X-Message-Number: 4234
Subject: Re: Lower animals
Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 10:01:13 -0500
From: Will Dye <>

Regarding the issue of teaching apes to "speak" in sign language, 
Keith Lynch writes:

> This has been pretty well debunked, in experiments where human students
> were taught these "languages" in a way similar to how the apes were,
> and when questioned said they had no linguistic understanding of what
> they were doing.

I used to be on the board of directors of the Foundation for Primate 
Research and Conservation.  I've worked with signing chimps.  I'm not 
trying to pull rank, but to convince you that I've talked with people 
who have studied this issue in detail.  

Believe me, the research you quoted in no way closed the issue.  
If anything, this basic question "are humans the only species that 
can use language?" has been settled in the negative.  I believe that 
the open questions are mostly rooted in the much deeper question: 
"what _is_ language?".

For cryonics, this means that animals have several types of cognition 
that are somewhat analagous to human cognitions.  In other words, 
the cognitive abilities of a revived animal will, indeed, give us 
useful information.  The caveat is that the information will be indirect.  
There will still be plenty of room for doubt.

Jim Davidson <> writes:

> One of the most interesting experiments in suspended animation
> research that I can conceive would be to train an ape ... and then
> suspend that animal.  

This would be angrily opposed by the primate research community, unless 
you built up plenty of contacts in advance and convinced them that 
this will somehow help the non-human primates.  I suggest starting 
with a species that is not endangered, and takes to freezing well.  
I believe some work was (or is?) being done with salamanders, but as I 
recall even nematodes can be trained, and their neural systems are 
well-studied.  

Only after establishing a strong base of research on less human-like 
("lower") species should we move towards the more human like species.  

Besides, they're VERY expensive.

-Will


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