Different in degree or kind (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, November 15, 2013, 20:11 (3809 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: [...] cells and intelligence arrived out of nowhere. Life began, and nobody knows its origin. We have discussed three options: God, chance, panpsychist evolution.
DAVID: Ah, then it is settled. Nowhere and nohow and nowhy are all stopping points in human thought? But I guess you are willing to be satisfied with that stopping point.-If I was satisfied, I would not have started up this website. But that doesn't mean I should embrace Dawkins' blind faith in chance or your blind faith in a nebulous UI. -dhw; You agree that "we have no idea how that [ant society] developed", just as we have no idea how any innovation occurred, but you refuse to consider the possibility that it developed through the intelligence of the organisms that started it.
DAVID: Is the presence of intelligence a given? Where did it come from, how did it arise? -You keep asking the same question, and I give you the same reply: the three equally unbelievable hypotheses of 1) God, 2) chance, 3) panpsychist evolution. Why do you refuse to consider the possibility that ant society developed through the intelligence of the organisms themselves? -Dhw: In what way is that anthropomorphic?
DAVID: Because I have the impression that your description requires mental decisions on the part of ant committees. Do you propose ant thought?-We do not have words to describe the mental processes of organisms other than ourselves, and you refuse to accept terms like thought, decision and consciousness unless they are human. You even try to ridicule "cooperation" by substituting "committee". The answer to your question is yes, my description requires thought and decisions ... but not the self-aware, self-analytical thought and decisions of humans.
 
Dhw: Each society has to invent its own methods of survival, but the ground rules are always the same: self-protection, acquiring food, bringing up the young, cooperating with one another etc. 
DAVID: Yes, we did not inherit ant societal rules. Humans invented tsir own rules.-I did not say we inherited our social rules from ants! You dismissed my list of formic attributes as "the most anthropomorphic rendition I have ever heard". It is not anthropomorphic to say that ant or any other animal society is built on the same ground rules as above ... i.e. those needs which are the reason for all societies, including ours, to form in the first place (even though modern "civilization" has greatly expanded our range). "Anthropomorphic" is a back-to-front denial of our descent from the animal kingdom.