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

Christophe Grandsire wrote at 2003-06-29 14:29:07 (+0200)
> En réponse à Joe :
[...]
>
> >   It would open up a whole new a-posteriori Conlanging field.
> >And what would be even weirder is if we had another species as
> >intelligent as us sitting right under our noses, and we never
> >realised it.
>
> Actually, it's been quite a while that we know that. The only
> problem is that the people telling about the impressive
> intelligence of dolphins were not taken seriously. After all, there
> just *couldn't* be another intelligent species on Earth but us
> (also, for long people have considered that intelligence had to do
> with the ability to create and use tools, something that by
> definition dolphins cannot do - difficult without hands -).
Apart from agreeing with Tim May that there is no plentitude of consensus on
these matters, I'd just just want to call the expression "another intelligent
species" into question. Assuming that intelligence (whatever that is), can be
objectively compared across animal species, we might expect there to be
animals at a wide variety of levels, but this expression seems to presuppose a
gulf separating on one side humans and the other "intelligent species", and on
the other the rest of the animal kingdom.

To the extent we my trust my impression of the matter, the difference between
the average intelligence of chimps and that of humans is pretty hefty compared
to the variation typically found between (adult) humans, but still much
smaller than that separating chimps from worms. If we could place all animals
on an inteligence scale, I'd expect to see humans at or near the top, and
worms close to the bottom, but no large stretches were no species turns up.

                                                           Andreas

PS And whether the possession of intelligence, or a certain level thereof,
confers any special rights or status, is another kettle of philosophical
dolphin feed entirely.

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