> these creatures who have displayed startling emotional depth (Koko and her pet cat, anyone?)
I'm not convinced that Koko is much more than a long-term, well-publicized Clever Hans. Can you explain what emotional depth you think is evidenced in this case? If possible, please do so without relying on the interpretation of Koko's main caregiver, who does not seem to abide by scientific principles.
The position of a 'skeptic' that you adopt is frequently adopted for things related to animal emotion, empathy, intelligence etc. It is often couched in a higher 'we have higher standards for a scientific method'. But it is somewhat misguided.
I find these inferential questions no more fraught than the question that a fellow human, for example, you are capable of intelligence, empathy, emotion. All we can do is make external observations and not get into your psyche and feel what you feel. If the basis of assigning emotions etc to a second person is the fact that I am aware of my own emotions, then it is structurally very limited. It is incapable of making inferences beyond the human kind, and even then it is quite suspect.
I am fine as long as the same standards are used for animals and as is used for humans, without resorting to arguments mirroring 'I know I feel therefore I know you do' or 'I know you feel because you told me so'.
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'm not convinced that Koko is much more than a long-term, well-publicized Clever Hans. Can you explain what emotional depth you think is evidenced in this case? If possible, please do so without relying on the interpretation of Koko's main caregiver, who does not seem to abide by scientific principles.