Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, November 03, 2013, 01:17 (3825 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: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.-I'm only suggesting that your writing ability is a gift of your brain. I know I don't have it. Each of us has different abilities, far in advance of poor chimps.-> 
> dhw; 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.-If it is a huge gulf, which you admit, it is different in kind. How many degrees do iI need? It is a matter of opinion.-
> 
> 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. ... May I ask you now why the distinction is so important to you?-Because, if we are different in kind, then evolution is not a chance unguided process. The point Adler made.