39. Clive Wynne, Animal Consciousness, Making Friends With Skeptics (Podcast)

[Venom]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Venom,

Don't you think that if we know the nature of Alex's broadcasts, so do his guests? Would you agree to appear on an arbitrary US show without even looking up what it contained?

David

Well, I'm sorry, but sometimes the people he's interviewing seem to have no clue whatsoever.

Maybe they're just careless, but nevertheless Alex should make his position and his goal clear to them.

[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)

[David Bailey]

Open Mind,

Thanks for making that point - it was something that I had wanted to write, but forgot.

The original disbelief that parrots could understand language was understandable, because a sizeable amount of the brain is devoted to this one task, so how could it be there in other animals totally unused - I mean why would it evolve?

Here are three interesting facts, and my theory as to what might be going on:

1) Parrots can mimic assorted sounds, including speech, but they also seem to be able to be trained to understand some speech.

2) Apes don't have the right throat structures to generate speech.

3) As Dr Clive Wynne points out, it is hard to imagine conscious thought without that inner voice that we all seem to possess - "Hmm, what shall I do next?"

I seriously wonder if consciousness does indeed work with an inner language - each individual creature developing its own private language - and that it is this which is synchronized in humans so that we can all share our thoughts. This would explain why creatures such as parrots have the ability to understand speech and generate replies, and why some chimps can be taught to understand quite a large vocabulary.

David

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Venom

Well, I'm sorry, but sometimes the people he's interviewing seem to have no clue whatsoever.

Maybe they're just careless, but nevertheless Alex should make his position and his goal clear to them.

Would YOU go on a TV show to discuss your professional work without researching the nature of the programme?

David

[Venom]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

Would YOU go on a TV show to discuss your professional work without researching the nature of the programme?

The question is not what I would do.

Well, to be honest, knowing how Alex is taking quotations out of context all the time (and even months after the actual interview) and editing them in order to create artificial controversies, and how he's always talking more than the skeptic because the all show is about what he believes, and how he has such a strong biais toward Psi, I wouldn't agree to go on his show at all.

So the fact that they go on the show is proof in itself that they have no clue.

More seriously, my point is not about me, but about them. When you listen to some of the guess, they seem to have no idea.

So please, let's talk about Alex's guests, and not about me.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by Venom

Well, to be honest, knowing how Alex is taking quotations out of context all the time (and even months after the actual interview) and editing them in order to create artificial controversies, and how he's always talking more than the skeptic because the all show is about what he believes, and how he has such a strong biais toward Psi, I wouldn't agree to go on his show at all.

I don't think that is fair. Alex does add his own commentary after the interviews are complete, which is maybe a bit 'unfair', but he is simply trying to relate all the things that they have said to try to get some sense out of a very muddy area.

I think if anyone goes on his show they would be very well advised to have their facts right and to have carefully read any papers that they want to criticise - but what is wrong with that?

Any skeptics that don't research their facts properly, are likely to make themselves sound fairly silly:

Dialogues and Controversies - Controversies - The Telepathy Debate

David

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by Open Mind

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)

Yes, he's agreed to another interview. He's dropped me an emial saying he's out of twon until mid-April. So, we'll try and get something after that.

[alextsakiris]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

I don't think that is fair. Alex does add his own commentary after the interviews are complete, which is maybe a bit 'unfair', but he is simply trying to relate all the things that they have said to try to get some sense out of a very muddy area.

I think if anyone goes on his show they would be very well advised to have their facts right and to have carefully read any papers that they want to criticise - but what is wrong with that?

Any skeptics that don't research their facts properly, are likely to make themselves sound fairly silly:

Dialogues and Controversies - Controversies - The Telepathy Debate

David

I would add that I'm always willing to have any guest come back on and correct any mistakes, or misrepresentations I may have made.

Steve Novella did this... at least one time, but after I pointed out the obvious mistakes he and Wiseman made the conversation kinda died out.

Why???

Because Skepitcs love to dish it out, but they can't take it.

[David Bailey]

Alex,

I think it is great that you have got Rupert back on your show. I would like to hear how his work with N'kisi (the parrot) has gone - as well as his responses to the various criticisms of his experiments with dogs.

David

[DysonSphere]

I think its pretty clear that consciousness is not a result of language, people who have strokes are temporarily unable to communicate or understand language, numbers, yet they are still able to have conscious thoughts.


3) "As Dr Clive Wynne points out, it is hard to imagine conscious thought without that inner voice that we all seem to possess - "Hmm, what shall I do next?"

Not really. I can think in images and concepts just fine. But it doesn't even matter if I can or can't. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a dog with an amazing sniffer, quite probably they think in terms of "remember that smell, you like that smell, that smell is always over here" *finds kibble*.

Well, to be honest, knowing how Alex is taking quotations out of context all the time (and even months after the actual interview) and editing them in order to create artificial controversies, and how he's always talking more than the skeptic because the all show is about what he believes, and how he has such a strong biais toward Psi, I wouldn't agree to go on his show at all.

Do you ever get tired of spewing bullshit? Honestly, its remarks like this that make me feel justified in my skepticism of psi skeptics.