Animal Minds; social adaptability in macaques (Animals)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 26, 2024, 17:52 (149 days ago) @ xeno6696

I misread that, thanks for the clarification!

xeno: This suggests the following:
1. Memory of past aggression
2. Enough consciousness to realize some level of individual self-control.
3. A willingness to try a non-aggressive strategy to get desired outcomes which directly implies
4. The ability to plan and adjust. You have to be able to imagine different outcomes to pick a different strategy.
What this study directly assaults is the idea that macaques are automatons that react via instinct. They think like we do, sans language. (dhw’s bold)

DHW: I agree completely. And I would extend the bolded comment to all organisms, though with the obvious proviso that our own human range of thought goes way, way, way beyond the limits of other life forms.

Matt: The thing that makes humans special--is that we have learned to utilize language. A very fascinating and controversial book was Julian Jaynes' "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind." He brought some things to light that I hadn't considered before in the process of unfolding his argument, but he focuses in deeply on the importance of metaphor and extension as the primary method by which we built up vocalizations to be the rich tapestry of language that we have today, a difference that does make us different, but I can't say different in kind exactly. Take away language and you take away humanity. And many philosophies have gone down a wrong path using that difference "in kind" to justify terrible behavior towards other species (and even our own.)

But coming back to Jaynes, he details the process of metaphor building and extension that to my mind unlocks the key as to how we ended up dominating the planet, which ought to be a fascinating question for most of us. It also explains why we were relatively "silent" prior to recorded history--we lacked the language that allowed us to spill into new places. The controversial part of his thesis is the idea that Schizophrenics represent a vestige of what "normal" humanity looked like in prehistory. In Jaynes' thesis, the explosion of language tracks with the explosion of civilization and texts like the Iliad show us vestiges of an older, more alien way that people dealt with Gods. I'm going way off topic here though, if it interests you guys I can make an official topic for it.

I have always thought that having language expanded the ability to think and develop ideas and produced what we are today. At the grunt and point level ideation had to be simple.