[Open Mind]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

Edited to fix errors ....my usual impatient habit of clicking 'post' before checking

I disagree with Dr Clive Wynne on .....

(1) He claims language is the cause of consciousness? I think this is nonsense. Consciousness must proceed language. A word points to a conscious experience, it does not create consciousness. One does not drive the word 'car', one does not feed the word 'dog', words only point to a conscious experiences , therefore must proceed language.... words do not describe colours they point to conscious images of these, words are meaningless unless one has conscious experience of what these represent.

(2)Unconscious emotion? What does he mean? How can one know one has an emotion without experiencing it? One can of course have unconscious habits but if emotional, these must be conscious to at least some degree or we would be unaware of them.

Even if Clive Wynne was correct about consciousness being the result of language... he would still be wrong in implying only humans possess it.


'...Until the 1980s, within academic science it was generally assumed that parrots were mere mimics, “parroting” words with no understanding. Most scientific studies of human-to-animal linguistic communication were carried out with primates, using sign language (e.g. Patterson and Linden, 1981; Fouts, 1997).

In 1977, Irene Pepperberg began training and testing an African Grey parrot, Alex, and subsequently succeeded in showing that Alex and other parrots can use language meaningfully. Over 20 years of training, Alex acquired a vocabulary of more than 200 words, and Pepperberg established that he was capable of abstraction and of using language referentially. For example, he can grasp such concepts as “present” and “absent” and use words for colors appropriately, whatever the shape of the colored object (Pepperberg, 1999). Pepperberg and her colleagues have shown that parrots, although literally bird-brained, rival primates in their ability to use language meaningfully.

Inspired by seeing Alex on television, in 1997 Aimée Morgana began training a young male African Grey parrot, N’kisi (pronounced “in-key-see”) in the use of language. She did so by teaching him as if he were a human child, starting when he was 5 months old. She used two teaching techniques known as “sentence frames” and “cognitive mapping”. In sentence frames, words were taught by repeating them in various sentences such as, “Want some water? Look, I have some water.” Cognitive mapping reinforced meanings that might not yet be fully understood. For example, if N’kisi said “water”, Aimee would show him a glass of water. By the time he was 5 years old, he had a contextual vocabulary of more than 700 words. He apparently understood the meanings of words, and used his language skills to make relevant comments. He ordinarily spoke in grammatical sentences, and by January 2002, Aimée had recorded more than 7,000 original sentences - Rupert Sheldrake ...'


Venom, before you even think of making a venomous joke about 'Alex the parrot' .....forget it

Alex the interviewer, any chance of another interview with Rupert Sheldrake? So much debate has gone on here concerning his work with dogs, since his first interview, it would be interesting to hear Sheldrake's comments on these (and also on animal consciousness too)