communication to yourself, talking to yourself, thinking if you like.
They can do that, and
they can even communicate with each other in iconic terms.
Now what an indicator is, an indicator is something
which always associated with one thing, okay.
So if I point to something there, right,
that's pointing to something specific and it's indicative, right.
If I say the name Julius Caesar, it's referring to
a specific person which is you got a picture of Julius Caesar in your head.
Or if I say, if I laugh, I mean it's an indicator
of my thinking something's funny.
And by the way, animal warnings are sounds which don't directly depict the reality.
So if an animal wants to warn fellow animals about a danger
sign they might make a noise.
That noise doesn't iconically represent the danger, but
it is indicative of that there is a danger.
If you see what I mean.
So this is another level of communication representation, animals can do that too.
But symbolic thinking builds semantic systems,
it builds systems that make meaning.
And the meaning is not just the connection between the indicator, or
the icon, and the thing.
It's actually meaning that also fits into a system where the meanings
are related to each other, and the meaning is partly related.
But with the connections between that and other meanings.
Okay let me just say what I mean.
When I use the word animal, right.
I'm actually grouping together a whole pile of things,
I mean in terms of the animal kingdom that includes insects, and birds, and
giraffes, and things that look incredibly different from each other.
And what I've done is I have a kind,
the reason why I can build that simple the word animal,
which is either oral or written down as the word animal, for example.
The reason why I can build that is I've got
a system in my head which classifies all these things in the world, right?
And they are called animals, so that is actually called a symbol.
Now, you know in the world of visuals we can have
abstract icons which are visual icons.
We can have keys on maps and diagrams and whatever which are symbols,
which sit in the systems of symbols and in terms of visual iconography,
classic symbol systems might be flow diagrams.
They might be circuit diagrams for electronics and so on.
But in the world of objects, we might have objects that stand for
things, sacred objects, for example, where it's purely an abstraction.
This is an object, but it stands for this generalized abstraction in a system which
may be religious or superstitious or something like that.
So it's the system which defines that object, not so
simply the object itself in relation to the world.
I might do something like I might nod.
I might have gestures like this but
they fit into a system of gestures which I have which I operate on my head.
I may have a thing like a doorbell which fits into a system of alerts.
So in other words what we do is we build these things
which form semantic systems if you like.
Now, the interesting thing is Kanji did learn a lot of this stuff.
A lot of the more complicated things that we do in language, for example,
like embedded clauses.
And it was a pretty not very complicated, not very high level symbol system.
But they were capable,
the researchers were capable of teaching Kanji a symbol system.
One of the huge differences though with Kanji is there was no way that
Kanji could pass this system on to anybody else.
Right, he couldn't then have a family of little bonobos and
teach the little bonobo.
So this business of being able to teach this symbolic representational system,
no animals can do.
So even though he partly made it into the world of symbols, it was a one-off.
Not reproducible, it's only if the ad researchers are willing to spend
a hell of a lot of time teaching him just to remember things, so to speak.