Xref: utzoo sci.psychology:47 rec.birds:469 sci.bio:977
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!gatech!gitpyr!kludge
From: kludge@pyr.gatech.EDU (Scott Dorsey)
Newsgroups: sci.psychology,rec.birds,sci.bio
Subject: Re: Intelligent Parrots, or Self-deception and Gullibility.
Message-ID: <5200@pyr.gatech.EDU>
Date: 13 Mar 88 16:14:15 GMT
References: <1988Mar4.162334.18184@utzoo.uucp> <4299@blia.BLI.COM> <1988Mar9.132722.3364@mntgfx.mentor.com> <727@actnyc.UUCP>
Reply-To: kludge@pyr.UUCP (Scott Dorsey)
Organization: Georgia College Of Universal Knowledge
Lines: 34

In article <727@actnyc.UUCP> gcf@actnyc.UUCP (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>If Science were really minimalist, "it" would assume that "it" didn't
>know whether what the whales were doing when they sang was prosaic or
>not.  It is imprudent to assume they are discussing Beauty, algebra,
>or God, because these are, as far as we know, concepts of the human
>mind, but they might be doing something else equally abstract or
>complex.

   This is indeed true.  However, there is a certain amount of mundane
communication, and in every channel I can think about offhand (ie. human
speech, the few bird songs which have been deciphered, the Ethernet
protocol, etc.), natural or man-made, a fair percentage of the information
presented is housekeeping stuff.  
   Therefore, one can assume that a fair amount of whales' songs are
data of a similar character.  This assumption might be wrong (assumptions
often are), and room exists in my mind for it being so.  But I'll place
fair odds and five dollars on the existance of information about where
the good kelp is, mothers calling their children and telling them to
hurry along, mating and so on.
   Once you can decipher this information, then you can worry about the
rest of it.  I learned the French word for "chair" long before I learned
the words for "soul" or "integration."



Scott Dorsey   Kaptain_Kludge
SnailMail: ICS Programming Lab, Georgia Tech, Box 36681, Atlanta, Georgia 30332

   "To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic
    contrivances may be as natural to future times as to us is a 
    literary correspondence."  -- Joseph Glanvill, 1661

Internet:  kludge@pyr.gatech.edu
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