Animal language (Animals)

by dhw, Thursday, January 15, 2015, 16:33 (3599 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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...... 
DAVID: But you do believe in gradualism: did the weaverbirds spend time 'working out' the whole nest at first or a little bit at a time?-I was replying to your comment: “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.” How gradual is gradual? I wasn't around at the time, so I can't answer your mischievous question. I'm suggesting that they worked it all out for themselves. Maybe each generation improved on the initial design, but they must have designed something - you can't live in a bit of a nest. Were you around to see your God's preprogrammed perfect nests suddenly emerge from nowhere? And why the heck would he preprogramme weavers' nests if his aim was to produce humans? Do you honestly believe we could not have existed without them?-dhw: ...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.

DAVID: Of course they can work out very simple mental issues. You just won't recognize the giant leap to us doesn't fit any orderly form of evolution.-What do you mean by “orderly”? You've posted a thread on Neanderthal tools. Our fellow animals also use tools. Once you have an extra degree of intelligence, each generation builds on the discoveries of its predecessors. Of course there's a gulf between us and our fellow animals - but you're considering humanity as it is now. Our ancestors lived in caves like animals. Now we have skyscrapers. Our ancestors communicated vocally like animals. Now we have books, telephones, the Internet. Our ancestors hunted like animals. Now we have farms, factories, supermarkets...All this because we have an extra degree of intelligence which has enabled our species to develop the resources offered by Nature. As in general evolution, each innovation may have been a giant leap, but the progression from the “primitive” (animal and early human) to the “civilized” (homo sapiens ‘modernus') has been an orderly development as our more advanced intelligence provides each improvement.
 
dhw: .... 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.
DAVID: It is you who is using the aesthetic term 'attractive'. We don't know that the response is not an automatic response to a certain note. And you can't claim you know it is 'attraction'. Neither you or I know which is correct.-You're right: on a certain epistemological level, we know nothing. Maybe all our fellow creatures are clockwork toys carrying out God's instructions. Indeed, we may be the same. And naturalists who have spent their lives studying animal behaviour are deluded. Strangely, I don't share your agnosticism on this subject. I believe that our fellow animals are intelligent, sentient, creative etc., though generally to a much smaller degree than ourselves.
 
dhw: 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.
DAVID: I accept your point. The attributes started before we evolved. But I view the gap as a difference in kind, and you don't. At no other point in evolution do we see such a gap, except at the Cambrian.-The gap is enormous, but as above I see an “orderly” development from animal to so-called primitive to so-called civilized society/technology/emotion/communication/ education/aesthetics etc. Tony wrote that the surprise expressed by some in relation to the complexities of animal language “emphasizes human arrogance”. He went on: “perhaps that is what happens when people get too far removed from nature; they start to believe that other life forms are not as valid, precious, or complex as our own.” I would add that they start to believe the gap is so great that humans are different in “kind” to the animals from which they have descended.