qualities we have and believe they don't have (or have much less of), and that's the problem. You yourself said they have demonstrated no capacity for abstract reasoning, as though that somehow means they are "mere" animals and therefore do not have the right to liberty, or to be left alone by us. Why? Is abstract reasoning a requirement for sentience? Should we only show compassion to our own kind? Who says abstract reasoning is the best kind? How do we know animal reasoning isn't superior to ours on some level we aren't measuring? Quite simply we don't. We only know that it is generally different than human reasoning and as I said before, different doesn't necessarily imply inferior. | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 5:39:16 PM |
But they dont have a comparable intellect to us.
Well, that's like comparing apples and oranges. There are some skills (I was watching how a type of bird is MUCH better at memorizing number sequences) but on the whole, it is obvious that in most school subjects they would be kindergarden dropouts. :-) Still, I'd like to see anyone try to live like a snake for a while. We aren't equiped we'd say, can't eat raw mice, or smell like they do. Well, neither can snakes build mouse traps and operate bbqs.
Clearly humans are thinking animals the way most birds are flying animals. I would say, however that most of what gives us this distinction is our technology and cultural heritage. If everyone died but newborns which simply had access to a never ending food supply... we'd certain resemble like animals. No culture, no speech, no technology... hmmm... if anything, a human being is a remembering animal for so much of what makes us special is what we remember, individually and as a culture. | |
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| Apes... Do they have emotions and thought processes like our own?
Posted: 8/24/2009 5:40:51 PM |
It is you that feels this equates to the lack of liberty rights.
Perhaps I misunderstood you when you said animal experimentation was OK. If by experimentation you merely mean studying their behaviour (in the manner of Jane Goodall), I have no real disagreement with you. I know you don't condone inhumane experimentation (cutting off heads & wiring them with electrodes, etc.), but it is as yet unclear to me what sort of intrusive experimentation (if any) you would condone on animals if you grant them their right to liberty and to remain unmolested by us.
It is my opinion that granting them their rights would ethically disallow even confining them for study as that would be a violation of their rights. | |
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