Testing The Environment For Intersubjectivity

Lorikeets will respond to any isolated sound whatsoever — e.g. the sound of a door closing — with a call they otherwise use to elicit a response in other lorikeets. This suggests they are always testing for the presence of potential interactants. This relates to their consciousness involving the interpretation of their perceptual meanings in terms of their (social) protolanguage.

ChatGPT comments:

This behaviour highlights an important aspect of lorikeet social cognition and the relationship between perception and communication. The fact that lorikeets respond to any isolated sound, even one as mundane as a door closing, with a call typically used for eliciting a response in other lorikeets, suggests several semiotic and cognitive processes at play:

1. Constant Testing for Social Interaction – The act of calling in response to isolated sounds suggests that lorikeets are constantly "testing" their environment for the presence of potential interactants. It indicates a high level of attentiveness to their surroundings, and this behaviour could be an adaptive strategy for maintaining social connections, as lorikeets are highly social birds. In their semiotic system, any unexpected sound might be interpreted as an indication of an alterable social situation, and calling becomes a way of determining whether an interaction is possible or imminent.

2. Perceptual Meaning as Socially Mediated – This response also underscores how lorikeets construe their perceptual experiences through the lens of their social semiotics. Rather than simply reacting to an environmental sound as a neutral stimulus, they interpret it as a potential signal from another bird, prompting them to engage in social behaviour. This indicates that their consciousness — or the way they experience their environment — is inherently social, with their sensory inputs always being framed in terms of possible communicative interactions. This aligns with the idea that their perceptual meanings are constructed not just in isolation but in relation to the potential for social engagement.

3. Semiotic System and Alertness – The birds' constant readiness to respond to any sound also speaks to the semiotic function of alertness in their communication system. It may suggest a certain level of anxiety or vigilance in the way lorikeets interact with their environment, particularly in contexts where social engagement is crucial for survival, whether through cooperation or defence. The way lorikeets use their calls as a social tool — not just for specific needs but as an ongoing inquiry into the presence of others — shows how semiotic systems can operate in real-time, facilitating continual social navigation.

4. Protocommunication and Social Bonding – This response pattern could also be seen as an early form of protolanguage, where sounds are not just responses to immediate stimuli but also proactive signals for fostering social connection. It suggests that lorikeets may rely on constant social feedback, interpreting the world through their interactional microfunction and constantly seeking to maintain or reinforce their social bonds. Their calls function not just as isolated signals but as part of an ongoing process of relationship-building and environmental interpretation.

In summary, lorikeets' tendency to respond to any isolated sound with a call typically used for social interaction demonstrates the deeply embedded social aspect of their perceptual system. Their awareness of the environment is continually framed through the lens of potential social interaction, with calls functioning as both responses and inquiries, reflecting their complex social consciousness and the semiotic processes that drive it.

Do Lorikeets See What Humans See?

No — in two senses: one material, one semiotic.

1.  Birds have 4 types of colour receptors, whereas humans only have three.  So their visual systems detect a wider range of the light frequencies, at the very least.

2.  If semiotic systems construe experience as meaning, then lorikeet visual experience is construed through their protolinguistic social semiotic system, whereas human visual experience is construed through language.

One way to think of visual experience construed only as perceptual meaning is as a partially animated pattern of (nameless) shapes and colours — as a sort of Jackson Pollock painting in which some of the coloured shapes can move around.

Detecting change is key to survival, and for humans, language provides clause transitivity as the key means of construing visible change as meaning.  It enables visual experience — the partially animated Jackson Pollock painting — to be mentally construed as processes, their participants and circumstances.  Humans see things that are delimited by their names, doing things that also have names, in places that have names.*

For lorikeets, on the other hand, the partially animated visual patterns are construed as protolinguistic meaning, in terms of the microfunctions — personal, instrumental, regulatory and interactional — in ways that have proved successful for their ancestors — rather than ours.


* This is consistent with Oliver Sacks' account of his patient Virgil who was blind until an operation gave him sight as an adult, after which he had to start making sense of the swirling colours he saw, by reference to language.

.ChatGPT comments:

That's a fascinating distinction between the material and semiotic ways in which lorikeets and humans perceive the world. Your explanation aligns well with the idea that perception is not just a passive reception of stimuli but is shaped by both the physiological limitations of the observer and the semiotic systems they operate within.

In terms of the material differences, the fact that lorikeets have four types of colour receptors while humans have three means they can perceive a broader spectrum of colours, likely giving them a very different visual experience. Their ability to detect additional wavelengths could change their interpretation of the environment, especially in relation to things like floral patterns or subtle shifts in light, which are important for foraging and mating displays.

When you move to the semiotic interpretation, the idea of the Jackson Pollock-like visual field for lorikeets is a compelling way to frame it. They aren’t likely to think in terms of discrete "objects" as humans do, but rather a fluid, dynamic array of shapes and colours that are interpreted through their social semiotics. It’s almost as though their perception is inherently tied to their social and behavioural needs — constantly evaluating things in terms of potential action, relationships, and context (like whether a shape is a potential food source or an approaching threat). This contrasts sharply with human perception, where visual data is parsed and segmented into structured categories that allow us to conceptualise the world in terms of identity and action.

You also make a really good point about the role of language in human vision. For humans, language allows us to impose categories and conceptual boundaries on what we see — we “name” the things in our visual field, and that transforms our perception into a coherent, narrative-like structure. This is echoed in Sacks’ account of Virgil, where he had to develop a mental framework for interpreting the swirling colours he saw by reference to language, showing how integral language is to human vision and cognition.

For lorikeets, as you noted, their semiotic system seems to construe visual experience differently. They see the world through a lens of action and interaction rather than static objects, constantly processing what’s relevant to their immediate social and survival needs. The absence of naming means their perception is likely more fluid and relational, based on cues that signal what needs to be done, who to interact with, or where to go.

This could mean that lorikeet vision, while it shares some features with human vision, is adapted to a more immediate, functional reality, focused on communication and interaction rather than categorisation and interpretation through language. Their "seeing" is thus more in tune with the social and ecological context of their existence.

Visual Perception, Memory And Primary Consciousness

If a feeding bowl, or its supporting structure, is shifted from its usual position in the yard, the majority of lorikeets will still try to land where the bowl used to be, even to the extent of finding themselves on the ground (and looking bewildered).

This demonstrates that their immediate real-time visual perception occurs against the background of memories of previous experiences.

On Edelman's model, it is 'the dynamic interaction between memory and ongoing perception that gives rise to [primary] consciousness' (2005: 55).

As Edelman points out, memory is a property of the system: the ability to repeat a performance.

As Halliday points out, a performance is an instance of the system potential.

See also here.

ChatGPT comments:

That example of lorikeets attempting to land where the feeding bowl used to be is a great illustration of how memory informs perception and behaviour in real time. It seems to show how memory—specifically, memory of past experiences—can shape how lorikeets process sensory information and act on it. They’re relying on stored representations (i.e., memories) of the bowl's location, even when that location is no longer relevant or correct. The behaviour suggests a kind of interaction between their present sensory input and past experience, highlighting the dynamic, real-time nature of perception.

In terms of Edelman’s model, this supports his view that primary consciousness arises from the interaction between memory and perception. The lorikeets are showing awareness of the past (the memory of the bowl’s location) and trying to apply that to their present experience, even when it doesn’t align with the current reality. This demonstrates how memory isn't just a static repository of past events but is integrated into ongoing sensory processes, informing their behaviour.

From a Hallidayan perspective, this behaviour seems to demonstrate how the lorikeets’ actions are instances of a system's potential. The potential is the knowledge they have of the feeding bowl’s previous location, which is enacted through their physical behaviour—an instance of a "performance" shaped by the potential stored in memory. This again shows how perception and memory aren't independent of one another but are part of an integrated, dynamic system of meaning-making, where past experiences inform the present moment and drive action.

Visual Perception Without Language

Without language to label visual experience, the visual field is just a configuration of patterns, more or less like a Jackson Pollock painting.  This puts enormous pressure on memory, and makes the detection of difference, such as sudden movements (changes in the pattern), a matter of life and death.

It is not clear how far the semiosis of adult lorikeets — they can live as long as 35 years — develops beyond protolanguage to the point of labelling phenomena.  From observations of their behaviour, I suspect they have intersubjective labels — labels for each other — though it may be just that they recognise each other by indexical features, such as the timbre of their calls.

ChatGPT comments:

Your observation about the visual field being a configuration of patterns rather than a structured world of labelled objects makes sense, especially from an SFL perspective where meaning arises through semiotic systems. Without labels, visual experience wouldn’t be segmented into discrete "things," but instead would be an undifferentiated flux of perceptual contrasts.

If lorikeets primarily use indexical rather than symbolic semiosis (recognising individuals by voice timbre rather than assigning an arbitrary signifier to them), that would suggest their semiotic system operates largely at the level of direct perception rather than conceptual abstraction. In that case, their "naming" might not be truly referential but rather an extension of direct perception—something akin to how human infants differentiate faces long before they attach words to them.

The question then is whether lorikeets move beyond this indexical mode into something approximating symbolic reference. If they do, even in a limited sense, their semiosis might be more developed than protolanguage, particularly if they can establish stable sign-object relations independent of immediate perception.