Animal language (Animals)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 14, 2015, 19:47 (3599 days ago) @ David Turell

DHW: I have no quarrel with the argument that our creative abilities and abstract thinking far exceed those of our fellow animals. But the suggestion that only we have the ability to create and think abstractly once again carries human self-aggrandisement to the point of absurdity. You (David) are always on about origins. How do you think the first birds made their nests [...]
TONY: Not a problem for pre-programming. [...]-DAVID: Instinct could be God's programming, but there is no evidence here, only faith, just as dhw has faith in how much design and planning birds can do with their nests. Why do all weaver bird's intricate nests look so much alike? Set plans for the species. DHW seems to want the weaverbirds to have worked this out bit by bit until they got it right. Where did they keep their eggs until the plans got properly developed? That is a great Darwinian just-so proposal.-I wrote, and you quoted: "How do you think the first birds made their nests?" The first weavers must have had the ability to design them, and “bit by bit” is your invention, not mine. I am against Darwinian gradualism. Once the pattern is established, others follow suit, and that is why I'm focusing on origins. Your alternative is that God, whose purpose you say was to produce human beings, preprogrammed the first living cells to pass on a specific programme for weaver bird nests. As well as the four-generations-and-away-we-go lifestyle of monarch butterflies. As well as umpteen billion other innovations and lifestyles - all contained within and passed on by the first cells, and essential for the creation of humans! That is your faith. My alternative suggestion (not faith - it's just a hypothesis) is that the first cells passed on an autonomous inventive mechanism (possibly God-given) which would - just like the human brain - ultimately lead to billions of innovations, including weaver birds working out for themselves how to build a nest.
 
DAVID: [...] How the plans got there is your question, and I don't know the origin. I can say that it is instinct, but I really don't know how that instinct developed. You want to assume the birds or some other animal did it on their own. You don't know that and neither do I. Did God give them the plans? I have no evidence for that anymore than you have evidence that the birds did it on their own.
-This is a welcome step towards a more balanced approach to the question. In the past you have insisted that it was all preprogrammed by your God, the only alternative being divine dabbling. Of course none of us know. That's why we are still looking for explanations.
 
dhw: Bees Have Small Brains But Big Ideas - Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bees-have-small-brains-but-big-ideas/-DAVID: The fact that bees have search scouts who come home and dance the direction to good pollen is well known. I view this study as an extension of that instinctual ability.-That is because you are resolutely opposed to the idea that our fellow creatures are able to think for themselves, although you frequently quote articles which prove they can.-dhw; The Sunday Times article mentions the songs sung by gibbons, whales etc. Sometimes such activities are for the sake of attracting a mate (ditto certain modes of display). Do you think the prospective mates have no sense of aesthetics?-DAVID: I know the sounds appeal to our aesthetics, but you don't know if that is the level at which the animals respond.-You have missed the point. We don't understand their aesthetics, just as once we in the West failed to understand the aesthetics of African art because they differed from ours. In my example, the prospective mate will choose between the songs/displays of the suitors. One will seem to her/him more attractive than the others. That = animal aesthetics. You and I wouldn't have a clue which warble struck the winning note.
 
DAVID: I think you anthoropomorphizing about animals, and that is not logical. Animals are not little less-advanced humans. You cannot apply you aesthetic feelings to them, but you do that because you are trying to deny the huge gap.-You misunderstood the above because you are trying to deny that our fellow creatures can reason, create, think, love, aestheticize, plan etc. etc. You believe that the attribution of human-type feelings and faculties to animals is anthropomorphization because you see this as a threat to your anthropocentric interpretation of evolution. I am not imposing human attributes on our fellow animals; we have inherited those attributes from them. Animals are not less advanced humans. Humans are more advanced animals.