From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Mon Apr 29 2002 - 16:53:39 MDT
> >Not to mention that the "if" there is complete nonsense anyway.
> >Even after decades of research attempting to teach chimps, gorillas,
> >and other apes something resembling "language", none of them, at any
> >age, after years of work, have acheived skills that any 18-month-old
> >human infant acheives spontaneously with no effort.
>
> Human infants go through considerable effort to acheive the same
> results and any parent knows that the adult participation in
> such learning is not effortless either.
>
> The point though is that these creatures are close enough to
> sentient levels we consider as possessing rights that it is at
> least questionable that we treat them often so poorly. If a
> chimp can communicate at the level of a three-year-old then it
> is a prove of its sentience and thus a call for not abusing such
> creatures. That it does not have to have the potential of
> growing into a full adult human equivalent does not justify
> disallowing any rights at all.
You misunderstand me--the chimp does not have the potential to
develop even to the three-year-old stage, and any claims to the
contrary are bad science and wishful thinking. There is plenty
of proof of apes' sentience elsewhere--as in their problem-solving
abilities, cultures, emotions, personalities, and many other things.
Language just isn't one of them, and using it as an argument
weakens the position rather than strengthening it.
Don't blindly accept what you see on PBS as if it's real science.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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