Nonhuman animals have no culture because they don't have a developed brain.A.YB.NC.NG
Nonhuman animals have no culture because they don't have a developed brain.
A.Y
B.N
C.NG
Nonhuman animals have no culture because they don't have a developed brain.
A.Y
B.N
C.NG
第1题
From what Warneken said in the passage, we can infer that ______.
A.no other nonhuman primate can be as altruistic as chimpanzees
B.altruism has never been observed in any nonhuman animals before
C.chimpanzees did not display altruism in their previous experiments
D.it is the first time they have conducted experiments about chimpanzees
第2题
第3题
【M1】
第4题
One consequence from studying the possibility of computer thought was that we were forced to examine with new care the idea of thought in general. It soon became clear that we were not sure what we meant by such terms as thought and thinking. We tend to assume that human beings think, some more than others, though we often call people thoughtless or unthinking. Dreams cause a problem, partly because they usually happen outside our control. They are obviously some type of mental experience, but are they a type of thinking? And the question of nonhuman life forms adds further problems. Many of us would maintain that some of the higher animals—dogs, cats, apes, and so on—are capable of at least basic thought, but what about fish and insects? It is certainly true that the higher mammals show complex brain activity when tested with the appropriate equipment. If thinking is demonstrated by evident electrical activity in the brain, then many animal species are capable of thought. Once we have formulated clear ideas on what thought is in biological creatures, it will be easier to discuss the question of thought in artificial machines. One of the great benefits of AI research is that we are being forced to examine more closely the working of the human mind.
It is already clear that machines have superior mental abilities to many life forms. No tree can play chess as well as even the simplest computer; nor can frogs repair car bodies as well as robots. It seems that, viewed in terms of intellect, the computer should be set well above plants and most animals. Only the higher animals can, it seems, compete with computers with regard to intellect.
The first electronic computers were
A.slow and reliable.
B.creative and accurate.
C.large and fast.
D.only capable of additions.
第5题
Benji left us about 15 years ago for that great kennel in the sky. But recently I've been thinking about him a lot. Was he really conscious? Could any animal have consciousness like we do? Does it matter whether animals are conscious or not?
For many, it is a matter of life and death. On the one hand, animal research has helped prevent some of the most pressing human diseases, including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, "mad cow" disease, malaria, cystic fibrosis and emphysema. On the other hand, this research is performed largely on chimps, our closest nonhuman relatives, with whom we share 98.4% of our genetic material, and great apes, with whom we are similarly biologically close.
Some people feel this connection is strong enough to warrant special treatment. An international group called the Great Ape Project is lobbying the United Nations to adopt a declaration on the rights of great apes modeled on the UN declaration On the Rights of Man. The group believes that apes are "conscious" and so deserve legal protection of their right to life and freedom from imprisonment and torture.
If great apes were shown to have consciousness or something like our own, I would consider it among the scientific discoveries of the century. I would then agree with the Australian philosopher and founder of the animal rights movement, Peter Singer, that per forming medical experiments on chimps would be like experimenting on orphan children. That's a pretty chilling thought, and no amount of' human suffering saved could justify such an action. But before we close down the laboratories and stop searching for a vaccine against AIDS, we had better take a long hard look at the evidence for ape consciousness.
Why does the author bring up the example of Benji?
A.To show that animals have consciousness.
B.To raise the question of animal consciousness.
C.Because Benji was his best friend.
D.To illustrate the differences between dogs and chimps.
第6题
Benji left us about 15 years ago for that great kennel in the sky. But recently I've been thinking about him a lot. Was he really conscious? Could any animal have consciousness like we do? Does it matter whether animals are conscious or not?
For many, it is a matter of life and death. On the one hand, animal research has helped prevent some of the most pressing human diseases, including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, "mad cow" disease, malaria, cystic fibrosis and emphysema. On the other hand, this research is performed largely on chimps, our closest nonhuman relatives, with whom we share 98.4% of our genetic material, and great apes, with whom we are similarly biologically close.
Some people feel this connection is strong enough to warrant special treatment. An international group called the Great Ape Project is lobbying the United Nations to adopt a declaration on the rights of great apes modeled on the UN declaration On the Rights of Man. The group believes that apes are "conscious" and so deserve legal protection of their right to life and freedom from imprisonment and torture.
If great apes were shown to have consciousness or something like our own, I would consider it among the scientific discoveries of the century. I would then agree with the Australian philosopher and founder of the animal rights movement, Peter Singer, that performing medical experiments on chimps would be like experimenting on orphan children. That's a pretty chilling thought, and no amount of human suffering saved could justify such an action. But before we close down the laboratories and stop searching for a vaccine against AIDS, we had better take a long hard look at the evidence for ape consciousness.
Why does the author bring up the example of Benji?
A.To show that animals have consciousness.
B.To raise the question of animal consciousness.
C.Because Benji was his best friend.
D.To illustrate the differences between dogs and chimps.
第7题
What is Culture?
Culture, in anthropology(人类学), the patterns of behavior. and thinking that people living in social groups learn, create, and share. Culture distinguishes one human group from others. It also distinguishes humans from other animals. A people's culture includes their beliefs, rules of behavior, language, rituals, art, technology, styles of dress, ways of producing and cooking food, religion, and political and economic systems.
Culture is the most important concept in anthropology (the study of all aspects of human life, past and present). Anthropologists commonly use the term culture to refer to a society or group in which many or all people live and think in the same ways. Likewise, any group of people who share a common culture—and in particular, common rules of behavior. and a basic form. of social organization—constitutes a society. Thus, the terms culture and society are somewhat interchangeable. However, while many animals live in societies, such as herds of elk (麋鹿) or packs of wild dogs, only humans have culture.
Characteristics of culture
People have culture primarily because they can communicate with and understand symbols. Symbols allow people to develop complex thoughts and to exchange these thoughts with others. Language and other forms of symbolic communication, such as art, enable people to create, explain, and record new ideas and information.
A symbol has either an indirect connection or no connection at all with the object, idea, feeling, or behavior. to which it refers. For instance, most people in the United States find some meaning in the combination of the colors red, white, and blue. But those colors themselves have nothing to do with, for instance, the land that people call the United States, the concept of patriotism, or the U.S. national anthem (圣歌), 7he Star Spangled Banner.
People have the capacity at birth to construct, understand, and communicate through symbols, primarily by using language. Research has shown, for example, that infants have a basic structure of language—a sort of universal grammar—built into their minds. Infants are thus predisposed(有……倾向) to learn the languages spoken by the people around them.
Language provides a means to store, process, and communicate amounts of information that vastly exceed the capabilities of nonhuman animals. For instance, chimpanzees (黑猩猩), the closest genetic relatives of humans, use h few dozen calls and a variety of gestures to communicate in the wild. People have taught some chimps (黑猩猩) to communicate using American Sign Language and picture-bused languages, and some have developed vocabularies of a few hundred words. But an unabridged (完整的) English dictionary might contain more than half-a-million vocabulary entries. Chimpanzees have also not clearly demonstrated the ability to use grammar, which is crucial for communicating complex thoughts.
In addition, the human vocal tract, unlike that of chimpanzees and other animals, can create and articulate a wide enough variety of sounds to create millions of distinct words. In fact, each human language uses only a fraction of the sounds humans can make. The human brain also contains areas dedicated to the production and interpretation of speech, which other animals lack. Thus, humans are predisposed in many ways to use symbolic communication.
People are not born with culture; they have to learn it. For instance, people must learn to speak and understand a language and to abide by the rules of a society. In many societies, all people mast learn to produce and prepare food and to construct shelters. In other societies, people must learn a skill to earn money, which they then use to provide for themselves. In all human societies, children learn culture from adults. Anthropologists call this process enculturation, or cultural transmission.
Encultu
A.Y
B.N
C.NG