Animal Minds; how much can we learn about them? (Animals)

by dhw, Sunday, December 06, 2015, 13:16 (3274 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: A mind without a brain is integral to the concept of cellular intelligence. On the “Human consciousness” thread, you comment: “Let's throw out materialism as the lone explanation is what he is suggesting.” You will have to do the same for other animals whose consciousness you recognize.
DAVID: Your comment confuses consciousness with intelligence. First animals are conscious but self-consciousness is different, and their degree of self-consciousness appears to be minimal.-In the next but one sentence, I wrote after the word consciousness: “I prefer ”intelligence”, to distinguish it from self-awareness.” In my definition (see below, but you already know it), intelligence requires consciousness but not self-awareness, and I knew you would try to conflate the two. You grant “intelligence” to your dog and various other animals, and if I remember rightly, you even believe some animals have souls.
 
DAVID: As for intelligence in cells we are back to the same issue, intelligent instructions for actions or actual intelligence. We cannot tell the difference from the outside of a bacteria. I am not a materialist as you know, and a firm dualist.

Except when it comes to bacteria, and then suddenly you are a firm materialist.-dhw: QUOTE: "We humans have a sense of "self" that goes well beyond a drive to continue to exist. But to what extent do other life forms have this sense? “
My evolutionary “drive to improvement” depends on this sense. NB: for those of us who believe in common descent, it is logical that humans would have inherited this drive - as opposed to being its originators.
DAVID: Of course. Early hominins are today's Homo.-Common descent did not begin with hominins. Common descent goes back to the first forms of life, and if they had not had the “drive to improvement”, there would have been no evolution.
 
dhw: Here are more quotes from Denyse O'Leary's brilliant article:
DAVID: I thought you'd like it. Her background is as a devout clear-thinking Catholic.-Then it will be interesting to see how much autonomous intelligence she attributes to our fellow creatures.-QUOTE: “Life forms communicate with each other to a degree that often surprises researchers [...] evidence suggests that plants can communicate too [...] Plants, it seems, have a social life that scientists are just beginning to understand.”-DAVID: Again you presume too much. Plants use gases and chemicals to communicate through their roots and through the air. There is much and growing research on this aspect of their lives. -This is not just my presumption. You have kindly posted many articles emphasizing the mental activities of even the lowliest organisms. But for some reason, you always focus on the means of communication, which in all organisms - including ourselves - rely on automatic processes. The presence of intelligence is shown by WHAT is communicated, not by HOW communication takes place.- DAVID: There is little support for panpsychism, per se, in the theological and philosophic communities today. God's implanted instructions are another issue.-I haven't seen any polls on the subject, and I wonder how much support theologians and philosophers give to your theory that 3.8 billion years ago God implanted instructions on how to build a weaverbird's nest. As regards panpsychism, I am becoming more and more convinced that all forms of life have a degree of “intelligence” (i.e. autonomous awareness (but not self-awareness), sentience, the ability to process information, communicate, cooperate, take decisions etc.), but I am very doubtful about inanimate things like rocks. (I am not referring to the kind of “intelligence” BBella has been discussing.)
 
QUOTE:“Hence the matricide," Loope said. "Workers are not mindless automatons working for the queen no matter what. They only altruistically give up reproduction when the context is right, but revolt when it benefits them to do so."
You don't have to believe it, but you have to be very stubborn indeed to disbelieve it.
DAVID: I presented it. I believe it. You and I debate the driving instructional mechanisms. There could be a designated endpoint to a given queen's work, and she is then overthrown.-If the “driving instructional mechanisms” (sometimes known as “guidance”, but this is much clearer), were not devised originally by the bees themselves, I am left with God as their source, which in turn gives me the choice between a 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme for Queen Bee Overthrowing, or God personally instructing the workers to overthrow the Queen. Fortunately, you have already said you understand my doubts...