Sep 23, 2016 10:24 AM
Do Dolphins Have Conversations? We Still Can’t Say
http://m.nautil.us/blog/do-dolphins-have...l-cant-say
EXCERPTS: [...] “As this language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language,” [Vyacheslav] Ryabov wrote. The study inferred that each pulse conveyed a distinctive meaning. “In this regard, we can assume that each pulse represents a phoneme or a word of the dolphin’s spoken language.”
Unsurprisingly, news of the study swept through social media like wildfire. Humans have long felt an uncanny connection to dolphins, in part because of their Mona Lisa smiles and tenderly soulful eyes, and in part because they do indeed exhibit strikingly intelligent behavior. [...] But carry on a polite conversation? Top American dolphin experts were united last week in their skepticism. Both Denise Herzing, the founder of the Wild Dolphin Project, and Kathleen Dudzinski, the director of the Dolphin Communication Project, told Nautilus that the study didn’t present adequate data to support its claims, and should be taken with a grain of salt....
The Irrational Idea That Humans Are Mostly Irrational
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...ty/500219/
EXCERPTS: Last summer I was at a moral psychology conference in Chile [...] The consensus was that human moral reasoning is a mess—irrational, contradictory, and incoherent.
And how could it be otherwise? The evolutionary psychologists in the room argued that our propensity to reason about right and wrong arises through social adaptations calibrated to enhance our survival and reproduction, not to arrive at consistent or objective truth. [...] we are continually swayed by irrelevant factors, by gut feelings and unconscious motivations. As the primatologist Frans de Waal once put it [...]: “We celebrate rationality, but when push comes to shove we assign it little weight.”
I think that this is mistaken. Yes, our moral capacities are far from perfect. But—as I’ve argued elsewhere, including in my forthcoming book on empathy—we are often capable of objective moral reasoning. And so we can arrive at novel, sometimes uncomfortable, moral positions, as when men appreciate the wrongness of sexism or when people who really like the taste of meat decide that it’s better to go without. In fact, the strong view of some evolutionary theorists—that real moral reasoning is impossible—isn’t even coherent....
http://m.nautil.us/blog/do-dolphins-have...l-cant-say
EXCERPTS: [...] “As this language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language,” [Vyacheslav] Ryabov wrote. The study inferred that each pulse conveyed a distinctive meaning. “In this regard, we can assume that each pulse represents a phoneme or a word of the dolphin’s spoken language.”
Unsurprisingly, news of the study swept through social media like wildfire. Humans have long felt an uncanny connection to dolphins, in part because of their Mona Lisa smiles and tenderly soulful eyes, and in part because they do indeed exhibit strikingly intelligent behavior. [...] But carry on a polite conversation? Top American dolphin experts were united last week in their skepticism. Both Denise Herzing, the founder of the Wild Dolphin Project, and Kathleen Dudzinski, the director of the Dolphin Communication Project, told Nautilus that the study didn’t present adequate data to support its claims, and should be taken with a grain of salt....
The Irrational Idea That Humans Are Mostly Irrational
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archi...ty/500219/
EXCERPTS: Last summer I was at a moral psychology conference in Chile [...] The consensus was that human moral reasoning is a mess—irrational, contradictory, and incoherent.
And how could it be otherwise? The evolutionary psychologists in the room argued that our propensity to reason about right and wrong arises through social adaptations calibrated to enhance our survival and reproduction, not to arrive at consistent or objective truth. [...] we are continually swayed by irrelevant factors, by gut feelings and unconscious motivations. As the primatologist Frans de Waal once put it [...]: “We celebrate rationality, but when push comes to shove we assign it little weight.”
I think that this is mistaken. Yes, our moral capacities are far from perfect. But—as I’ve argued elsewhere, including in my forthcoming book on empathy—we are often capable of objective moral reasoning. And so we can arrive at novel, sometimes uncomfortable, moral positions, as when men appreciate the wrongness of sexism or when people who really like the taste of meat decide that it’s better to go without. In fact, the strong view of some evolutionary theorists—that real moral reasoning is impossible—isn’t even coherent....