I laughed to think that HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dolphin is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language.
Using that logic, it seems my dog is more intelligent than me: He can understand some of my language as well as his own, whereas I can only understand my own.
I agree with your sentiment but your logic is backward. Substitute dog for dolphin in your first sentence:
[a] HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dog is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language.
Since you cannot (by your own admission) understand your dog's language, by the logic of that statement, the dog would not be intelligent.
Therefore, I am not intelligent because I can't get my logic correct. :-)
Actually, I was hoping to slip that one by you guys, because I knew there was something wrong with it.
The point I should have made was that the species that understands less language (us) is considered more intelligent by humans than the one that understands more language (dog). This seems screwed up.
Taken to an extreme, there could be a theoretical species that can communicate among its own kind and understand every other species' communication, and we'd consider it unintelligent because WE can't understand them. That sort of logic makes US seem pretty unintelligent.
Using that logic, it seems my dog is more intelligent than me: He can understand some of my language as well as his own, whereas I can only understand my own.
I agree with your sentiment but your logic is backward. Substitute dog for dolphin in your first sentence:
[a] HUMAN'S analysis of whether a dog is intelligent is whether WE can understand their language.
Since you cannot (by your own admission) understand your dog's language, by the logic of that statement, the dog would not be intelligent.