It's also been said that ancient humans were more intelligent than modern ones. In fact, both the argument for human intelligence and the wolf-dog argument have put forward the idea that being domesticated lowers intelligence (in the case of humans, it can be said we domesticated ourselves). I don't really think this is a simple hypothesis to investigate at all given the complexity of investigating intelligence.
Some references:
News Article on Human Intelligence--News article discussing this hypothesis.
Gerald Crabtree--This is the researcher I've seen quoted a lot lately on the idea that ancient humans were more intelligent than modern ones. From the article above, and looking at his published work, it sounds like this is just a hypothesis he wants to test, rather than something that he has thoroughly investigated.
News Article on Dog-Wolf intelligence--This news article has some discussion of an experiment trying to determine differences between wolf-dog intelligence.
Does anyone have recommendations of good things to read on the ethics of animal cognitive enhancement? By this I mean applying various methods of human cognitive enhancement (pharmacological, technological, etc) to animals such as the Great Apes. I've also heard this referred to as 'up-lifting' an animal.
I'm looking for articles, books, lectures - anything really. Obviously one can just google this but I find getting recommendations from others a better bet. I think this may be a useful resource for other people interested in the same topic. Interesting issues might include:
- Possible obligations to enhance
- Possible negative consequences
- Possible side-effects (such as radically different perspective)