Rating: 
Summary: Thought without language
Review: Vervet monkeys make one cry when a cheetah approaches; a different cry when an eagle flies overhead, and yet another cry when a human is near. It's a pity Marc Hauser makes no attempt, Edgar-Rice-Burroughs-style, to transliterate that last cry: I'd like to know the vervet word for "human". But though Hauser acknowledges the many species that exchange sounds that are very close to being "words", he argues convincingly that they do not have language. That's disappointing, of course, for those of us with that Dr Doolittle urge for closer communication with animals, but clearly how things are. And despite the subtitle "What animals really hink" Hauser concludes that we are too different ever to truly know that: not only will we never settle down with a lion or dog and exchange views about politics and sex and art; but much of their behaviour will remain enigmatic to us. We simply can't imagine or empathise our way into knowing what they are thinking. Many people, anthropomorphising wildly, like to imagine that they can. But there are always alternative explanations for animal behaviour, and no way of checking which is the correct one. Nor do animals have a "moral sense", as is argued in the final section of the book. Though animals do cooperate, and will sacrifice themselves or their interests for the benefit of others. On that question I'm not so sure that the animal form of "ethics" is really qualitively different from the human, despite the cultural ideas we heap up around concepts of "morality". But that's an argument about human thought, and therefore outside the scope of the book. In some ways the earliest parts of the book are the most interest. Animals don't have language, but they do have tools for understanding the world: dividing reality into classes of objects, engaging in rudimentary mathematics, and creating mental maps of the physical world. This section of the book could be usefully read by anyone still believing, along with the previous generation of French philosophers, that a chair, for example, is a linguistic construct rather than an object of a certain kind. Animals deal with reality in ways that strongly suggest that their perception of the world, and their organisation of the world into different classes of things, by edibility, animate or inert, sharp or soft, green or blue, and so on, is at the fundamental building-block level similar to ours. Clearly there is a world without language, let alone text. The book doesn't show us, as its sub-title claims, "What animals really think", but it does contain a great deal of fascinating information on how animals organise their information about the world, the kind of guesses they make about the behaviour of others, the cries and signals that became the building-blocks of our languages, and much else besides. And it's not the most misleading title in this genre: consider the "Penguin English Dictionary". A splendid resource, certainly, but penguins don't seem to respond to any of it ... Anyway, you can't use Hauser's book to "talk to the animals either", but at least you wll know more about why you can't. Recommended. Cheers! Laon
Rating:
Summary: Thought without language
Review: Vervet monkeys make one cry when a cheetah approaches; a different cry when an eagle flies overhead, and yet another cry when a human is near. It's a pity Marc Hauser makes no attempt, Edgar-Rice-Burroughs-style, to transliterate that last cry: I'd like to know the vervet word for "human". But though Hauser acknowledges the many species that exchange sounds that are very close to being "words", he argues convincingly that they do not have language. That's disappointing, of course, for those of us with that Dr Doolittle urge for closer communication with animals, but clearly how things are. And despite the subtitle "What animals really hink" Hauser concludes that we are too different ever to truly know that: not only will we never settle down with a lion or dog and exchange views about politics and sex and art; but much of their behaviour will remain enigmatic to us. We simply can't imagine or empathise our way into knowing what they are thinking. Many people, anthropomorphising wildly, like to imagine that they can. But there are always alternative explanations for animal behaviour, and no way of checking which is the correct one. Nor do animals have a "moral sense", as is argued in the final section of the book. Though animals do cooperate, and will sacrifice themselves or their interests for the benefit of others. On that question I'm not so sure that the animal form of "ethics" is really qualitively different from the human, despite the cultural ideas we heap up around concepts of "morality". But that's an argument about human thought, and therefore outside the scope of the book. In some ways the earliest parts of the book are the most interest. Animals don't have language, but they do have tools for understanding the world: dividing reality into classes of objects, engaging in rudimentary mathematics, and creating mental maps of the physical world. This section of the book could be usefully read by anyone still believing, along with the previous generation of French philosophers, that a chair, for example, is a linguistic construct rather than an object of a certain kind. Animals deal with reality in ways that strongly suggest that their perception of the world, and their organisation of the world into different classes of things, by edibility, animate or inert, sharp or soft, green or blue, and so on, is at the fundamental building-block level similar to ours. Clearly there is a world without language, let alone text. The book doesn't show us, as its sub-title claims, "What animals really think", but it does contain a great deal of fascinating information on how animals organise their information about the world, the kind of guesses they make about the behaviour of others, the cries and signals that became the building-blocks of our languages, and much else besides. And it's not the most misleading title in this genre: consider the "Penguin English Dictionary". A splendid resource, certainly, but penguins don't seem to respond to any of it ... Anyway, you can't use Hauser's book to "talk to the animals either", but at least you wll know more about why you can't. Recommended. Cheers! Laon
Rating: 
Summary: What does my dog think about?
Review: Wild minds is an accessible book for anyone. The main point of the book is to explore animal minds not by anthropomorphizing our furry friends, but rather thinking critically about what goes on inside their heads. Hauser reviews a wealth of different areas of animal cogntion and points out the similarities and differences between species. One excellent point made by Hauser is that each species is endowed with its own mental tool kit. Therefore, creating a hierarchy based on "intelligence" may not be entirely correct. We must recognize each species as the product of its own unique evolutionary history. I recommend this book to anyone curious about what other animals think.
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