Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, November 10, 2013, 19:12 (4031 days ago) @ dhw

PART TWO-TOVEY: In a nutshell: the view that self-awareness is a uniquely human trait is a scientifically respectable one.-It boils down to whether you think self-awareness is utterly lacking in every other species, which it has to be to qualify as "unique". If you think your dog yelping when kicked doesn't know he's in pain, won't remember you kicked him, and won't cower away from you tomorrow, then you think your dog has no self-awareness. He's not going to write articles about primary and higher order consciousness ... because although he has a DEGREE of self-awareness, it's nothing like as great as ours. But "nothing like as great" doesn't make "higher-order consciousness" UNIQUE to humans. Only the degree is unique.-TOVEY: I would like to preface my remarks on higher-order consciousness with a disclaimer. Researchers in the field of animal cognition are continually making new discoveries. It is impossible to foretell with any confidence what scientists will have to say about higher-order consciousness in animals, fifty years from now. What we can say is that judging from the evidence presently available to us, higher-order consciousness is likely to be confined to only a few species of mammals, and perhaps corvids (crows and their relatives) as well. It may even be unique to human beings.
 
Perhaps he should have issued his disclaimer "preface" before attacking Sullivan and the twelve prominent neuroscientists for their "scientific failings". They MAY even be right. To add insult to his self-inflicted injury, he even agrees that higher order consciousness is likely to be present in mammals and corvids, so human uniqueness ... essential to "human exceptionalism" ... is only an unlikely maybe. 
 
Tovey quotes a remarkable set of figures based on the number of cortical neurons and synapses as a guide to consciousness:
 "The normalized complexity figures are now as follows: humans 45.5, dolphins 43.2, chimpanzees 41.8, elephant 41.8, gorilla 40.0, rhesus (monkey) 36.5, horse 34.8, dog 34.4, cat 32.7, rat 25.4, opossum 24.9, mouse 23.2."-I have no idea what this is meant to prove, but such figures look to me like gradations, or degrees, not difference in kind.
 
Tovey cites Poole: elephants use more than 70 kinds of vocal sounds and 160 different visual and tactile signals, expressions, and gestures in their day-to-day interactions...Tovey speculates on the meanings, and asks: "Is this communication? Of course it is. But is it language? That is a different question altogether."-If by language you mean written and spoken use of words, it isn't. If you mean the use of sounds, smells, chemicals, movements, touch for the purpose of communication, it is. Most dictionaries will offer you both definitions.-Tovey answers a post from a reader, and his response contains the following: 
"...life-long monogamy (which of course presupposes a capacity for mental time travel and long-term planning) became the only practical way of rearing large-brained children. However, physical matter in and of itself is incapable of having the abstract thoughts required to make such a commitment, so in the absence of an immaterial human soul, Heidelberg man would have swiftly perished as a non-viable life-form. It was at this point that God endowed our ancestors with immaterial rational souls, enabling them to think rationally and support infants whose energy requirements would have made them impossible to feed otherwise. That was the point when I believe our ancestors became human beings."-Even if we disregard the birds and animals that practise monogamy, and the millions of humans that practise polygamy, the theory that the need for monogamy was the spur for God to endow our ancestors with immaterial rational souls suggests to me that Dr Tovey has an agenda that even you, David, might find hard to swallow.