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Anonymous
>>175413
Using a language implies that you understand what you are saying, and that you can choose words and combine them together to express new ideas.
You don't have to understand a language in order to simply repeat phrases and sounds.
My telephone answering machine can "speak" the message that I recored on it. Does that make the answering machine intelligent? Of course not. All it does is play back something that I said. Likewise if your parrot "speaks", all it is doing is regurgitating some sounds that it has heard before. That doesn't require intelligence at all. All that requries is memory and the ability to make sounds.
Now then, if you teach a bird some words and it recombines those words on its own accord to express a new concept (as opposed to just repeating what it heard), then that would be actual USE of language, and that would suggest intelligence.
By the way, back up a little bit here and focus on the discussion at hand. Nobody (at least not I) is claiming that animals aren't intelligent. We are saying that repeating some words does not imply intelligence. That's it.
Animals do exhibit learning and intelligence, such as begging for food, opening doors, or whining when they want to be let outside--but that's besides the point here.
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