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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Muddled logic to prove a point, November 30, 2000
This review is from: If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness (Hardcover)
The point of this book is to "prove" that only people think. Anything a non-human, be it a bacteria or a gorilla, does that looks like thinking actually isn't. It's all programmed by evolution. He cites study after study to prove his point, even when the study appears not to prove it at all. Some examples of anthropomorphism, of course, are clearly erroneous - the famous example of the counting horse, and the way evolution seems almost spooky in its apparent "intelligence." Certainly he's right in saying that it's hubris on our part to compare animals intelligence solely in terms of ours. And it's not very accurate either; at a wolf refuge in Washington state, called Wolf Haven, they tell you that researchers have determined that a German Shepherd dog is as intelligent as a 4-year old child, but a wolf is as intelligent as a 12-year old. There are very few four-year-olds, or 12-year olds, for that matter, who could survive and thrive in the wild, hunting their food successfully and finding safe places to sleep, avoiding predators and hunters along the way. But then he jumps from those errors, with a few bashes at Decartes along the way, to the conclusion that only people think. There is little difference, he says, between the behavior of a simple computerized model of a cricket and a real cricket. And, by extension, there's little difference between that computer toy and a chimpanzee, at least in terms of its behavior. Bernd Heinrich, in his fascinating book Mind of the Raven, discusses his frustration at being unable to publish articles with results that appear to demonstrate raven's abilities to figure out problems. It didn't matter how carefully he was able to construct the studies, and how accurate the results appeared, the scientific community doesn't want to hear it. Certainly it's accurate (apparently) that only humans use language in any real sense, and much of what separates human behavior from the behavior or "lower" animals is that language and what it enables us to do. But that's not enough for him, he wants to have people be the only animals that think at all, and he goes through study after study to demonstrate this fact, whether the studies show that or not. One example: a study had chimpanzees, pigeons, and college students look at a series of pictures of birds, to learn to pick out the kingfisher. Once they could do it, they got a second set of different bird pictures, from which they were supposed to identify the kingfisher. All three groups did very well on the test (80-90% right) but on interviewing the human participants, the researchers learned that they had simply been picking out the most colorful bird, rather than correctly identifying the kingfisher. So they reran the second part of the test, using brightly colored birds with the kingfisher pictures, and the scores of the apes, the pigeons, and the college students all dropped by about 10%. This proves, apparently, that animals can't think the way people do. It's unfortunate, because he does make some very good points. For instance, the things which set apart human brain function from other animals: language, planning, playing chess, the ability to do mathematics, are precisely those things which computers can do well - in fact, far better than we -- while the things that "even animals" can do, such as recognizing a face, or navigating across a room without bumping into anything, computers have so far been almost perfect failures at. Although he doesn't say it, it seems pretty clear to me that this is an indication that we understand things like mathematics and language much better than we do our own ability to recognize faces. What you don't understand, you can't program. So, if you want to be reassured that the "Tenko the Robotic Puppy" your child wants for Christmas this year is just the same as a real puppy, but without the walks and the droppings, this book is for you.
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11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Heavy in straw, but light in substance, January 11, 2005
This review is from: If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness (Hardcover)
A new class of science writer has emerged in recent years. Where science journalism was once an effort to bring often arcane material to a wider reading public, there is a new approach - debunk science whenever possible. Budiansky, in his opening to this book, is quite open about his agenda. Science, particularly the studies of animal behaviour, is actually driven by New Age animal protection schemes. This must come as a shock to those who have spent years of field and laboratory work trying to understand why various animals, including humans, act as they do.
Budiansky takes us through numerous animal studies, particularly that of primates. His theme is begun with the story of a zoo gorilla who purported(ly?) "saved" a child. That the media hype over this story is based on the fallacious assumption that these huge animals are a threat to humans never seems to have occurred to him. He is only concerned over whether it is "natural" for gorillas to "save" children. Are scientists, as Budiansky charges, over enthusiastically applying human values to our animal relatives?
From a false starting point, he continues with copious accounts of behaviour studies. Each is presented as if the research teams had claimed far more than they actually have done. This is precisely the kind of selective quotations technique others have used in attempting to refute evolution by natural selection. It's the use of whole paddocks of straw creatures that clearly lack substance or value. It also demonstrates that Budiansky is devoid of understanding how science works. Research builds up snippets of information from a great deal of work. In cognition, we're still learning to ask the proper questions, never mind the completeness of the answers.
The book goes on to address the issues of animal "self-awareness", deception, forms of communication and, of course, pain. Since he's keen to refute those seeking greater protection for animals other than ourselves, it's important to Budiansky to limit any meaning to any of these concepts. The irony in all this is that he attributes other animals with talents such as mapping, distance assessment, deception, survival strategies and other attributes without granting these traits any real value. The book is filled with self-contradictions which neither Budiansky nor his editor appear to have noticed. It's as if the manuscript was typed, then rushed into print to meet a deadline.
Budiansky's "references" make abundantly clear that he's failed to consult the more prominent animal behaviourists. John Alcock, Thomas Eisner or Bernd Heinrich are noticeably absent from the list. He gives Seyforth and Cheney ["How Monkeys See the World"] lengthy coverage, only to lambaste them for misrepresenting their findings. He cites Daniel Dennett frequently, but in doing so simply adopts a limited definition of consciousness from what he's used elsewhere in the book. While he claims to have a handle on the evolutionary roots of behaviour, it's clear he has no real grasp of the development of cognition. When he arrives at language, of course, he soars with flowery rhetoric. There's no doubt that language gives humans a special cognitive ability. Does that thus relegate the rest of the animal kingdom to a subordinate role in life? Budiansky thinks so, and wants his readers to follow his lead. It's a false trail. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very much worthwhile, but contentious, June 17, 2007
This review is from: If a Lion Could Talk: Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of Consciousness (Hardcover)
This is a very slippery book on a very slippery subject. What Stephen Budiansky is trying to do is demonstrate from his reading of the literature, including experiments published in peer-reviewed journals, that there is a distinction to be made between the minds of humans and all other animals. Budiansky seems not to believe that intelligence and consciousness are matters of degree, but matters of threshold. Following philosopher Daniel Dennett he attributes this nearly absolute difference between us and them to our ability to use symbolic language.
The reason the subject is so slippery is that an adequate definition of both intelligence and consciousness is lacking. The reason the book is contentious naturally follows from this, but additionally Budiansky seems to have an agenda or, call it a thesis. He writes: "Consciousness is a wonderful gift and a wonderful curse that, all the evidence suggests, is not in the realm of the sentient experiences of other creatures." (p. 194)
How true or not his statement may be really depends on the definition of consciousness. Unfortunately Budiansky does not give one, and so all his conclusions about the differences in consciousness between humans and other creatures are murky at best. The closest he comes to a definition is on page 193 where he asserts that "...language is so intimately tied to consciousness that the two seem inseparable." Using this "definition" it is only a matter of demonstrating that animals do not have language in order to demonstrate that they don't have consciousness.
However even in this I don't think Budiansky is successful. Much of the book is given over to showing how so many experiments using chimps and monkeys, pigeons and dogs, etc., that seem to demonstrate that language use by animals is just signaling. This position is well known. The argument is that humans are the only animals with grammatical, syntactical and symbolic ability built into their brains. Other animals cannot construct sentences because they have no syntax. They have no "theory of mind" because they cannot think symbolically.
But this is not proven, as Budiansky acknowledges. What is obvious is that whatever language ability other animals have is rudimentary compared to that of humans. And almost everyone would agree that the consciousness demonstrated by animals varies considerably. By the way, here's a quick definition of consciousness: awareness, identify, and self-awareness. A lot of confusion results because when people talk about consciousness, one person may have in mind "awareness," while another may be talking about "self-awareness" only, or about "self-identity." Awareness includes past, present and future events, and places here and elsewhere. We are very good at all of this, whereas other creatures are apparently not so good at anything other than the here and now. Because of our extended awareness, people like Budiansky are persuaded that we are on a consciousness level above other animals that should be recognized as different in kind.
Notice, by the way, that the idea that consciousness depends on language is by this definition obviously false. Sentient beings can be aware of many things without using language. Also there are different kinds of languages. Budiansky is talking about the kind of language that linguists study, the kind of language that Norm Chomsky analyzed to come up with his discovery that syntax is innate. But mathematics is a language, and when mathematicians are thinking about equations, they are conscious to the same extent that I am when I am thinking about how to put an idea into a sentence. Ditto for chess players and musicians. The languages that humans use are of one kind. We do not yet understand the languages the whales and dolphins speak.
What I don't like about Budiansky's insistence on a difference in kind is that when you stop to think about it, such a difference would be surprising since all life forms on this planet as far as we know evolved from a single ancient ancestor--unless of course you believe in a divine and separate creation.
Some other points at issue:
Budiansky wants to debunk the idea that animals are "worthy of special consideration" because their "behavior resembles" that of humans (see, e.g., p. xiii). I agree. We should appreciate other living things for what they are and not for how much they resemble us.
Consider the example of a chimpanzee holding out her hand to another in an appeasement gesture only to attack the other when he got near. Budiansky writes that a "theory of mind" interpretation would be that the tricky female knew the male would be misled in approaching and took advantage. But the "behaviorist spoilsport" interpretation is that the female had done this in the past and it worked and so did it again without recourse to reading the other's mind. (p. 182) This example illustrates just how difficult it is to say what is going on in another's mind. Personally I think the notion of a "theory of mind" should stay in the philosophy department.
One of the things that Budiansky makes clear is why some animals cry out when a predator appears. (See Chapter 6, "Speak!") Such calls seem altruistic to the point of being impossible from an evolutionary perspective; however Budiansky shows that such cries actually help the crier because their pitch either fools the attacking hawk so that it looks in the wrong direction, or the calls bring out other victims who go running about, thereby confusing the attacker or giving the attacker targets other than the crier.
Another nice thing that Budiansky does is show in sharp detail that the language accomplishments of chimpanzees and gorillas in some famous studies reveal not so much a human-like ability, but demonstrate the great gulf that exists between our use of language and theirs, which is not the kind of truth some people want to read.
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