Thursday, December 04, 2008
Koko
Watching the movie Koko today in class was very interesting and I found myself starting to rethink emotions that can be felt not just by humans. But after having the conversation about the emotions koko was feeling as being up to level with humans it still remains, that the emotions humans feel are different than that of animals or robots. We talked about how if a dog gets scolded or given a treat it either shys away because it got yelled at or it jumps around because it is excited over getting the treat. These emotions are instinct and happen in any animal whereas when humans feel emotions we feel and think deeply into our emotions. and those emotions can change. Yes it is remarkable that a gorilla can learn and have the ability to be as smart as a young child and this amazes me but it still is not the same level that humans are on when dealign with learning and handeling emotions.
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I also think the film we watched in class today, Koko was interesting. It showed that a gorilla, an animal that is said to be very closely related to humans, could learn how to communicate with humans. This proves that animals then, do have the capacity to learn and to develop somewhat of an IQ. Animals also have emotions though, making them more like us in the fact that they can deal with situations in a given manner. However, the emotion that animals have is not the same kind or to the extent that we have. Whereas robots have no emotion at all, making it hard to communicate with them unless it is giving them an order. I think it would also be hard to give robots this sense of emotion because it wouldn't be real, it would be registered in them kind of like the 3 laws that are programmed into them as well. Like Cassandra said, there are distinctions between robots and animals that make each like humans, but neither is completely like humans.
as i watched the movie i began to be amazed on how intellegent the gorilla was. he could comprehend most of what Dr. Patterson was saying. I would defenitiely think Gorillas should be mentioned with humans. yes i think they lack some aspects that make humans function, but they are knowledgable. I believe professor Lannguth stated it in class today, they remind us of of babies and mentally challenged humans. Gorillas understand and have the intellegence to communicate through sign languague but cannot talk or full yuse their brain.
I also really enjoyed the movie about Koko. I think that there should be animal cruelty laws, but even Koko cannot be put at the same level for human rights. If Koko is hurt then yes someone should be punished for their actions. However, if Koko hurts people are going to say she didn't mean it and that she can't be faulted for it like a human could be. Even if you could "charge" Koko for a crime, how could you punish her? I think that Koko is a very smart gorilla, but is also very far from being a human. Koko has made improvements on elements that people say are essential in characterizing human rights.
When looking at Koko's ability to feel emotion just like other animals and humans, it really made me think about the questions that were raised. When looking to determine if she or other gorillas should have some kind of rights I feel one major thing needs to be looked at. Humans have the ability to feel emotion and then on top of that analyze what those feelings mean. I feel that gorillas are not cabable of analyzing their own feelings to determine what they mean. I feel that they only relate those feelings to previous experiecnes or reactions that they have seen from humans. Like dogs realize that it is bad to go the bathroom in the house, but they only know that because of the reactions that the owner gives when it happens. They don't know that it is wrong, only that the owner doesn't approve.
After watching the film and doing my final paper i began to wonder how KoKo acts with other gorillas when he is bascilly being surrounded by humans 24/7. I also find it very interesting to think about the theory of evolution and how we evolved from animals like KoKo. when we think of it like that, i believe we see that they are not much different from us and i can see the comparisions of us.
I also agree. Koko is an origin of our species, and I think that this being is probably the closest one could every come with mankind. Animals do have a capacity to learn, maybe not as sophisticated as humans, but it is still present. They are able to deal with situations in different manners, which I believe expresses emotion. Robots aren't able to experience emotion, which is the fundamental characteristic of a human being. I believe this disengages the robot from being granted equal rights.
I really thought that the movie on Koko was very interesting. I didn't know that a gorilla could learn to that extent. However, this does not change my opinion on whether or not robots could become equals to humans. The Koko experiment proves that even gorillas don't have the thinkng capabillity of an average adult human. Dr. Patterson said Koko could only have the ability of a two year old child. The emotions and feelings of humans are so complex that not even a gorilla could meet the standards. I still feel that robots would just be computers, because we do not have the abillity to create a brain that is complex enough to have deep emotions.
In the documentary I found it hard to see koko as more than a chimp. A reason being all I saw was koko mimicking or doing trick for treats. Also when you look at documentary you have to see if its bias or not. In the documentary to me it seems really bias and only showing the parts when koko actually does something intelligent. So it’s not fair to say the koko is above my dog. My dogs can do more trick then koko and I don’t consider him more than a dog.
This reminds me of Dreyfus's stages of learning. I agree that it was very interesting to watch the gorillas do sign language. This is a direct reflection of how far a gorilla can go on the scale of human learning. Gorillas probably never achieve anything past the compatence stage. It is remarkable to me that they can actually communicate in a certain way with humans. it makes me wonder how else humans can connect with other species simply by body language.
I think that it is amazing that animals, more specifically gorillas like Koko have the abilty to learn to communicate through sign language. It is remarkable this she is able to says what she is thinking, but more importantly she can respond when confronted with a question. Koko knows how to answer. That, I believe, is something remrarkable. That is a true human characteristic. Along with that, Koko demonstrated the ability to show and feel true emotion. As the viewer, we knew when she was tired, when she reacted to getting yelled at, and when she got happy as she was praised. Robots do not have that metnal capacity to feel. This is where gorillas and chimps demonstrate human like characteristics but robots do not.
I agreed with the zoo keeper in the film when he said that they were turning a gorilla into something that it is not. Gorillas are not supposed to be human, that is why they are gorillas. And that is why we cannot grant gorillas or robots, or any non-human, human rights. If they are not human why are they deserving? We can give them gorilla rights or robot rights, but to go to the extent of saying that they are human is the extremist point of view. Intrinsically they are not humans so why would we try and change that. I believe that to say something that can somewhat show signs of "communication" (I believe a dog, from watching the film, is just as smart as a gorilla. I was not impressed) needs to show more complexity of though to even start to consider it human.
I agree with Phil here. It seems that we are trying so hard to make gorillas human that we are perceiving Koko's actions to be more than they are. So what the gorilla can use sign language, it could already communicate with us like this and has through symbols that it naturally uses. Now it's simply doing it with the symbols that we teach it to use and we call those symbols words. My dog communicates with me all the time. It's called barking. It barks in different ways to mean different things. One type of bark means that it wants to go outside. Another is "somebody I don't know is coming". When it gets hungry and wants food, it sits by it's bowl and whines. If my dog had hands and thumbs then I could probably teach it sign language words for all these things. For heaven's sake, it already uses symbols that I've forced upon it; I just refer to them as tricks. As a matter of fact, my dog's so smart that it believes that if it does a trick it might get food; so even when I'm not offering it a treat, but it just wants some of whatever I happen to be eating, it comes up to me and starts doing trick after trick to try and get food. Pack animals, such as dogs, do this in the wild too. It's called begging. They do it in order to get their "ration" of the kill from the leader of the pack. We've simply twisted and perverted this natural occurance of theirs to achieve our own ends. The same sort of thing has happened with Koko from what I saw. Now should we suddenly give all wild animals that show characteristics that can be bent so as to give the appearance of "humanity" human rights.
I enjoyed watching the Koko film and thought it was incredible how koko interacted with the trainer through the understanding of a few hundred words. The emotions Koko showed were little compared to humans but way more than what a robot would show. I believe Koko should be given some human rights especially with the progress she is making.
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