OT: Dolphin intelligence (Re: Origin of names (WAS: Re: Proto-Uralic?))

Christophe Grandsire wrote at 2003-06-30 11:49:57 (+0200)
 > En réponse à Tim May :
 >
 >
 > >"We" don't "know that" at all, Christophe.
 >
 > Actually we *do*. I've never seen any argument against it that
 > doesn't boil down to pure prejudice.
 >

What argument is there _for_ it?  What evidence forces us to accept
that dolphins are "another species as intelligent as us", which is so
overwhelming as to brook no disagreement?

 > >   Some researchers in that
 > >field have reached such a conclusion, but many others disagree.  It is
 > >possible that they are simply blinded by prejudice, but I see no
 > >reason to assume that to be the case.
 >
 > I see plenty of them, and Stone only showed us a few. Don't forget
 > that just one hundred years ago, it was scientifically "proven"
 > that black people were inferior in all senses to white people, and
 > saying anything different from that was anathema. And we haven't
 > changed that much in one hundred years.
 >
That people are prejudiced, and have been so in the past, is no
revelation.  But you cannot simply assume that something is true on
the grounds that those who disagree might in principle be arguing out
of prejudice.  That is the mentality of the conspiracy theorist.