Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, November 11, 2013, 19:38 (3817 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Does that mean that Sullivan and the dozen prominent neuroscientists are guilty of "scientific failings"?
DAVID: We must interpret Torley as a theist. He is on my side of the debate, but as I analyze his interpretations they made me see the possible way of interpretating animal behavior in a 'less mental' way.-You have misunderstood virtually the whole of my post. I have painstakingly pointed out the contradictions and vacuousness of Dr Torley's attack on Sullivan. (Apologies for misreading his name.) He begins by accusing him of "scientific failings". It's hardly a scientific failing not to mention the term "human exceptionalism", which even Torley himself calls a highly controversial position.-dhw: His "discontinuity" is two extreme levels. We humans operate on both, but that doesn't mean there's nothing in between! Even Tovey later admits that some organisms (he restricts them to mammals and birds) have a degree of "higher order consciousness".-DAVID: The key is not the discontinuity but the emphasis on self-awareness, something you have continuously heard from me. That intrapective aspect of humans, the animals do not have at all. That alone is a major gap. Adler makes much of it.-Read Torley. There is a colon after "discontinuities", which he explains as being the two kinds of consciousness. I have pointed out that this does not mean discontinuity. You are substituting your own argument for his. Of course I accept our self-awareness as a "major gap", just as I would accept that there is a major gap between a student who gets 90% in an exam and a student who gets 10% in the same exam. I am answering Torley, not Adler.-DAVID: How many degrees of difference do you need before 'man is an animal like no other' to then iterpret as a difference in kind? Since we know the vast degrees of difference, I think your position is untenable.-I've never disputed that man is an animal like no other. An elephant is also an animal like no other. As I keep pointing out, the question of degree versus kind seems totally pointless to me, but your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution demands special treatment by God, and that is why it's important to you. If God guided evolution to the specialness of man, he also guided it to the specialness of elephants (or dogs ... see my post under "Intelligence"). If you believe evolution happened, but somehow humans are to be set apart from their animal ancestors, you are arguing for separate creation, as Torley does with his God suddenly endowing post Heidelberg homo with a soul.
 
DAVID: You know darn well that feeling pain is not the type of self-awareness we should be discussing. The term self-awareness as used in philosophic discussion is tuned to only those higher mental capacities that we alone have. That was Adler's level of discussion.-Once again you are defending your own position and Adler's, but you directed me to Torley. Torley himself argues that mammals and corvids share in "higher-order consciousness". I am pointing out that his arguments are confused.-DAVID: What Torley is debating honestly, in my opinion, are levels of awareness that may in corvids involve that ability to do some future (for us) simple planning. Corvids are not at the level of self-analysis of their own actions. That is what you are not willing to think about, or recognize, because your position is so tenuous.-That is you and not Torley speaking. I hope you won't insult me by pretending that I don't know the difference between human and corvid intelligence. That is not my point, and you know it. I have made my point (yet again) in the paragraph referring to elephants.
 
dhw: Tovey quotes a remarkable set of figures based on the number of cortical neurons and synapses as a guide to consciousness. I have no idea what this is meant to prove, but such figures look to me like gradations, or degrees, not difference in kind.
DAVID: I had no idea what that really proved either.-If you read Torley instead of substituting your own (far clearer) arguments, and you read my criticisms of what he has written, perhaps you will recognize that this is only one example of the confusion.-dhw; 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.
DAVID: I should have warned you Dr Torley is a very committed Christian. -I'd like to hear your own views on his theory that the need for monogamy led God to provide post-Heidelberg humans with a soul.