Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, November 01, 2013, 13:27 (3828 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: There is scarcely anything in the above paragraph that can't be applied to our fellow creatures. They can certainly think beyond what their senses perceive, because they plan for the future, remember the past, and can work out strategies for coping with their enemies. Our own imagination of course stretches way beyond our needs, but I would say that our art, philosophy, literature, music etc. are the result of our self-awareness, which is unquestionably a degree of consciousness far, far beyond that of other beings.-DAVID: I cannot understand that your statement has any depth of understanding. You must be trying to needle me. What a preposterous argument. Sure squirrels plan instinctively for the future by storing nuts. My horses remember the past because they have learned their training. Who trained them? Not themselves. And then to propose that selfawareness leads to aesthetics and artistic presentation is based on what reearch?-Not trying to needle you, but trying to point out that virtually all our activities are sophisticated developments of the basic instincts we've inherited from the animals we're descended from. Non-humans would not be able to survive if they didn't plan for the future, train their young, protect and feed themselves etc. We have institutionalized all these instinctive activities: we have schools to train our young, we have industries to provide food and shelter. Degree, not kind.-As for the self-awareness which exceeds by far the consciousness of other animals, we ask questions they don't ask, and we seek to express ourselves and our reactions to the world we live in. One important aspect of this is religion, which arises from our self-aware ability to ask questions about how we got here and what makes our world tick. So-called "primitive" art was linked to religion, as an attempt to communicate with the powers that created us. Today religion has lost its influence, but humans still need to express themselves and their personal vision, and to share their vision with others. All the arts grow from the self-awareness of the artist/writer/sculptor/composer, whose first point of contact is himself, since he has to dig the work out of his own mind before being able to present it to others.-DAVID: Our language capacity is not duplicated in any way by animals. It allows us the complicated thought and philosophy we practice. And to what language of animals do your refer that in any way is like ours? Horses nicker, neigh and snort. Please interpret. I can interpret nicker. It means notice me, I'm noticing you. That thought is really deep isn't it?-We're not talking about deep thought but about language as a means of communication. Each species has its own "language", which depends entirely on the physical means at its disposal. Our fellow mammals have voices, as we do, and they communicate by sound, as we did before we invented writing. But somehow our own mechanisms evolved (through changes in the respective cell communities) to allow for a greater variety. And so our sound language, as I see it, developed an infinitely greater degree of sophistication than the sound language of our fellow mammals. "Infinitely greater" ... degree, not kind.-DAVID: I always knew you were a bleeding heart liberal. I am very sensitive toward all animals even though, perish the thought, I know I am different in kind. [...]. I never kill lightly, but I must kill all copperheads around the ranch to protect my dog. [...] I have the human ability to undertstnd and make those choices. I imagine you do also, but that makes you a killer like I am.-This was in no way meant as an attack on you! I have no doubt that you treat your animals with the utmost kindness. And yes, I too am a killer. But you are as aware as I am of the suffering humans inflict on animals and on one another, justifying their cruelty with the argument that their victims are different from them.-I do, however, have a philosophical as well as a "bleeding heart liberal" argument. You "know" you are different in kind, and you believe your God's purpose in starting life and evolution was to produce us humans. I agree that our degree of consciousness and our mastery of the environment are almost infinitely greater than those of our animal forebears. However, I do not see that as evidence (a) that there is a God, or (b) that if there is, he geared evolution to the production of humans, or (c) that in our basic needs we are so far apart from our animal ancestors that we can claim to have no kinship (= to be of a different kind). I see our sophistication as a huge extension to but not a departure from our animal origins.