If a chimpanzee looks its handler in the eyes and points to a banana, it may be interpreted that the ape is asking to have the banana. This, Hobaiter said, shows apes are capable of asking questions.
Obviously not in the spirit of the question. No curiosity, no attempt to learn about what’s going on around them. The article has no examples of real questions, so to me I’d say the meme rings true.
Yeah, when my cat meows, it is “asking” for snacks. But it’s not inquiring about snacks, or curious about where the snacks come from or why cats enjoy snacking so much.
Granted, many humans don’t ask such questions either, but that’s because intellectual acuity is on a spectrum also occupied by non-human animals, at least in the realm of being an incurious dumbass.
Cats don’t need to ask questions about the world because they are scientists and will figure it out for themselves if they don’t get shown the answers. They know where the snacks come from, at least in regards to their own world, that’s why they come running when they hear the package.
They knock stuff over to see what happens. They meow for treats to see what happens. They sit on your face to wake you up to see what happens. They get into things just to see what’s in them.
And when the result is something they want, they try it again to see if the result is consistent. Reproducible.
That’s why the best way to get a cat to stop doing something they do to you is to ignore them. They meow to wake you up for food? They do that because it’s been working. Stop responding, and the behavior will also stop.
What you are doing is anthropomorphizing an animal’s behavior and ascribing intent behind the action without having any substantial basis for that claim.
Cats are intelligent, yes, but what you have described is completely devoid of any understanding of animal behavior or psychology.
I think there are several separate cognitive abilities needed to ask questions. Curiosity (which is very common), complex communication (much less common), and advanced theory of mind (exists on a spectrum, you need not only awareness of your own mental state, or metacognition, but awareness that others have a mental state that is distinct from your own. Humans actually develop this ability slowly throughout childhood, and it goes through stages). Though there are other species with similar traits, it might well be the case that humans are the only living species in possession of all of them simultaneously.
My cat has asked where my wife is. She has a very specific meow for each of us that she uses when she’s looking for us. One day while my wife was at work, cat meowed for my wife. Told the cat she’d be home on a couple hours. Cat curled up by the window, satisfied. Next time it happened, I teased her and tried to play with her. She kept wandering around the house looking for my wife until I told her she was at work. Smart little bastard.
Yeah that’s just a quirk of the English language in that “ask” means both inquiring, trying to learn information from a response, and request, a communication to another that the “asker” wants something.
“One of life’s great mysteries isn’t it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence? Or is there really a God, watching everything? You know, with a plan for us and stuff? I don’t know man, but it keeps me up at night.”
“What? I mean why are we here, in this box canyon in the middle of nowhere?”
You ask the aliens why you are there, meaning the cell they imprisoned you, and they tell you how their species created humans and what humans purpose is. You immediately go catatonic by the revelation.
They already understand the second order questions though. Why would they ask the humans?
They know what’s outside their enclosures, they know they’re there because the humans want them there, they know strange humans like to see and interact with them through the glass. They just don’t care, so long as they have their tribe around with things to do and they get tasty food
Animals understand existence better than humans do. They understand life and death better than we to. Our higher intelligence makes second order questions complicated because we put ourselves through mental gymnastics
We should be asking apes about the meaning of life, not the other way around
Second-order questions aren’t just the prosaic things any intelligent creature would ask, such as “why am I here?” or “what do you want from me?”
but also the more esoteric, “what sort of creature are you?” And “what sort of creature am I?”
Animals (and, indeed, most humans) don’t ask (or don’t really understand) second-order questions very well because that requires abstraction, which is the sort of reasoning that requires enormous amounts of education and curiosity.
but also the more esoteric, “what sort of creature are you?” And “what sort of creature am I?”
I agree, but that is the kind of question they do think about. Koko was “a wonderful gorilla person” in her own words
There’s a dog that uses one of those word button mats that thinks small dogs are cats, dogs are dogs, and that she’s a human (or that her owner is also a dog, she’s convinced she’s the same as her owner and always gets confused when it’s explained otherwise)
They don’t ask, because they already know what they think. They aren’t confused about where they stand in the world, it’s learning human categorization that confuses them
I don’t want to conflate the pragmatic use of tools or manipulation of the environment with questions about the meaning of life. Even most humans can’t do the latter. We have a lot of depressing research showing that most people can barely engage in abstract reasoning at all, let alone willingly or effectively.
I think nearly every sentient creature can be depressed and understand how badly life is going. But that’s different.
It is the question at hand. It’s a question about the mental process of animals
The question isn’t are they curious - we know they are. The question is why they don’t ask humans questions when you teach them how to speak
The answer is - it’s because you’re not speaking gorilla, the gorilla is learning a foreign language, which it learned by being motivated by food.
Animal languages have a different grammar to human languages. When they ask questions, they often do it by making statements to be agreed with or corrected. They might even disagree, and assert the statement again in reply
You have to meet animals halfway… Well, really like 10% of the way since they’re the ones learning to speak to us in our languages
Obviously not in the spirit of the question. No curiosity, no attempt to learn about what’s going on around them. The article has no examples of real questions, so to me I’d say the meme rings true.
Yeah, when my cat meows, it is “asking” for snacks. But it’s not inquiring about snacks, or curious about where the snacks come from or why cats enjoy snacking so much.
Granted, many humans don’t ask such questions either, but that’s because intellectual acuity is on a spectrum also occupied by non-human animals, at least in the realm of being an incurious dumbass.
How do you know your cat isnt curious, is it survival bias. All the curious cats died
Cats don’t need to ask questions about the world because they are scientists and will figure it out for themselves if they don’t get shown the answers. They know where the snacks come from, at least in regards to their own world, that’s why they come running when they hear the package.
They knock stuff over to see what happens. They meow for treats to see what happens. They sit on your face to wake you up to see what happens. They get into things just to see what’s in them.
And when the result is something they want, they try it again to see if the result is consistent. Reproducible.
That’s why the best way to get a cat to stop doing something they do to you is to ignore them. They meow to wake you up for food? They do that because it’s been working. Stop responding, and the behavior will also stop.
It’s not that cats can’t ask questions. It’s that they can’t ask abstract questions. That’s quite different.
They can, but they don’t know how to dumb it down enough for their minions to understand.
What you are doing is anthropomorphizing an animal’s behavior and ascribing intent behind the action without having any substantial basis for that claim.
Cats are intelligent, yes, but what you have described is completely devoid of any understanding of animal behavior or psychology.
Well of course he is. He’s not a cat.
I think there are several separate cognitive abilities needed to ask questions. Curiosity (which is very common), complex communication (much less common), and advanced theory of mind (exists on a spectrum, you need not only awareness of your own mental state, or metacognition, but awareness that others have a mental state that is distinct from your own. Humans actually develop this ability slowly throughout childhood, and it goes through stages). Though there are other species with similar traits, it might well be the case that humans are the only living species in possession of all of them simultaneously.
My cat has asked where my wife is. She has a very specific meow for each of us that she uses when she’s looking for us. One day while my wife was at work, cat meowed for my wife. Told the cat she’d be home on a couple hours. Cat curled up by the window, satisfied. Next time it happened, I teased her and tried to play with her. She kept wandering around the house looking for my wife until I told her she was at work. Smart little bastard.
Your cat’s breath smells like cat food.
There’s your “Loading screen game tip” for today lol.
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Yeah that’s just a quirk of the English language in that “ask” means both inquiring, trying to learn information from a response, and request, a communication to another that the “asker” wants something.
That’s crazy. You think monkeys aren’t curious about the world around them?
They just don’t look to humans for answers, they look to humans for treats
Well, curiosity comes in different stripes. Investigating your environment is one thing. Asking second-order questions is another.
“May I have food?” vs “Why am I here?” and “What is the nature of consciousness?”
“Why are we here?”
“One of life’s great mysteries isn’t it? Why are we here? I mean, are we the product of some cosmic coincidence? Or is there really a God, watching everything? You know, with a plan for us and stuff? I don’t know man, but it keeps me up at night.”
“What? I mean why are we here, in this box canyon in the middle of nowhere?”
if you wake up in a compound, catered to your every need by weird alien captors, “why am I here?” is a pretty obvious question.
You ask the aliens why you are there, meaning the cell they imprisoned you, and they tell you how their species created humans and what humans purpose is. You immediately go catatonic by the revelation.
The information that aliens created us for some particular purpose is empirically interesting but normatively insignificant.
Oh man, RvB reference in the wild after all these years. Warms my heart.
To be fair a lot of people don’t ask the latter questions either
They already understand the second order questions though. Why would they ask the humans?
They know what’s outside their enclosures, they know they’re there because the humans want them there, they know strange humans like to see and interact with them through the glass. They just don’t care, so long as they have their tribe around with things to do and they get tasty food
Animals understand existence better than humans do. They understand life and death better than we to. Our higher intelligence makes second order questions complicated because we put ourselves through mental gymnastics
We should be asking apes about the meaning of life, not the other way around
Second-order questions aren’t just the prosaic things any intelligent creature would ask, such as “why am I here?” or “what do you want from me?”
but also the more esoteric, “what sort of creature are you?” And “what sort of creature am I?”
Animals (and, indeed, most humans) don’t ask (or don’t really understand) second-order questions very well because that requires abstraction, which is the sort of reasoning that requires enormous amounts of education and curiosity.
I agree, but that is the kind of question they do think about. Koko was “a wonderful gorilla person” in her own words
There’s a dog that uses one of those word button mats that thinks small dogs are cats, dogs are dogs, and that she’s a human (or that her owner is also a dog, she’s convinced she’s the same as her owner and always gets confused when it’s explained otherwise)
They don’t ask, because they already know what they think. They aren’t confused about where they stand in the world, it’s learning human categorization that confuses them
I don’t want to conflate the pragmatic use of tools or manipulation of the environment with questions about the meaning of life. Even most humans can’t do the latter. We have a lot of depressing research showing that most people can barely engage in abstract reasoning at all, let alone willingly or effectively.
I think nearly every sentient creature can be depressed and understand how badly life is going. But that’s different.
I have no idea if they’re curious about the world around them. But that’s also not the question at hand.
It is the question at hand. It’s a question about the mental process of animals
The question isn’t are they curious - we know they are. The question is why they don’t ask humans questions when you teach them how to speak
The answer is - it’s because you’re not speaking gorilla, the gorilla is learning a foreign language, which it learned by being motivated by food.
Animal languages have a different grammar to human languages. When they ask questions, they often do it by making statements to be agreed with or corrected. They might even disagree, and assert the statement again in reply
You have to meet animals halfway… Well, really like 10% of the way since they’re the ones learning to speak to us in our languages
By that standard, my dog is as smart as a gorilla