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

by David Turell , Sunday, December 06, 2015, 15:42 (3274 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: if I remember rightly, you even believe some animals have souls.-In Jewish tradition animals have souls. I except that it may be.
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> 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.
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> dhw: Except when it comes to bacteria, and then suddenly you are a firm materialist.-I am a dualist at the consciousness level. "I think therefore I am".-> dhw: 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.-My limited-to-humans comment did not deny this.-> 
> dhw: The presence of intelligence is shown by WHAT is communicated, not by HOW communication takes place.-This bucks up against our usual difference. Intelligent instructions can control communication which appear to be intelligent information.
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> dhw: 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.),-Once again I take the view that before consciousness appeared, automaticity is present.