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

by David Turell , Monday, December 14, 2015, 15:30 (3266 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: You are asking some highly pertinent questions. The bottom line is that we do not understand the need for such a complex nest. That is the perfect image for the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution. Why is it illogical for the weaverbird to build such an unnecessarily complicated nest, and yet logical if your God designed it[?]-You've neatly sidestepped the issue of "was it built in stages or all at once?" My highly pertinent questions lead to a logical conclusion: it had to be planned in advance.-> dhw: The simplest logical answer is that organisms do their own thing, and it is their particular type of intelligence that enables them to do it in their particular (in this case very complicated) way.-That is the issue. Too complicated to avoid planning. Your assumed approach implies stepwise development.
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> dhw: And so the vital question remains: why would your God design the apparently illogical weaverbird's nest, especially if all he wanted to do was produce humans? If every innovation, lifestyle and natural wonder created by living organisms requires intelligence, and if your God did not plan or dabble them all, the intelligence can only be that of the organisms themselves.-That is your 'if' about God. Of course he either dabbled or pre-planned. My dilemma has the usual two horns!- 
> dhw: If it's illogical for the plover to fly 2000 miles, why did your God make him do it? Once you question the logic of these natural wonders, you are actually questioning your God's logic, and the simplest answer is as above. Every innovation is a designed jump, and if it works, it survives.-Here is the wide gulf of our thinking. I'm not questioning God's logic. Only He could plan such amazing jumps of complexity in lifestyles.-> dhw: That would apply to every new species, including the earliest hominins and their successors. If they were specially designed, so was the duckbilled platypus, which according to your logic suggests that God's purpose was to produce the duckbilled platypus. -Logic demands that God did all of the designing, to explain the complexity. Evolutionary theory as you and I view it requires a drive to complexity and challenges by environment to cause adaptive responses. Where did a drive to complexity come from? Why did humans arrive when there is no demonstrated requirement or need? Simple: God did it. -> 
> dhw:I also noted Noble's admiration for McClintock and Shapiro - two champions of the concept of cellular intelligence.
> DAVID: I have the same admiration.
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> I know you do. That is why it is all the more surprising that you reject their views on cellular intelligence as “absolutely wrong”.-Same answer: intelligence and intelligent design look the same.