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Are humans special?


Rlyeh

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That doesnt answer my question. YOU assume there is no evidence for joan of arcs conversations with god, or their validity. An impartial/unbiased historian would not make such an assumption, whether they were an atheist or a theist.. And of course for most of history the great majority of historians were theists, like all other humans. Probably the majority of modern historians, including academics, still are; but they have to be objective and impartial in their study of history.

There is nothing biased about a historian saying there is no evidence that Joan of Arc actually had conversations with God because no one, including you I'm pretty sure, accepts that extraordinary things are true merely because someone says they are. Impartiality does not require that one ignore and not compare the amount, weight and strength of evidence, or lack thereof, supporting two different propositions.

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Why assume you have to train an animal to do what comes naturally to them? The training enhances and regularises what is natural behaviour, otherwise they could not BE trained to do this. Your cat sounds like it is naturally doing what others are trained to do But the reasons it is doing it have nothing to do with self aware intent. That simply isnt possible, given the brain structure and capacity, neurology and cognitive ability of a cat. For example a cat wil attack and kill a snake but not to protect you, even though that is an unintended consequence. A human observer who sees a cat kill a snake on the back lawn, which is approaching, say a baby, might think the cat was acting to protect the baby but that thougth never entered the cat's mind because it can't formulate thoughts of that order. It would have attacked a grasshopper or a mouse in the same vicinity.

All the rest is your mind creating connections because IT can; and not only has it the capacity to do this, but it has actually evolved to do this for special purposes.

I hope you find another animal which can help you, and i am sorry to hear of your condition. It must be frustrating. Perhaps i should not continue to "attack" the belief and faith you have in your cat. It serves little productive purpose and i dont want to upset you. Even if scientifically you were incorrect, the effect is positive and productive for you, and that is more important than who is right or wrong..

I have been around cats, birds, dogs, farm and wild animals all my life. There is nothing in a cat's behavior that would even come close to alerting. Cats are murders by nature. They are one animal, other than us, that will kill for fun. The dog is a different story, she is trained to alert. It is her nature. She barks when people come in the yard or to the door. It is her job, that is what dogs are for. So there is no surprise when she does it. The only way I can tell when some's at the door with the cat is she starts and hides. When she alerts there is more going on in her brain than robotic behavior.

If you really want to understand animals this is the woman who knows better than most, Dr. Temple Grandin. She has an advantage over must of us when it come to how brains work. She is autistic. Nothing will teach you more about the brain than having a wonky one.

http://www.grandin.com/welfare/animals.are.not.things.html

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Huh? What is the natural behavior that corresponds to a dog learning to 'shake' hands? Have you not seen what circus animals are trained to do? There's a lot of it that is not natural behaviour, unless you think monkeys ride bicycles in the jungle.

Pawing is actually pretty natural in dogs. They paw each other as an expression that they want to play http://www.dogsbestlife.com/home-page/why-does-my-dog-paw-me/

So "shake a paw" is just building on that natural movement. Kinda like dressage horses - the movements are all natural movements horses can do, but they are trained to perform them on cue and to exagerrate the movements. For example, most horses are able to turn on their haunches at different speeds. The pirouette in dressage is an extension of this natural movement that uses the natural movement and exaggerates it into a high level dressage move that you wouldn't see horses doing in the wild. Same with the circus animals. Elephants in the wild can pick things up and step onto things, in the circus they are trained so these natural things are turned into "tricks" Lions/tigers are naturally good jumpers, so they are trained to jump from one specific place to another, often through objects. With enough training and trust between the animal and trainer, the object could be set on fire, so the natural jumping action has now been turned into a trick of jumping through a ring of fire.

Monkeys on a bicycle have me stumped though! LOL

I have been around cats, birds, dogs, farm and wild animals all my life. There is nothing in a cat's behavior that would even come close to alerting. Cats are murders by nature. They are one animal, other than us, that will kill for fun. The dog is a different story, she is trained to alert. It is her nature. She barks when people come in the yard or to the door. It is her job, that is what dogs are for. So there is no surprise when she does it. The only way I can tell when some's at the door with the cat is she starts and hides. When she alerts there is more going on in her brain than robotic behavior.

Personally, I think your cat has picked up on your dogs alerting. Cats are way too smart for their own good. It wouldn't surprise me at all if she could see the connection between the dog alerting you and you going to lie down. And I have no doubt she could recognize the same symptom the dog recognizes that prompts the alert. Seriously, cats are too darn smart. My old cat pulled a Lassie and came and woke me up and led me down the hall to the front door where he proceeded to paw and whine at the door. I peeked through the crack and saw hubby passed out in the hallway.

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There is nothing biased about a historian saying there is no evidence that Joan of Arc actually had conversations with God because no one, including you I'm pretty sure, accepts that extraordinary things are true merely because someone says they are. Impartiality does not require that one ignore and not compare the amount, weight and strength of evidence, or lack thereof, supporting two different propositions.

An impartial person would neither assume they were true, nor assume they could not be. From there on I agree with you entirely.

It is an assumption that joan talked to god. It is also a assumption that she had some sort of disease or brain damge which caused her to think she was talking to god. One can only go on evidences and knowledge to estimate the most likely truth. Knowledge includes ones own knowledge /data base, wherever that came from and was formed.

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I have been around cats, birds, dogs, farm and wild animals all my life. There is nothing in a cat's behavior that would even come close to alerting. Cats are murders by nature. They are one animal, other than us, that will kill for fun. The dog is a different story, she is trained to alert. It is her nature. She barks when people come in the yard or to the door. It is her job, that is what dogs are for. So there is no surprise when she does it. The only way I can tell when some's at the door with the cat is she starts and hides. When she alerts there is more going on in her brain than robotic behavior.

If you really want to understand animals this is the woman who knows better than most, Dr. Temple Grandin. She has an advantage over must of us when it come to how brains work. She is autistic. Nothing will teach you more about the brain than having a wonky one.

http://www.grandin.c...not.things.html

Actually, all things being equal, i think having an excellent working brain would allow one to learn and know more, but i accept a condition like autism would provide exceptional motivation.

I read her article. In general principles I accept everything she says. It is how i perceive and treat animals. And so?

Interestingly, my mind is the diametric opposite of hers

Since I am autistic I do not understand purely abstract concepts that are based only in language. To understand a word I have to make a picture in my imagination and define words with concrete examples. When I think of the phrase “buy a car” I immediately get images of past experiences of buying cars. Some purely philosophical arguments I do not understand because I can not visualize them.

I do not, and cannot, consciously make myself visualise anything, not even a simple circle in my "mind's eye".

I think in verbal, abstrtact and symbolic, terms using various internal streams of consciousness and dialogues between parts of my mind. I have an excellent undersanding of abstract concepts, symbols etc, because i can think them in words, thoughts, meanings etc. This might be because i was read to from birth every night. I listened to my mother, grandmother and father read. As i observed the word in the book I heard their words. By two I was reading the books by myself and i still heard the words in my head, only now they were my own versions of the reader's words, and I knew what they represented but i couldnt see a picture of them.

I have a "photographic memory" which enables me to remember hundreds of pages verbatim temporarily, and many facts for decades. I can read a page as fast as i can turn it, because the words on the page go straight into my mind, as fast as i can see them, and i taught myself to look at a whole page, rather than a word or even a line at a time, but i cant see pictures images etc.

So my knowledge ALL exists in abstract non written verbal form. I do not "see" the words on a page when i remember them, as some people with a photographic memory might, because i cannot visually "see" numbers, letters, or words in my mind at all.

I just recall them from my memory, where i internally verbalised and stored them as I read. They come straight into my mind in my stream of consciousness. If i shut my eyes and try and see a word which i just typed, I simply physically cannot. Yet i can type it again straight from my memory This is so for very complex things as well. At uni i recalled 200 big pages of a year's lecture notes for third year politics, while sitting in the exam, and got a distinction for the exam. I knew every word on every page, but i couldnt "See" them, they just came into my memory .

Ps to my point about training reinforcing natural abilities. Try training your cat to ride a bike. All primates have very similar natural abilities, and monkeys can be trained to do many things a human can do, from grinding an organ to painting a picture.(or riding a bike) I used to swing from tree to tree on a rope in our back yard, and climb trees, towers, buildings etc, as a young child.

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Pawing is actually pretty natural in dogs. They paw each other as an expression that they want to play http://www.dogsbestl...-my-dog-paw-me/

So "shake a paw" is just building on that natural movement. Kinda like dressage horses - the movements are all natural movements horses can do, but they are trained to perform them on cue and to exagerrate the movements. For example, most horses are able to turn on their haunches at different speeds. The pirouette in dressage is an extension of this natural movement that uses the natural movement and exaggerates it into a high level dressage move that you wouldn't see horses doing in the wild. Same with the circus animals. Elephants in the wild can pick things up and step onto things, in the circus they are trained so these natural things are turned into "tricks" Lions/tigers are naturally good jumpers, so they are trained to jump from one specific place to another, often through objects. With enough training and trust between the animal and trainer, the object could be set on fire, so the natural jumping action has now been turned into a trick of jumping through a ring of fire.

Ah, thanks shadowlark, that does make sense. I'm not sure how far to go on the circus tricks, ha, yes obviously it's difficult to analogize something a monkey would naturally do that resembles riding a bicycle, but it seems to me that the line of 'natural behavior' maybe being drawn too close to just 'they are capable of doing it'. I would be that monkeys can and occasionally do walk on their hands only. If you trained a monkey to walk on it's hands all the time at the circus, I don't know I'd call that merely an enhancement of natural behavior, nor do I consider elephants balancing on a ball to be all that natural either.

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An impartial person would neither assume they were true, nor assume they could not be. From there on I agree with you entirely.

Taking 'could not be' literally, I agree. But I think an impartial person can still assume it is not true, as there is no compelling reason or evidence to think it is true. You can be less than certain about something and still make impartial, rational assumptions.

It is an assumption that joan talked to god. It is also a assumption that she had some sort of disease or brain damge which caused her to think she was talking to god. One can only go on evidences and knowledge to estimate the most likely truth. Knowledge includes ones own knowledge /data base, wherever that came from and was formed.

Agreed again, but the value of said knowledge/database in this case is measured by how well it is compares to the objective reality we seem to be all sharing. That reality currently does not have very good demonstrable and convincing evidence that God even exists, which would need to be resolved before we can then discuss whether Joan was conversing with him, which are both rather large hurdles. In a nutshell, I don't think the assumption that Joan talked to God and the assumption that Joan did not talk to God are equally founded.

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Taking 'could not be' literally, I agree. But I think an impartial person can still assume it is not true, as there is no compelling reason or evidence to think it is true. You can be less than certain about something and still make impartial, rational assumptions.

Agreed again, but the value of said knowledge/database in this case is measured by how well it is compares to the objective reality we seem to be all sharing. That reality currently does not have very good demonstrable and convincing evidence that God even exists, which would need to be resolved before we can then discuss whether Joan was conversing with him, which are both rather large hurdles. In a nutshell, I don't think the assumption that Joan talked to God and the assumption that Joan did not talk to God are equally founded.

Ah! now there you touch on a differnce in philosophy and logic. In my view an absence of evidence allows for belief and disbelief and does not(and should not) predispose one to disbelief Because disbelief will then prejudice imartiality( as would belief) For example is gravity a universal constant? I do not know, so i can chose to believe it is or it is not. We do not have enough evidence to know either way

I KNOW that joan might have talked to a real and powerful physical god because i do al the timeand he physiclaly answers proects me teaches me etc. But of course i should not allow tha tto prejudice mein considering joans case. She might have had epilepsy or another condition which caused hallucinations.

But neither should a person with no personal experience in god allow that to prejudice their own opinion about joan's case. Just because they have never encountered god says nothing about joan's case. The two experiences are totally unconnected, as are my case and joan's case. It is just tha t I know it is quite possible to converse with god and to be helped by him.

If the current objective reality does not suggest god is real, then why do the vast majority of humans, past and present, think he is, (in one form or another) and why do so many of us have personal encounters with him and his agents? You are speaking of YOUR objective reality, not my own current objective reality.

My objective reality has complete, demonstrated and convincing, physical evidences for the physical existence of an independently existent, sapient being which humans call god, and for physical agents or extensions of god as well. Just as much evidence, and in the same form, as for my own existence, or that of any other concrete thing.

You dont have that evidence, so you are forced to take a position of belief/disbelief, like many others. Your position is chosen based on other values, beliefs, and logics you have learned and established in your life. And they are not "wrong," for you.

So, in my objective reality god exists. Whether joan was talking to "him", or mentally ill, is open to debate. The effect on history is exactly the same, in either case. Using god's personal teachings and empowerments, I have changed the world as well. Not as dramatically as joan did, but in significant ways for many people.

Whether god was real or not, of course, if I believed in him enough, I would have changed the world, just the same and for the same reasons. That's the way belief works, although knowledge changes a realtionship from that of belief.

I do not have to invest belief in god. I am not motivated by belief in god. it is more like my relationship with my father. I honour and respect and trust him, and thus i do what i can for him and work with him, rather than against him.

I could know god was real and still not follow him, just as i could know my father was real but still not trust, respect, love or obey him. but if I believe in god, that belief "enforces", and reinforces, my responses to him.

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Why assume you have to train an animal to do what comes naturally to them?

I'm unsure that that was what our colleague Darkwind said. He said that his cat, and to a lesser extent his dog, do without training what some service animals are trained to do.

My understanding of "training," human or animal, is to take activity that is in an animal's behavioral repertoire ("comes naturally to them"), and to make that behavior more frequent, or occur more often in specific situations, or able to occur on "cue" (that is, when the human and the animal communicate so they can agree that now is a good time for that behavior).

DW's argument, as I understood it, stemmed from the indisputable fact that animals can be, and actually are, trained to perform alerting, This means that alterting is within animals' behavioral repertoire. It follows that some animals will exhibit the behavior spontaneously, without training.

Add to that the definition of alterting, and Darkwind reports that his cat and dog, to name two animals, do alerting spontaneously, without training. That they do so makes a positive contribution to the quality of DW's life. I sense in his words the hope that it makes a positive contribution to theirs as well.

As arguments go, Mr W, this one is starightforward. Or so it seemed to me anyway.

The nature of alerting behavior is to make an inference from evidence, and to find a way to get a crisp message about the conclusion to move across the interspecies barrier in timely fashion. These are cognitive feats of a high order. Training can help a lot with the second goal: human and animal might agree on a "signal." Training can't help at all, however, with the first goal unless the necessary inferential competence is already there in the first place.

It is all the more remarkable that DW's animals have concluded on their own initiative that all of that is worth their effort. There's no question that it is worthwhile for Darkwind. Apparently, then, the animals show interest in Darkwind's welfare, and reason about what is in his welfare. If that is also in their interest, then that doesn't diminish their inferential accomplishment in the least.

Somebody is home inside each of those two skulls. It's time to meet the neighbors, Mr W.

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Thanks, 8-bits, for your explanation of what I was trying to explain. :yes:

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I'm unsure that that was what our colleague Darkwind said. He said that his cat, and to a lesser extent his dog, do without training what some service animals are trained to do.

My understanding of "training," human or animal, is to take activity that is in an animal's behavioral repertoire ("comes naturally to them"), and to make that behavior more frequent, or occur more often in specific situations, or able to occur on "cue" (that is, when the human and the animal communicate so they can agree that now is a good time for that behavior).

DW's argument, as I understood it, stemmed from the indisputable fact that animals can be, and actually are, trained to perform alerting, This means that alterting is within animals' behavioral repertoire. It follows that some animals will exhibit the behavior spontaneously, without training.

Add to that the definition of alterting, and Darkwind reports that his cat and dog, to name two animals, do alerting spontaneously, without training. That they do so makes a positive contribution to the quality of DW's life. I sense in his words the hope that it makes a positive contribution to theirs as well.

As arguments go, Mr W, this one is starightforward. Or so it seemed to me anyway.

The nature of alerting behavior is to make an inference from evidence, and to find a way to get a crisp message about the conclusion to move across the interspecies barrier in timely fashion. These are cognitive feats of a high order. Training can help a lot with the second goal: human and animal might agree on a "signal." Training can't help at all, however, with the first goal unless the necessary inferential competence is already there in the first place.

It is all the more remarkable that DW's animals have concluded on their own initiative that all of that is worth their effort. There's no question that it is worthwhile for Darkwind. Apparently, then, the animals show interest in Darkwind's welfare, and reason about what is in his welfare. If that is also in their interest, then that doesn't diminish their inferential accomplishment in the least.

Somebody is home inside each of those two skulls. It's time to meet the neighbors, Mr W.

Thats what my question meant to elucidate/ascertain. If an animal can be trained to do something, then some individual animals may do it without training, because it is within their natural abilities to do so. I would assume darkwinds cat fell into this category from the description given. The cats show the same "concern" for darkwinds welfare as they would for any member of their "pack" because that is what they are evolved to do.

Words like concern are tricky in such a scenario, because a cat can't feel concern even if it appears to display concerned behaviour ."Making inferences from evidence" is even more problematica. That is a very late- evolved cognitive skill, even in humans. It is a conscious and aware procedure of a quite high order. More likely a cat responds subconsciously or unconsciously to certain stimuli, even as a very young child does from evolved programming.

I have trouble teaching inferential thinking to 14-15 year olds. Many don't even consciously understand the concept, let alone the quite complex conscious procedural steps involved. But then again, some cats could well be smarter and more trainable than some teenagers i know. :devil:

To put it simply. While apparently, to an observer, a complex high order skill, "alerting" is most likely like a beaver's ability to build a dam, or a pigeon's ability to find its way home, or a spiders ability to build an intricate web; a purely natural, evolved ability, which requires no congitive ability or self awareness at all.

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Mr W

"Making inferences from evidence" is even more problematica.

If alerting is not sending a message based upon an inference from evidence, then what is it?

a purely natural, evolved ability, which requires no congitive ability or self awareness at all.

Putting aside whether site-adapted constructions and navigation over variable terrain are examples of activities which do not require inferences, how is "purely natural, evolved ability" antithetical to something requiring "cognitive ability or self awareness?"

My answering your post exercises a purely natural, evloved ability, yet it displays at least some cognitive ability and is accompanied by self awareness, too.

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Thats what my question meant to elucidate/ascertain. If an animal can be trained to do something, then some individual animals may do it without training, because it is within their natural abilities to do so. I would assume darkwinds cat fell into this category from the description given. The cats show the same "concern" for darkwinds welfare as they would for any member of their "pack" because that is what they are evolved to do.

When we show concern for our fellow humans are we not also driven by an instinctive behavior formed as a pack mentality in early hominids. We live in packs, we look out for our pack members and fight with those outside of our packs. We just call them countries, warfare and sports.

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Mr W

If alerting is not sending a message based upon an inference from evidence, then what is it?

Putting aside whether site-adapted constructions and navigation over variable terrain are examples of activities which do not require inferences, how is "purely natural, evolved ability" antithetical to something requiring "cognitive ability or self awareness?"

My answering your post exercises a purely natural, evloved ability, yet it displays at least some cognitive ability and is accompanied by self awareness, too.

Yes; and when a cat answers my post, I will credit it with your level of self awareness and cognitive reasoning. :devil:

The ability to reason is and evolved ability. The capacity to reason at a human level is a learned one which requires self awareness and complex thought structures that also require complex linguistic abilities. One cant THINK like a human unless one can potentially speak (even if only in inner dialogue) like a human Language is the same. humans have an evolved ability to speak but they will never do so unless they are taught how to either deliberately or by exposure to language As they learn to "speak" internally, they learn to think. The two are basically insperable. I am not arguing that animals don't think. Just that they do not think with the concious self awareness that a human uses.

A rat "thinks" its way through a maze, once it has been through it once, but it doesnt ask why it was placed in the maze.

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When we show concern for our fellow humans are we not also driven by an instinctive behavior formed as a pack mentality in early hominids. We live in packs, we look out for our pack members and fight with those outside of our packs. We just call them countries, warfare and sports.

No. In my opinion, having read the debates about this in various scientific disciplines, that is not true.

Ys some humans act as you describe, but my point is that,unlike other animals, we are not compelled to. We have a conscious choice. We can choose differently and more productively.

Like language, empthy is an ability we have evolved, and then refined through ongoing practice, usage and development. But, human level empathy requires awareness of its nature to act on it. We have to know and understand many concepts to be able to FEEL and understand human level empathy and thus to exercise it.

We have to understand self/other, the nature of pain /suffering/ grief, consequence, creative/destructive outcomes of actions. We even have to understand the nature of time and its effects, to be able to empathise at a human level with another. Empathy is NOTsimply grooming another pack menber or giving food to another animal. It is not related to any form of reward Thats why empathy leads to true human level altuism which doesnt exist in other animals either.

It involves conscious reasoning that we do this for no reason other than that it is the right thing to do (and that includes a sense of philosophy and logic about WHY an act is the right thing to do.)

Human empathy creates acts with NO natural reward, not even a sense of feeling good, despite what some scientists argue about it. It is about what is right and what is wrong. And so, to be empathetic and altruistic you have to understand what is right to do and whatt is wrong to do, and make a choice.

Some of the reductionist scientific analysis of empathy was originally based on an understandable philosophical opposition to the type of christian view that we are superior because we are god's creations and given dominion over the earth. They argued that, as we are obviously not created by god, then all our qualities are evolved and innate.

They forgot (or at that stage science hadn't realised) that once a certain level of cognitive self awareness is attained it is not evolution which sets the course of humanity but we ourselves, We cut loose from our biological and environmental impaeratives because we can. First we reconstruct our inner selves, minds emotions etc. Then we begin to reconstruct our bodies; including today, hormone replacements, genetic engineering, medical nano technologies, gene therapy etc.

Thus, that form of scientific thinking falls into the same trap as that form of christian thinking.

Humans are different purely because of our sapient self awareness and cognitive development. We evolved those abilities, but then we learned, over 100000 years or so, to use them, as illustrated in how we can potentially think and speak. (not all humans actually learn to think and speak at this level of sohistication)

Some animals may well have evolved close to the natural ability of early humans, but they have not had time to evolve the language and cognitive skills of a human being.

I would like to see us help them learn/develop those skills, and share the planet (and more) with us, as true equals.

An interesting side bar One could argue that sports are, and always have been, a conscious construct to replace armed conflict, and to give a more creative outlet for humans, especially male human aggression. I hope one day we go beyond the need for competitive sports, and keep fit and healthy just for the pure benefit and joy of doing so.

Modern humans dont really need, or benefit from, highly aggresive or competitive sports any more than they do from warfare. In a way they teach young people dangerous values. (Dangerous in this day and age but useful and desired for most of human history).

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Mr W

Yes; and when a cat answers my post, I will credit it with your level of self awareness and cognitive reasoning.

There's where we differ. If a cat answers my posts, then I'll credit her with my modality of expression. Self-awareness seems categorical, so "levels" wouldn't apply; I'm confident that the typical cat has the quality. Cognitive reasoning? I think the cat beats me on some dimensions, I beat the cat on others. That's what I'd expect from two species in a cooperative relationship.

If she beat me on every dimension, then she wouldn't have an incentive to stick around. The comparative situation seems to me better described as "styles" than "levels." "Levels" is certainly a loaded term. With such words, you seem to try to frame our discussion as if the controversy has already been decided in your favor. There wouldn't be much point having such a discussion.

Why would thiinking like a human be an improvement for a cat? I think like a human better than a cat does. So what? Any cat thinks like a cat better than I do. Stalemate.

A rat "thinks" its way through a maze, once it has been through it once, but it doesnt ask why it was placed in the maze.

I'm not following you there. To whom would you have the rat pose this question? In what language?

I think this is the third or fourth time we have gone over that human language is species-specifc. That fact has been beaten to death. The controversy is what follows from that.

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Mr W

There's where we differ. If a cat answers my posts, then I'll credit her with my modality of expression. Self-awareness seems categorical, so "levels" wouldn't apply; I'm confident that the typical cat has the quality. Cognitive reasoning? I think the cat beats me on some dimensions, I beat the cat on others. That's what I'd expect from two species in a cooperative relationship.

If she beat me on every dimension, then she wouldn't have an incentive to stick around. The comparative situation seems to me better described as "styles" than "levels." "Levels" is certainly a loaded term. With such words, you seem to try to frame our discussion as if the controversy has already been decided in your favor. There wouldn't be much point having such a discussion.

Why would thiinking like a human be an improvement for a cat? I think like a human better than a cat does. So what? Any cat thinks like a cat better than I do. Stalemate.

I'm not following you there. To whom would you have the rat pose this question? In what language?

I think this is the third or fourth time we have gone over that human language is species-specifc. That fact has been beaten to death. The controversy is what follows from that.

It doesnt matter what language but there must be language Without language you cant think at human level. If a rat or a cat had a language anythng "like" humans they could think like a human and we would be able to decode their language and talk with them Cats dont "think" at all; well not compared to humans. Thought is a form of cognitive ability connected to language cats dont have language thus they cant "think" at all, Yes this is a bit absolute but the difference in capability of thought between humans and other animals is so great as to BE almost absolute.

If an alien race reached earth its language would be totally different to any of ours, but because it got here, it is self aware and highly sapient. Thus, whatever its language, we would be able to decode it and learn to speak it in a relatively short time. We would be able to communicate with it species to species despite any physical differnces in our species. The fact that we cannot do this with other earth animals after millenia of living with them indicates they simply do not have a complex language system that enables the formation and tranmission of complex ideas abstract concpets symbolic meaning etc They dont even have a simple language system for the transmisson of simple ideas Generally only humans communicate cross species, because we can.

They are an evolved species with instincts, environmental drivers, genetic forces and biological imperatives which shape their behaviours and which they have no choice but to respond to. While humans also evolved those same things, our self awareness and language moved us past them. A cat cant say mouse to another cat in any form of language probably because its memory and symbolic attachments dont form as humans do, and so it doesnt name an image in its mind. If it cant name the image it cant transmit the image via a name to another cat.

Im am not so certain about some of the primates. Some individuals seem to be on the verge of this ability but all have lived in close contact with humans for a long time which influences the assessment.

A dog can learn 400 words and know the difference between under, over, on, up, down, etc; but it has to be taught these and it cant speak them or teach them to another dog. It doesnt have language, just learned responses to words/commands

Ps the rat doesnt pose the question to itself. It is not capable of doing so. If it could, it would/could also pose a question like, "What is the meaning of life?", and develop religion and philosophy.

Edited by Mr Walker
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Well I think, Walker, as usual you reject science and only use it as it suits you. I sometimes do it myself, but like Hawking, I know science changes and is not engraved in stone or a book 2000 years old. Not much point in discussing this with you as you are lock into a way of thanking that is happily out of date. I am glad I listen to my animal friends and have learned to speak and understand their language.

Dust off your brain and think out of the box and read this book.

http://en.wikipedia...._in_Translation

Edited by Darkwind
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Yes; and when a cat answers my post, I will credit it with your level of self awareness and cognitive reasoning. :devil:

I have a vision of a cat in your life Mr Walker that is sitting there looking at you with that disdainful expression they do so well and thinking "when that biped answers my meows I will credit him with my level of self awareness and cognitive reasoning - until then there just ain't no proof he has those things" :innocent: .

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Fact is, everything we posit here is based on animals not being able to speak or write or have a social set of "language skills as we understand them. Why is there no question of whether we are making a huge assumption based on our limited capacity to perceive the nature of human behaviour?, our inferences on what their behaviour means could very well be laughable to any number of animals if they knew what we were thinking - they could very well be talking to "god" non-stop for all we know, why do we assume what we perceive of their behaviour is the truth about their behaviour, it is really only based on humanities version of reality isn't it?

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I have a vision of a cat in your life Mr Walker that is sitting there looking at you with that disdainful expression they do so well and thinking "when that biped answers my meows I will credit him with my level of self awareness and cognitive reasoning - until then there just ain't no proof he has those things" :innocent: .

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Fact is, everything we posit here is based on animals not being able to speak or write or have a social set of "language skills as we understand them. Why is there no question of whether we are making a huge assumption based on our limited capacity to perceive the nature of human behaviour?, our inferences on what their behaviour means could very well be laughable to any number of animals if they knew what we were thinking - they could very well be talking to "god" non-stop for all we know, why do we assume what we perceive of their behaviour is the truth about their behaviour, it is really only based on humanities version of reality isn't it?

Take a look at this...

Animal's Self Awareness

The Real Self Awareness:

Self awareness is proven by the many behavioral patterns which animals exhibit which suggest, without the shadow of a doubt, the possessions of certain mental stimuli; some of which are: status, pride, self esteem, territoriality, self punishment, self love, supremacy, and submission.

As an example lets take supremacy and submission: supremacy and submission are feelings which can not exist without self awareness, for if you are not aware of yourself, how can you be able to understand how great you are or how small you are.

Supremacy and submission are emotions which exists in fish, reptiles, mammals and birds. The reason why it exists in so many animals is because, along with territoriality, it is the most primitive of all feelings within self awareness.

It is my belief, that the sense of self awareness might have evolved as the by-product from some of the senses of self preservation, such as supremacy and territoriality. In other ways, when you evolve these adaptations, which are neurological, instinctive factors in the brain, what you get as the by-product of such, is the primitive self awareness which is present in fish as well as reptiles.

Self awareness is a very important adaptation, because it gives animals the ability to recognize their environment and themselves in order to avoid being hunted, create and defend their territorial grounds, groom themselves, protect themselves, and help themselves survive in many situations which require the love and the caring of one's self.

As an example, lets take territoriality: to own a piece of property you, most likely, will need to be aware of your self in order to understand the ownership of your property. If you where not self aware you would not have the need to own any property, for you will not be aware of your own needs.

For example: as a territorial animal, if you would put to words the feelings and thoughts that will come to your mind during a territorial dispute, you would say "Get off my territory!" you can not say "Get off the territory!" for you will be implying that the territory is not yours. You have to use an indication of self worth, which in this case would be the pronoun "my". Therefore, if you are a territorial animal which does not show much of any other signs of self awareness, you most likely will be self aware.

Some animal behaviorist would explain a territorial dispute with the phrase "back off!," but that would imply that the animal is uncomfortable with another and just wants to be left alone. So in this case, these two words would not apply within this behavioral action.

Pride:

Although pride is a feeling (mental stimulus), it is another part of the sense of self, because it concerns the importance of one's self. This stimulus gives animals a certain higher feeling of self worth which some animals use, to prove to their opposite sex that they are worthy of mating with, and it also helps individuals, such as matriarchs, behave in a manner that will show importance and higher status.

In the world of some bird species, pride is very important, for it helps male birds do their ritual dances with the finesse required to win the females. These ritual dances show the females the beauty, health, style and self expression which the males possess.

In some bird species, when the male appears too desperate and gets nervous, this feeling is expressed in his ritual dances, making the females loose interest and fly away. Such a behavior is probably due to the bird not thinking of himself as being good enough, for it has failed too many times before, and therefore, panic and desperation starts to show through the ritual.

In order for these male birds to win their females, they must perform their rituals without hesitation, which means that they must have an above average sense of pride stimulus to help them perform without getting desperate.

Birds that have manage to do their rituals right are able to breed and spread those proud qualities on to their species, while the birds that are not as proud, are most likely not to be able to do their rituals right and end up not breeding at all, making that species have a well developed pride stimulus.

Pride is a stimulus which evolved to stimulate all of the sociological senses of an organism towards performing their best. It is an adaptation made to do just that.

A Sense of Belonging:

An animal needs to be self aware in order for it to recognized another individual as a part of itself. Therefore, a sense of belonging is yet, another part of the sense of self awareness. This is what tells pack animals that they are a part of one particular group, and separate from other groups of the same species. For example: lions in Africa travel in groups, but each group has a sense of belonging, a sense of us, so when one group of lions meets a member of another group, lets say a female lion, and that lion asks for food, it could be hard for that lion to get food from that group, since that lion would not be considered a part of their group, and therefore, she might be considered an enemy.

This sense is also the reason why two groups of animals from the same species can be able to fight against each other. Such is the case with hyenas, lions, wild dogs, wolves, humans, chimpanzees, baboons and many other species.

By having this type of system, the group that works better can be able to succeed better, therefore, replacing the other groups with behavioral systems that might not work as good.

Taking into consideration the diversity caused by natural selection, it is quite possible that within different species of animals, there are also different or/and advanced senses of recognition which can make them see reality in different manners. Manners that our own perceptions can not understand.

Decision Making Processes:

These processes are a conjunction of thoughts, intelligence, instincts and feelings, which gives animals their mental freedom and helps them develop their personalities. Most of us who have pets, know that most animals have their own personalities and are always trying to do what they want, unless they are highly trained not to do so.

Decision making processes vary in their complexity depending on the intelligence of the animal, its environment, the skill or experience that it has at makings those decision, its social rank (if any), and a few other mental interactions and adaptations.

Decision making processes give animals an upper hand in deciding how to operate their escapes, how to operate their hunting strategies, where to rest better, when is best to play, how to protect their young, and so on. It also gives some intelligent animals the abilities of self expression.

More here - http://www.strato.ne...vny/sa03002.htm

Edited by Beckys_Mom
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It doesnt matter what language but there must be language Without language you cant think at human level.

My objection to calling a modality or style a "level" is renewed. It is an obstacle to fair discussion.

I am a human being. I represent to you as a ground fact that my thinking far exceeds what can be expressed in language. Language can sometimes offer a substrate for some thought, but its typical use is as a medium to exchange already-thought ideas with other human beings.

Even in that role, however, natural language is not the unique means of human expression. Not me, but many other people can fluently express their thoughts by drawing, painting, sculpture and dance. That I cannot express my thoughts in these ways doesn't support that visual artists and dancers lack my "level" of cognitive ability. On the contrary, I wonder if maybe I'm on the short end.

As it happens, I have limited ability to communicate according to the customs of some other warm-blooded animals. I'm about as skilled at it as I am at human interpretive dance, and in both cases, the patience of my audience is a major factor in what little success I have.

As you know, I am a big fan of treating similar uncertain cases similarly. Just as I doubt whether my limitations as an interpretive dancer are a reliable indication of my superiority to competent dancers, I also doubt whether my inability to express myself fluently to dogs is a reliable indicator of my superiority to them.

If an alien race reached earth its language would be totally different to any of ours, but because it got here, it is self aware and highly sapient. Thus, whatever its language, we would be able to decode it and learn to speak it in a relatively short time.

This is entirely speculative, Star Trek xenoanthropology. I have no reason whatsoever to expect that space aliens would have a "language" that would be available to me, or that our human language would be naturally available to them. I could imagine an intermediary translator technology, but not very clearly, and with no idea at all about what English would end up being translated "into."

You and I are unable to agree about earth creatures who exist and whom we can examine. Citing your imagined concept of beings who may not exist outside your skull is an inauspicious route to close the gap between us about real beings who live right in front of both of us.

the rat doesnt pose the question to itself. It is not capable of doing so. If it could, it would/could also pose a question like, "What is the meaning of life?", and develop religion and philosophy.

How would you know what a rat thinks about? Why would a rat look to us for guidance about how to handle big questions, following us into the dead ends of our ideas about religion and philosophy? "Our" idea of religion includes such notions as a caravan robber who imposes his God at sword point on men who wonder why his God says he gets a bigger share of the loot and more wives than any of them do. Which is bad enough, but apparently the imposed-upon can't figure out why his God is so generous to him.

I could choose other examples, too. That rats might look elsewhere for advice, then, hardly speaks poorly of them.

Edited by eight bits
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Yes some humans act as you describe, but my point is that,unlike other animals, we are not compelled to. We have a conscious choice. We can choose differently and more productively.

You do not know that nor have you shown that. I don't see any evidence at all that 'we can choose differently' any more than you believe an animal cannot choose differently. Short of introducing unsubstantiated theological 'evidence' of course

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Well I think, Walker, as usual you reject science and only use it as it suits you. I sometimes do it myself, but like Hawking, I know science changes and is not engraved in stone or a book 2000 years old. Not much point in discussing this with you as you are lock into a way of thanking that is happily out of date. I am glad I listen to my animal friends and have learned to speak and understand their language.

Dust off your brain and think out of the box and read this book.

http://en.wikipedia...._in_Translation

It is ONLY a variety of sciences upon which I base my opinion. I talk and listen to trees as well as animals. Science will say that is impossible too, because trees very obviously cant think or speak. So trees cant speak, and yet i can communicate with them, That says more about the science of my mind than that of the tree. Same with another animal.

I already said that i agree with the authors ideas and philosophy, and that my wife and i are members of groups like the rspca and IFAW and give a lot of money and spend a lot of time, working for animal welfare. My argument is that you dont see any other species doing something similar, because they cannot. That is what makes humans special.

Edited by Mr Walker
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I have a vision of a cat in your life Mr Walker that is sitting there looking at you with that disdainful expression they do so well and thinking "when that biped answers my meows I will credit him with my level of self awareness and cognitive reasoning - until then there just ain't no proof he has those things" :innocent: .

Sorry, I couldn't resist. Fact is, everything we posit here is based on animals not being able to speak or write or have a social set of "language skills as we understand them. Why is there no question of whether we are making a huge assumption based on our limited capacity to perceive the nature of human behaviour?, our inferences on what their behaviour means could very well be laughable to any number of animals if they knew what we were thinking - they could very well be talking to "god" non-stop for all we know, why do we assume what we perceive of their behaviour is the truth about their behaviour, it is really only based on humanities version of reality isn't it?

We have a fridge magnet which says "A dog thinks he is human, A cat thinks she is god"

Of course neither of them are capable of thinking in those terms at all, but we, as humans, perceive those qualities in them which we know exist in oursleves,

Modern science shows the differnces between human thought, and that of other anils be it in neuroscience or linguistics or biology. Humans are quite capable of both imagining all sorts of things but also of discovering physical truths.

To be honest, in this debate i feel like an evolutionist trying to convince creationists by using science against what they want to believe. While there i stil some debate, it is becoming increasingly clear that huan thought is dependent on language, and that the two are deeply connected and co evolved. Without a similar form of linguistic depth an animal cannot evolve a similar level of cognitive ability. (and humans could not have either)

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You do not know that nor have you shown that. I don't see any evidence at all that 'we can choose differently' any more than you believe an animal cannot choose differently. Short of introducing unsubstantiated theological 'evidence' of course

It would take a lot of time to demonstrate the many scientific arguments for this, but here is one simple test.

When a human feels anger or rage or lust they can control their behviour by self aware choice because they both understand the consequences of their behaviour and can see into the future the consequences of their act for them selves and for their victim They have a sense of linear time

Humans have acknowledged this, at first almost subconsciously, all through history and so our laws reflect this.

More recently, even more so ,where passion is no longer a mitigating circumstance for a crime. Animals on the other hand do not have these abilities because of their limited cognition. Thus we cannot charge, or hold responsible, another type of primate with rape or murder or infanticide when it takes a female, kills its riva,l and kills its rivals young.

If other animals had human capabilities we would have to treat them as we treat orselves and charge such an animal with those crimes. I do not know one scientist who argues that animlas have anything like human level self awreness and cognition once a humans is more than about 4 years old

(and we would not charge such a child with those crimes either, for the same reasons) There is nothing theological about any of this. I knew these truths when i was an atheist and secular humanist. Adult sane humans are accountable for every action because every action is a self aware choice. That is NOT true for any other animal.

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