By FRANS de WAAL: refuted (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, November 13, 2016, 13:17 (2714 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You have headed this thread: Frans de Waal: refuted, and you say that the review refutes “his claims of animal intelligence”. Of course you don’t mean that animals have no degree of intelligence, so what do these arguments refute? Does de Waal claim that apes spontaneously behave or talk like humans, or that they have the same degree of self-awareness as humans?

DAVID: The reviewer shows de Waal over emphasizes what apes can do mentally. That is the refutation. You like to support minor similarities, but admit the gaps are huge.

Two points: I haven’t read the book. I can only comment on the reviewer’s examples, and unless de Waal claims that apes do spontaneously behave and talk like humans, and do have the same degree of self-awareness as humans, I find their argument unacceptable. Secondly, in response to your own arguments, yes, the gaps are huge. My contention, however, is that the vast complexities of our thought and of our behaviour are natural advances on the thought and behaviour that we have inherited from our animal ancestors: they have social structures, they explore their environment, they communicate, take decisions, have emotions, help one another, play games, and even have aesthetic values (mainly for mating purposes) etc. Not the same as ours, and on nothing like the scale of complexity that we have reached with our enhanced consciousness. But in my view these are not minor similarities. They are the foundations on which we have built our own thought and behaviour.

dhw: I have no difficulty with a varying “degree of sharing”. But if we and our fellow animals have the same ability to do something, I would argue that this suggests similarity, not difference.

DAVID: I understand, to defend your position, similarities are of supreme importance, while ignoring the immensity of the differences.

There is no reason why one should not acknowledge both. I only stress the similarities because it irks me that so many people fail to recognize them, as a result of which they indulge in appalling callousness towards their fellow animals and, in some cases, towards those fellow humans whom they also regard as “different”. It goes without saying that this observation is not directed at yourself.