{"id":340,"date":"2007-09-23T14:32:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-23T14:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2007\/09\/23\/340\/"},"modified":"2015-10-14T19:51:47","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T00:51:47","slug":"340","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=340","title":{"rendered":"RIP Alex: The Thinking Man\u2019s Parrot"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t normally get sentimental over the death of a parrot, but the story about Alex was quite special. It turns out that Alex<\/a> (short for Avian Learning EXperiment) was being taught a wide variety of language and abstract problem solving-skills by Dr. Irene Pepperberg. He was actually doing stuff that might be found on a childhood IQ test, e.g. identifying combinations of shapes and colors and numbers (e.g., \u201cAlex, find the two red triangles\u201d; Alex may have never before seen a tray with two red triangles, but he knew what two, red and triangle meant). He was even making progress on the abstract concept of zero, zip, nada. Pretty darn good for a bird brain. Too bad he died so young (31 is middle-age for a big parrot like Alex, since they normally last around 50 to 60 years). <\/p>\n

According to the obituaries<\/a>, Alex had a rather interesting personality and experienced some of the more complex and subtle forms of emotions that distinguish humans from wild animals (e.g., boredom, frustration, annoyance and general affection). It is still a very open question in psychology whether animals are \u201cconscious\u201d in the way that humans are. We obviously don\u2019t have a good definition of what human consciousness is or how to scientifically identify it. The best we can do is still the \u201cTuring Test\u201d<\/a>, which is little better than the US Supreme Court\u2019s pornography test (\u201cI know it when I see it\u201d). From what I read about Alex, he was the kind of animal that could seemingly form and use abstract symbols, had developed an abstraction for his own being, and could intermingle his emotional experiences within the context of that self-image, thus having what is called \u201cqualia\u201d<\/a>. If Alex could do it with his little bird-brain, then you\u2019d think that it would be a cinch for cats and dogs!<\/p>\n

My theory (for what it\u2019s worth) regarding animal consciousness<\/span> is this: most animals in the wild are not conscious. They go about their day-to-day existence using pre-wired instinctual behavior patterns, versus the abstract analysis of unique situations that humans engage in. They have emotions, but those emotions are very basic, relating to food, sex and danger. Most of the time, a wild animal\u2019s emotional state appears to be blank. No anxiety, no elation, no depression, no existential crises (lucky them). There is appreciable evidence, however, that things change with higher species like chimps and dolphins. Those animals seem to have abstract thinking and communication skills, and do seem to exhibit a broader and more continual range of emotional responses and social interactions. <\/p>\n

If that is true, then what about our domesticated pets, especially the late, great Alex? My $0.02 is that they do start \u201cwaking up\u201d to self-identity and emotional realization because of their being around us. My theory is well short of a testable scientific hypothesis. I can\u2019t quite identify just how consciousness would \u201crub off\u201d on otherwise non-conscious wild animals. But it would obviously take time; it probably needs to start at birth. It couldn\u2019t be done with all wild species; only the ones that are calm enough to live in close proximity to humans could qualify. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the process starts when the animal relates the sound symbols that we give it (e.g., \u201cAlex\u201d). At first that sound may be programmed in the animal\u2019s head as \u201cfood call\u201d, in a stimulus-response fashion. But after a while, the wide variety of contexts with which we use the animal\u2019s name (e.g. food, punishment, affection, teaching, danger warning, etc.) starts challenging the beast\u2019s gray matter to go beyond the stimulus-response model, into a more flexible \u201cmental state\u201d situation. Perhaps by observing our never-ending use of word symbols for the many things around us, the whole concept of \u201cabstraction\u201d somehow gets hot-wired into the animal\u2019s otherwise non-abstract thinking brain. Not that the beast will ever understand our many abstractions, e.g. quarks, square roots, social injustice, oil futures, etc. However, it may be able to turn a rudimentary abstraction ability inward upon its own sensory and emotional experiences; at that point, perhaps the spark of consciousness and self-awareness begins.<\/p>\n

(Side point: can an animal with \u201cdomesticated consciousness\u201d pass it on to its progeny, in the absence of human presence? I would guess not. The next generation is back to the biological square one. I\u2019ve read that humans have trained chimps and other primates how to count and use sophisticated language symbols; but they in turn are not able to pass those skills on to their children. The kids need to be trained afresh by humans. I suspect that human language skills are closely tied to consciousness, and the non-transferability of human language in animals implies the non-transferability of proto-consciousness).<\/p>\n

Again, all of this is not a well-formed professional hypothesis, but only a semi-educated layman\u2019s hunch. However, if it does hold any water, then it has an interesting corollary regarding artificial intelligence. If we can \u201ctrain\u201d our pets to have a rudimentary version of self-consciousness, then why can\u2019t we train our computers too? At present, computers still have very limited abstraction ability. Your desktop PC today basically has none. In the labs, however, neural networking<\/a> researchers are making progress in giving computers the ability to form usable concepts and generalizations from \u201cfuzzy data\u201d (i.e., in allowing computers to learn inductively and think creatively, as we do in our better moments). From what I\u2019ve read, a few more breakthroughs are needed, but these will likely come. <\/p>\n

These \u201cthinking computers\u201d may not immediately go to work on string theory, but they might at least be able to appreciate some environmental properties (color, heat, depth, sound qualities, movements, weight) relative to their own vulnerabilities and the need to protect their energy input resources. And once they get that down, they can focus their thinking skills upon the behavior of their human benefactors.<\/p>\n

So, kids today might well live to see and deal with computers that have roughly the same sensing, learning and \u201cfeeling\u201d capacity as Alex did. And they may adopt them as pets and students; and also as friends. And when these pet machines inadvertently break down and die, then instead of cursing them like we do today when a motherboard fries (\u201cstupid piece of garbage\u201d), our kids may get just as choked up inside as we do today when reading about Alex\u2019s last words to Dr. Pepperberg: \u201cBe good, I love you, you\u2019ll be in tomorrow.\u201d Hats off to you, Avian Learning EXperiment<\/span>, from a fellow eternal student.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t normally get sentimental over the death of a parrot, but the story about Alex was quite special. It turns out that Alex (short for Avian Learning EXperiment) was being taught a wide variety of language and abstract problem solving-skills by Dr. Irene Pepperberg. He was actually doing stuff that might be found on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5711,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/5711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}