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

by BBella , Tuesday, December 08, 2015, 06:22 (3272 days ago) @ dhw

QUOTE: “Some current philosophers have reasoned away the problem by positing that rocks have minds too.”
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> BBELLA: For now, we believe the lowly rock is just a mere, lifeless, extra hard bundle of dirt. Just as we once believed (certain races of) humans, animals, plants, etc were unintelligent. Possibly, with patience and "open-mindedness" we may one day find, just as Rumi said many years ago (paraphrasing), intelligence is just asleep in the rocks.
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> Once again, there is a problem of definition here, because I think of intelligence in terms of awareness, sentience, processing and communicating information, cooperating, taking decisions etc. (not the sort of “life force” you have outlined earlier). -A rock or any "thing" that IS, is in the process of cooperating being what it IS or it would be no thing. I don't think I would call that life force. But I do understand where you are coming from with the common view of intelligence.->However, the possibility that “my” form of intelligence evolved in inorganic matter is central to the hypothesis that life is the product of such individual intelligences cooperating. -Intelligence evolved from unintelligent matter? Is that not saying a human evolved from a rock?->There is a passage in David's latest post under “Genome complexity” that is very striking: “But the ribosome itself has changed over time. Its history shows how simple molecules joined forces to invent biology...” What is later called the “mind-boggling” complexity would then be the result of 3.8 thousand million years of intelligences “joining forces”.-It would seem to me that no matter how many different kinds of rocks (and how did they become different kinds in the first place) joined together for eternity, rocks could not create an intelligent human unless there was already intelligence at work in the process - from the beginning (?), always.-> DHW: What follows is a defence of panpsychism, though the philosopher Jim Holt does not say so here. Many panpsychists are theists, and believe everything began with intelligence, but we have also discussed the hypothesis that everything began with mindless energy and matter, and intelligence evolved from their interaction.
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> BBELLA: And don't forget the hypothesis that intelligence, energy and matter always existed together with no beginning.
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> Again, we are probably talking of a different form of “intelligence”.-To me, intelligence is intelligence. Intelligence can show itself in different forms (rock or human), but it's still intelligence at work.