Do Animals Believe In Supernatural Beings?

CS writes:A chimp learning that certain hand configurations correspond to certain items or actions is not the same as a human developing verbal language during brain development.

CS writes:I would put a fairly hard line just past the genus Homo....

CS writes:Still though, I think language is key to religious belief, or any abstract thinking really.

CS writes:I don't think there'd be enough overlap to infer religious beliefs in chimps.

What about a human mute physically incapable of verbal communication at the age of 2 - Is that comparable?

How do you react to the claim by some scientists that chimpanzees are members of the genus homo?

Then where do young children stand in relation to the ability to abstract reason and what is the known evidence regarding apes and their ability to abstractly reason?

There still seems to be an "obviously comparable to human" and an "obvioulsy NOT comparable to human" bias going on here.Where does that "border" lie?

jon writes:A better approach might be to argue that such a communicative channel is not necessary to infer supernatural beliefs from the observance of outward actions/behaviors. Successfully demonstrating this would go far to counter one's opponents who claim that higher-level communication is necessary for inferences of these beliefs.Why not present that argument?

CS writes:I just did a bit of Googling on deaf child development and they do have consideral problems.

CS writes:I don't think they should be included in Homo, and if they should, then I guess I'd have to move my line. **shrugs**

CS writes:Whether they have enough language developed to string together thoughts into abstract reasoning.

Apparently not if their parents are also deaf and are capable signers.

Move your line on what basis?

If I remember correctly there are a couple of intriguing case studies of humans who have been denied language acquisition (for whatever reason) but have still been able to demonstrate considerable ability to think abstractly.I'll look them up.

Is your criteria of language acquisition in this context based on the idea that without language abstract thought is impossible?

What role do you think language is essential for with regard to holding superstitious beliefs?

Feel free to present that argument.

jon writes:My recommendation was as advice to youbefore you make yourself look more ridiculous than you already look.

CS writes:It does make me wonder how their abstract thoughts are organized when not by audible words.

CS writes:On the basis of not everyone included in Homo being close enough to humans to assume they think like we do.

CS writes:I'd read 'em...

CS writes:I won't claim impossibility, but yeah, pretty much.

CS writes:I.e. language.

Why do they have to be audible? Anyway - The perfectly normal cognitive abilities of those born deaf into already signing households refutes this.

Well how similar do they have to be?

Your line seems pretty arbitrarily placed. You move it to wherever your incredulity demands.

I haven't looked these up yet. So what ones were you thinking of?

So chimps are incapable of abstract thought as far as you are concerned? As are pre-lingual infants?

And those brain damaged adults who have lost linguistic ability?

Firstly you seem to be conflating an ability to think abstractly with an ability to communicate abstract thoughts to another being. They are not necessarily the same thing are they?

Secondly why does communication of abstraction have to be linguistic?

Do you have any ideas on how abstract thinking could work without language? (anybody?)

I don't suppose it does, but that's the way it is. Any ideas on how it could be otherwise?

Example writes:Did you ever wonder why there are no dead penguins on the ice in Antarctica - where do they go?It is a known fact that the penguin is a very ritualistic bird which lives an extremely ordered and complex life.
The penguin is very committed to its family and will mate for life, as well as maintaining a form of compassionate contact with its offspring throughout its life.If a penguin is found dead on the ice surface, other members of the family and social circle have been known to dig holes in the ice, using their vestigial wings and beaks, until the hole is deep enough for the dead bird to be rolled into and buried. The male penguins then gather in a circle around the fresh grave and sing:"Freeze a jolly good fellow"
"Freeze a jolly good fellow."

But on the basis of the behaviour described a degree of religiosity, I think, would be a perfectly valid and evidentially supported scientific hypothesis worthy of further investigation.

What is required cognitively to possess beliefs about imaginary beings doing things like creating stuff

Considering the earliest evidenced origins of human/homo belief in such things might be the way to start?

CS writes: Do you have any ideas on how abstract thinking could work without language? (anybody?)

Straggler writes:So chimps are incapable of abstract thought as far as you are concerned? As are pre-lingual infants?

CS writes:Yes.

CS writes: I think religious belief requires abstract thought and abstract thought requires language.

CS on the absence of language writes:How would the thoughts even be structured?

Link writes:I saw that he was studying mouths, he was studying people. Even though he was frightened, he was still watching: what is happening, what is happening?I walked up to him and signed, Hello. My name is Susan. He tried to copy that and did a sloppy rendition of Hello, my name is Susan. Obviously he didn’t know what he was doing. It wasn’t language. And I was shocked.He looked Mayan and I thought, well, if he knew Mexican sign language, he wouldn’t try to copy. That’s not a normal thing to do, even if you don’t know the language. I couldn’t walk away. I slowly figured out that this man had no language. As I said, I could see that he was very intelligent. I could see he was trying very hard. I was twenty-two years old. I had no idea of what I was doing. I was faced with how to communicate the idea of language to someone without language.He’d just try to form signs and copy what I was doing. But his facial expression was always, is this what I’m supposed to do?That question was on his face all of the time. It was terribly frustrating. It went on hour after hour, for days and days and days. Then I had an idea. If I died tonight, I may have had only one truly brilliant thought in my life. What was it that attracted me to this man? His intelligence and his studiousness, the fact he was still trying to figure things out-those two things.I decided to stop talking to him. Instead, I taught an invisible student. I set up a chair, and I started being the teacher to an invisible student in an empty chair. Then I became the student. I would get into the other chair and the student would answer the teacher. I did this over and over and over. And I ignored him. I stopped looking at him.What happened is that I saw a movement. I stopped. I was talking to an empty chair, but out of my peripheral vision I saw something move. I look at Ildefonso and he had just become rigid! He actually sat up in his chair and became rigid. His hands were flat on the table and his eyes were wide. His facial expression was different from any I’d seen. It was just wide with amazement!And then he started-it was the most emotional moment with another human being, I think, in my life so that even now, after all these years, I’m choking up [pauses]-he started pointing to everything in the room, and this is amazing to me! I’ve thought about this for years. It’s not having language that separates us from other animals, it’s because we love it! All of a sudden, this twenty-seven-year-old man-who, of course, had seen a wall and a door and a window before-started pointing to everything. He pointed to the table. He wanted me to sign table. He wanted the symbol. He wanted the name for table. And he wanted the symbol, the sign, for window.The amazing thing is that the look on his face was as if he had never seen a window before. The window became a different thing with a symbol attached to it. But it’s not just a symbol. It’s a shared symbol. He can say window to someone else tomorrow who he hasn’t even met yet! And they will know what a window is. There’s something magical that happens between humans and symbols and the sharing of symbols.
That was his first Aha! He just went crazy for a few seconds, pointing to everything in the room and signing whatever I signed. Then he collapsed and started crying, and I don’t mean just a few tears. He cradled his head in his arms on the table and the table was shaking loudly from his sobbing. Of course, I don’t know what was in his head, but I’m just guessing he saw what he had missed for twenty-seven years.It’s another frustration that Ildefonso doesn’t want to talk about it. For him, that was the dark time. Whenever I ask him, and I’ve asked him many, many times over the years, he always starts out with the visual representation of an imbecile: his mouth drops, his lower lip drops, and he looks stupid. He does something nonsensical with his hands like, I don’t know what’s going on. He always goes back to I was stupid.It doesn’t matter how many times I tell him, no, you weren’t exposed to language and The closest I’ve ever gotten is he’ll say, Why does anyone want to know about this? This is the bad time. What he wants to talk about is learning language.The only thing he said, which I think is fascinating and raises more questions than answers, is that he used to be able to talk to his other languageless friends. They found each other over the years. He said to me, I think differently. I can’t remember how I thought.

Which came first the concept or the Linguistic expression of the concept?