See what (if anything) Chomsky has to say about Dolphins in his book Why Only Us: evolution and language

The reason why I am hyperskeptical about scientific claims of rationality of animals is that I have been trying to follow what neuroscientists and cognitivists have had to say about human thoughts based on brainscans. It's utterly ludicrous.

Of course, you can ascribe headlines like "Scientists can now read your thoughts based on brainscan!" to journalistic licence, but when you are (hopefully) directed from the news article to the scientific article, you see the science article start off (or conclude, or both) in the same terms, whereas the really interesting part - the method and procedure itself - turns out to be a letdown or a scam. They don't get the basic idea of "thought" psychologically correct, far from it.

First, they never even attempt to read thoughts directly. They just assume that the thought process is there and that it can be read off from neural activity or brainscan. There is no proof or evidence of it, they just assume it because at heart they are phrenologists. Second, how to read specific thoughts? It's easy: Just prompt the person to think specific thoughts, by letting the person hear or see things or by direct commands "Now think of this, now think of that." It should be obvious that this is ludicrous, merely a poor attempt at a circus trick on humans.

Here's an example what scientists have achieved with brainscans on people this amazing 21st century. Left is the image shown to the subject, right is the reconstruction by AI from the brainscan, what the AI thinks the subject was shown based on the brainscan. Is this "reading minds"? Is it "reading your innermost thoughts"? Are the images left and right even remotely alike? With a long stretch of imagination maybe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7kVwoN8Cx4

I will start taking scientific claims of animal rationality seriously as soon as I see "rationality" or "understanding" rationally defined so that we can be sure what we are talking about. Unfortunately it's nowhere to be seen.

Last edited by seigneur (4/26/2018 12:35 am)