NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/rec/arts/sf/misc/2292

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-30 | 7.9 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!balrog!ctron.com
From: [e-mail] (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc
Subject: Re: Eating our other world friends & enemies
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 30 Jul 92 19:10:32 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <qnpmz![e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.
Lines: 160
Nntp-Posting-Host: glinda

In article <qnpmz![e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Chris Waters) writes:
>The holes in this pseudo-scientific "argument" are large enough to drive
>a truck through:

You are presuming the lack of those hallmarks we identify with "intelligence"
as implying that things can be "intelligent" without them.  By this logic a
jellyfish *might* be as intelligent.

>1.  We do not know whether or not they have made significant attempts to
>communicate with us.  They may well have.

Then it hardly matters if they are more intelligent than we or not.  They
*act* like unintelligent animals - pretty smart animals, but animals none-
theless.  If they are not smart enough to figure out *how* to talk to us,
then chances are they aren't smart enough *to* talk to us.

>2.  They may not think of these activities as "us killing them".  This
>assumes that the individuals identify with the species.  Hardly a
>warranted assumption.

But one that is, practically by definition, an attribute of an *animal* mind.
Were they a solitary species, I might allow you this.  But they are not, and
I do not believe a social, intelligent species would lack this "unwarranted"
assumption.

>3.  It assumes that they think that communication with us is
>possible--that they think that *we* are intelligent.

If they aren't intelligent enough to determine that we are intelligent then
they are obviously not intelligent.  Assuming anything else is the old "we
don't know if jellyfish are a higher mind" argument.

>4.  It assumes that they might think that we might respond to such
>overtures on their part.  Perhaps they've tried and given up, and they
>just assume that it's part of our nature to kill them.

Then they are semantically identical with animals and we need analyze no more
than that.

>5.  It assumes that they understand causality.

Flatly and unarguably an attribute of an intelligent mind.  Assuming anything
else is assuming facts not in evidence and assuming they imply a "higher"
intelligence.  I'm sure jellyfish don't understand causality, either, are they
intelligent?

>I'm sure that there are many more flaws in this curious piece of
>"reasoning", but that ought to do for a start.

Your "reasoning" is far more curious.  You assume the negative in order to
draw a positive conclusion.  "They do *not* show any of the attributes of
an intelligent creature, therefore they must be of a higher order of
intelligence".  Ridiculous.

>I'm not sure I understand the question.  If you are asking, "do dolphin
>researchers tend to feel that these animals are intelligent?", then the
>answer is yes.

You have cleverly switched from using the word as an adjective to adverb.
Implicitly you mean "_relatively_ intelligent" and no one has denied it.
Does that mean they _are_ "intelligent"?  No, it does not.  A dog is
relatively intelligent if we are referring to mice, but that does not
make a dog intelligent.  What few dolphic researchers who claim more than
just _relatively_ intelligent are well-known as crackpots.

>                No, let me correct that.  There is _incontrovertable_
>evidence that dolphins are intelligent.
                           ^ "relatively"

>                                         More intelligent than dogs,
>perhaps as intelligent as chimps, maybe even more so.
                                                      ^ relatively speaking.

But not intelligent as humans are.

>>Well, here we clearly need a definition of intelligent.  When we talk
>>about an organism being intelligent we usually mean that its brain
>>level is such that it is a rational, concious, thinking being
>>deserving legal protection.  Dogs do not meet this text.

>Huh?  From my Websters New World Dictionary:

Harcourt, Brace and World, "Standard College Dictionary", 1963:
intelligence: n. 1. The faculty of percieving and comprehending meaning;
mental quickness; intellect; understanding...7. An intelligent or rational
being...

None of that applies to dolphins, or to any other animal, except in the most
rudimentary sense.  1 allows comparisons of levels of intelligence, but the
way you use it you are referring to meaning 7 on the basis of good comparisons
against other animals in level 1.  That leap is not justified.

>Dogs and dolphins, chimps and even bats meet this definition of
>intelligence to one degree or another.

True.  But that does not make them _intelligent_.  Merely more intelligent
than other animals that do not do so well.

>But, for the sake of argument, let's take your definition:

Big of you.

>rational -- ability to reason.  Dogs certainly have this.

Dogs certainly have no such facility.  "Reason 3.  The faculty of thinking
logically; the power of drawing conclusions or making inferences."  The first-
order intellect of a dog "reasoning" about simple problems simply isn't that.
Just because the dog can solve the problem doesn't mean it is using reason.
By that logic a computer is capable of reason, in fact, for more defensibly
so than your dog.

>conscious -- having a feeling or knowlege.  Again, dogs have this.

They have not.  In fact, it is doubtful that humans have had this for all that
long.  Read Julian Jaynes "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the
Bicameral Mind".  Feelings and knowledge do not imply consciousness, not by a
long way.  Birds have "feelings".  Computers have knowledge.  Neither is
"intelligent".

>thinking -- Dogs certainly think.

Again, you are applying a term in one sense to findings in another.  Dogs
certainly do not think.  They can react, they can, to some extent, apply past
experience to a current problem, but they do not think in the kind of analog,
abstract sense you imply.  It isn't at all clear all *humans* can do that, let
alone dogs or dolphins.

>deserving legal protection -- well, this is the whole subject of the
>debate.  Just who or what is deserving of legal protection?

Dolphins already have legal protection.  So do Monarch butterflies.  Who or
what is deserving of "legal" protection is an entirely unrelated question.
What you are talking about is "civil rights".  Animals have none, they are
purely an attribute of intelligent, reasoning, conscious beings.  Humans
qualify.  Space aliens, were any to visit us, would qualify.  Animals do not.

>The simple fact of the matter is that intelligence is *not* a criteria
>for legal protection under the current laws of the United States, or any

So?  Then why are you arguing so vociferously about the supposed intelligence
of dolphins?

>other country that I am aware of.  Being human is.  Thus, if our

At present, the law is so constituted.  But the definition of human is a legal
term, subject to reinterpretation by the courts.

>hypothetical aliens landed in Times Square, someone might well be
>legally within their rights to kill and eat them.  Of course, killing

I guarantee the trial would bring about the above-mentioned reinterpretation,
and the killer would get life-plus-10.  Even if it were not so, "inciting to
war" _is_ actionable.

Larry Smith ([e-mail]) No, I don't speak for Cabletron.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Daily I'd go over to Congress - that grand old benevolent national asylum - and
report on the inmates there.  Never seen a body of men with tongues more handy,
or information more uncertain.  If one of those men had been present when the
Deity was on the point of saying "Let there be light" we never would've had it.