"If a lion could speak, we could not understand (verstehen)[0] him."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Philosophical Investigations
[0] Ironically, there is disagreement over the best translation of verstehen. Understand and comprehend have some conceptual overlap, but also some distinctions. The general idea is, though, of understanding in a greater, more all encompassing sense that is only possible when someone/something is no longer alien.
"We would [understand the Lion]. We're flexible and can get into different perspectives, and we have been close to animal living ourselves for hundreds of thousands of years, plus we watch nature and learn about how lions live and what they do. The lion would have difficulty understanding us, as our world is a superset of its world" - coldtea
One could argue that this isn't talking to a well adjusted animal living in its native habitat. It is talking to a long term research subject/victim suffering at the hands of "researchers" while trying to teach it a language that is utterly alien to it. Of course knowing how animals communicate in their natural habitat is not useful if you want to ask them deep questions like "what do you think about global warming" or "do you think god exists", to which they probably wouldn't have an answer anyway.
More seriously, I think humans and other mammals generally can learn to share an “animal” language which uses repetition for bidirectional training (animal to human, human to animal).
Elements used for prediction include:
- Predictable timing, both circadian and in relation to circumstantial events
- body language
- sound patterns
- touch patterns
- performative actions with environmental objects
It’s not so much a “universal” language, but rather that mammals seem to share some semi-universal ability to train each other in these cues and learn them. They can be used for surprisingly rich inter-species communication and over time both parties move a lot of the inference and signaling to their subconscious, no longer even taking active brain power to decipher intent and meanings.
I’ve also done this when I was working very closely with just myself and one other person and neither of us spoke the others language but we had to get the job done for 8-12 hours every day. We established a system of different grunts and cues that we used first for several weeks. Once that was fluid and we could communicate everything that we needed to, we started replacing/connecting the established grunts with our own language words and that’s how we taught eachother the others’ language. At least for the domain of our work.
I have no idea if any of these would be possible with cephalopods but I feel like if we had children and baby octopuses raised together they may find reasonably robust ways to communicate intent, feelings, and find the ability to create novel games to play with eachother.
It’s hard to say as the further you get away from a common ancestor the more the behavior of different species diverges (maybe a bit tautological, but still worth pointing out).
I played with my pet rat and we were good friends. We’d play little games and I’d tickle her Rats and humans diverged maybe 80 million years ago. Interestingly, humans and dogs diverged perhaps 100 million years ago, and we know we can communicate with dogs.
However an octopus is ~600 million years away from a mutual common ancestor, which is way back in the Precambrian. It’s an order of magnitude more time.
Dogs created civilization out of humans by consistently helping the most cooperative ones. Even today, dog “owners” live longer and attract more mates. It’s consistent selection pressure.
> The general idea is, though, of understanding in a greater, more all encompassing sense that is only possible when someone/something is no longer alien.
I would put forward "grok" as a translation. Your use of "no longer alien" evokes that word all the more.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Philosophical Investigations
[0] Ironically, there is disagreement over the best translation of verstehen. Understand and comprehend have some conceptual overlap, but also some distinctions. The general idea is, though, of understanding in a greater, more all encompassing sense that is only possible when someone/something is no longer alien.