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New theory... The **only** intellectual thing that seperates us from the rest of animals is the ability to do math.
All the things we dont usually think of as math but we associate with being human is in fact math... language is math, logic is math, its all math... language is simply our ontology we use to express logic as symbols we can express. We have a natural intuitive understanding (well some of us, to some extent) of prepositional logic and language is more or less a manifestation of that.
Like any other human cognitive feature, animals can do math, but in a very limited way. See https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200907-the-remarkable-ways-animals-understand-numbers
If you read Harari (if you haven't read his first book, you should, it is really great), he explains very nicely that the main differences between us and other animals are the ones that help us to collaborate and have collective goals and planning: language, creativity, shared ideas and dreams... We are much, much better.
Math and logic are a form of language, so we are naturally much, much better than animals at it.
@jgg i disagree, they arent doing math, being able to add and subtract something isnt "doing math", thats doing calculations, not math. Math is the ability to represent the world symbolicly and manipulate those symbols.
At least within this context.
Well, it seems really hard to design an experiment to know if animals have abstraction capabilities.
I think they must have some; knowing if a random animal belongs to your species or not is in itself a form of abstraction.
Creating symbols and managing them is really what language is about; and math is the most formalized and strict of them. Since animals have very limited language abilities, it is not surprising their math abilities are (nearly?) undetectable.
Well, it doesn't seem fair to put the litmus test on english. Why not on spanish? It would be easier for me 😆 And a chinese could put it really hard for both of us. And an alien could make all of us look like a chimpanzee.
We can't use human rules to measure other animals, it has to be something more neutral.
Anthropologists and biologist had made great efforts to find a really neutral way to measure cognition and conscience in animals, and they haven't uncovered even the tip of the iceberg.
That's why I recommended Harari's book; as an anthropologist, knowing the differences between humans and other animals is a key part of his job.
> Well, it doesn’t seem fair to put the litmus test on english. Why not on spanish? It would be easier for me 😆 And a chinese could put it really hard for both of us. And an alien could make all of us like a chimpanzee
may not be easy but if you were stuck in china youd be able to learn it, a cat couldnt.
> We can’t use human rules to measure other animals, it has to be something more neutral.
We arent using human rules, we are using objective general rules. We can understand the vocalizations of most animals well enough to know their not symbolic in nature, and we know they cant understand us. The rules are bidirectional.
A super advanced alien could understand our language, we may be incapable of understanding theirs. but the point is one of us (the more advanced one) can understand the other.
@jgg
> Well, it seems really hard to design an experiment to know if animals have abstraction capabilities.
Its actually quite easy... you try to teach them to understand english. If they can, they have the ability, if they cant, they dont. Even humans can understand languages without being taught translations through exposure.
The key is either animals are more advanced than us at symbolic manipulation in which case they would understand english and we wouldnt under stand them, or vice versa, we are the smarter of the two and we would understand their language (and see the symbolic manipulations within it).
The fact that they cant hold a conversation and do math is in and cant be taught, is in and of itself proof.
That said some chimps may be just barely capable (like koko who clearly could perform simple speech)... but beyond chimps it would seem easy to disprove by demonstration.
> I think they must have some; knowing if a random animal belongs to your species or not is in itself a form of abstraction.
Seeing an animal and feeling a kinship towards it or wanting to engage with it differently certainly shows some awareness as to their similarity, but doesnt show a **symbolic** understanding, they do not create symbols that represent those concepts, they just know the concepts.
> Since animals have very limited language abilities, it is not surprising their math abilities are (nearly?) undetectable.
I would only loosely call what most animals do language.. They are more like vocal signaling than language.. unless we talk about koko or something.