Animal language (Animals)

by dhw, Friday, January 16, 2015, 19:51 (3601 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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?-DAVID: I don't know why. I just know we need an enormous variety of life, because that is the result we see. You seem to expect a straight line from protocells of first life to humans with very little branching out in-between.-I don't expect a straight line from protocells to humans because I'm challenging two of your beliefs. Two questions will suffice: 1) Do you believe your God preprogrammed the first cells to pass on his design for the weaverbird's nest? 2) Do you believe that the weaverbird's nest was essential for the production of humans? -DAVID: You just don't recognize the giant leap to us doesn't fit any orderly form of evolution.
dhw: What do you mean by “orderly”?
DAVID: A fairly gradual step forward. Both the Cambrian and our brain were giant leaps compared to evolutionary time from 3.8 billion years ago. Ten million for the Cambrian and six million for our brain.-Can you or can you not see an orderly progression from animals and early humans living in caves to modern humans living in huts, houses, skyscrapers; from animals and early humans communicating by sounds to communication by writing, telephone, Internet?-dhw: ...we have an extra degree of intelligence which has enabled our species to develop the resources offered by Nature. 
DAVID: There is no evidence that our brain which appeared about 250,000 years ago was not equal to the one we have now. We simply needed time to learn to use it. Viewed that way we are definitely different in kind.-So once the intelligence is there (perhaps God-given), it builds on each generation's experiences, knowledge, memories and inventions to create more and more improvements. Exactly the same process for intelligent humans as for other intelligent cell communities, except that the latter appear to stop innovating when they reach a certain point of efficiency, whereas humans go on.
 
DAVID: When my dog decides to circle to table to the left instead of the right, to reach me, when both paths are clearly equal and open to him, I can't tell you how or why his brain (mind) made the decision. This is the source of my agnosticism. Is the thinking all veneer or can it be slightly deeper?-Nobody is pretending that your dog might have philosophical thoughts about God and the universe, but I think the source of your agnosticism runs much deeper. That will become clearer when you answer my two questions above.
 
dhw: [Tony] 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.
DAVID: As an animal owner I agree to a point, but I watch the instinctual behaviors and recognize that Tony's view is also over-humanizing them.-So do you think our fellow animals are capable or incapable of emotion (including love), reason, design, planning, communication, learning, organization, invention?