User talk:Philosophr

Philosophr's Opinion on Koko

I understand that you went and Googled Koko and found her AOL “Chat” transcript and such. After having done that, you still have no doubt that Koko uses language. Or is there some doubt in your mind? I’m just asking your opinion, based on what you saw. Chrisrus (talk) 07:44, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what it would take to convince you that my arguement does not have a basis in anti-evolution, but I can assure you that it does not. Actually, I am interested why you would think that it would. I suppose you are reasoning that a person might think that Koko's ability to use language proves something about evolution, but I hope that you'd agree that wouldn't. Whether a Gorilla can use language or not has no significance on Natural Selection or anything similar. Actually, there is good reason to believe that not only Prairie Dogs but also Honey Bees routinely use something which might reasonably be construed as language. If so, it would prove that what is needed for a species to develop language is not really intelligence, but simply to be a highly social species under great evolutionary pressure to communicate concepts of consistant particular type of relationships between a set of possible variations, such as "Go (direction) (measure), turn (direction) (measure), as with honeybees, or maybe (threat type) coming from (direction), as Praire Dogs seem to do. Anything that has a consitant pattern into which various symbols can be plugged in would merit the word "language" in my book, but then again, I have a somewhat low threashold for what constitues language, as opposed to just any form of communication. I will go so far as to declare based on pure reason and absolutely no evidence at all that somewhere out there in the universe, evolutionary pressures must have already produced unarguably true language as complicated or more as ours, out there somewhere, many times.

You say you have seen videos in which it seemed to you that she was speaking. Yet nothing I have seen seemed that way to me. This is indeed interesting, and I would ask you to be more specific, but hesitate to, as I would recommend you going back and having a critical look again at that video just to be sure you really does seem to you to be using language before continuing.

I assume good faith on your part. I know that most people don't realize that this is even controvertial - general public almost all believe that Koko uses language and are surpised to learn evidence to the contrary. I would welcome any "third party" or other attention that you can bring to this matter. This issue brings a number of interesting issues to the fore. Chrisrus (talk) 03:53, 13 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrisrus (talk • contribs)