Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, November 02, 2013, 20:29 (3821 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The jump in out abilities is enormous, but you don't seem to notice the size of the gap. -Our degree of consciousness is "far, far beyond that of other beings", our language has "an infinitely greater degree of sophistication than theirs", our sophistication as a "huge extension", and "Our degree of consciousness and our mastery of the environment are almost infinitely greater than those of our animal forebears." Not big enough for you? -dhw: ...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: We don't have to dig, as we have been given the where-with-all tov easily conjure up all sorts of artisitic production and thought if so inclined. You really are agreeing with me-If God exists, he must have given us and all other cell communities the wherewithal to do whatever we do. So he has given us our self-awareness and our ability to dig inside ourselves to produce all sorts of artistic production. I'm afraid your suggestion that artists don't have to dig, however, would only make sense if you thought your God dictated every word, note and brushstroke, and the artist was a mere automaton obeying instructions. I am emphatically disagreeing with you.-Dhw: 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......"Infinitely greater" ... degree, not kind.-DAVID: Still helping my argument. We have true complex language, with syntax built-in. We speak and we write. All animals do is grunt, meow, bark, nicker, all onomatopoeia words we use to imitate their poor method of communication.-What do you mean by "true complex language"? Since you talk of syntax and writing, clearly what you mean by language is human language, and so of course it's different from animal language. But animal, bird, insect and even bacterial languages as means of communication (which in this context is my understanding of language) have definite and varied meanings, and have proved perfectly adequate for their purposes over hundreds of millions of years. We have infinitely more complex messages to convey, and so our sounds are infinitely more complex than theirs. More complex = degree.
 
Dhw: I do not see that [the huge gap] 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.-DAVID: We interpret those facts entirely differently. We have a kinship and a love for other animals. We have animal bodies, but God-like minds, excluding theodicy.-We are not far apart in our philosophy. Kinship and animal bodies, definitely. But I would say our minds are a mixture of animal and "godlike" (by which I mean far beyond the limitations of our animal mentality). I'm very happy with that, and I don't really care whether people count it as different in degree or in kind. The only reason why the distinction has any value at all for me is that I have a strong antipathy towards a totally anthropocentric view of the world we live in, because of the havoc it has caused and is still causing to other forms of life. That is why I prefer to dwell on the similarities, though it doesn't stop me from killing flies and mosquitoes in my bedroom! May I ask you now why the distinction is so important to you?