If Bob says he has a message for you from Alice, and the message he delivers is exactly in line with Bob's incentives, are you skeptical of Bob? Even if you knew in advance Alice was sending you a message via Bob, does the fact that the message and Bob's incentives are in alignment not cause you any skepticism?
I addressed Koko specifically because her case was brought up and is especially famous. I believe that a press release about the death of a celebrity who visited the gorilla once, 13 years before[1] is either a) cynical, exploitative fund-raising or b) misguided interpretation, relying on the interpreter's own emotions to decide those of the animal being interpreted. These declarations are made by the caretaker who has a long, intimate relationship with the animal.
My skepticism is aimed not at the idea that non-human animals are intelligent, empathetic, or emotional, but rather that single human interpreters, working for decades with a single animal subject, are reliable scientific indicators of any possible conclusion. A decent Slate article here[2] goes beyond Koko. I am arguing that the evidence most commonly presented is weak, not the hypothesis.
I found this article about parrots and PTSD[3] fascinating as some of the examples are almost certainly Clever Hans effect and others are in fact best explained via a close pair-bonding humans recognize as love.
Just to make sure, I was not critical of _your_ skepticism (as in personally), it is necessary for science. But was pointing out that emotion in a 2nd being is inordinately difficult to make any claims about. We give human emotion / empathy a free(er) pass compared to the standards we use for other animals. I think a Turing test equivalent is the most one can do in these cases.
For example you and I may agree that something is color yellow but still be seeing something completely different. We just agree on the name because that's how they have been labeled to us when we were learning the colors by name. This is just for simple concepts like colors, for complex things such as emotion intelligence it gets much more fraught.
I addressed Koko specifically because her case was brought up and is especially famous. I believe that a press release about the death of a celebrity who visited the gorilla once, 13 years before[1] is either a) cynical, exploitative fund-raising or b) misguided interpretation, relying on the interpreter's own emotions to decide those of the animal being interpreted. These declarations are made by the caretaker who has a long, intimate relationship with the animal.
My skepticism is aimed not at the idea that non-human animals are intelligent, empathetic, or emotional, but rather that single human interpreters, working for decades with a single animal subject, are reliable scientific indicators of any possible conclusion. A decent Slate article here[2] goes beyond Koko. I am arguing that the evidence most commonly presented is weak, not the hypothesis.
I found this article about parrots and PTSD[3] fascinating as some of the examples are almost certainly Clever Hans effect and others are in fact best explained via a close pair-bonding humans recognize as love.
1: http://www.koko.org/koko-tribute-robin-williams
2: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
3: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/magazine/what-does-a-parro...