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

by dhw, Wednesday, December 16, 2015, 22:18 (3266 days ago) @ David Turell

Rather than go through your posts point by point, I will summarize:-You believe the weaverbird's nest and the plover's migration are too complex for the birds to have worked out for themselves. Therefore God must have preprogrammed them 3.8 billion years ago or given them private tuition. You don't know why he would make them do such unnecessarily complicated things, particularly when all he wanted was to produce humans. Humans are special because Nature did not require them to be produced. As bacteria have survived, Nature did not require any of the subsequent millions of species, lifestyles and natural wonders to be produced either, but you don't know why God designed them all, except that perhaps they were necessary for the production or feeding of humans. Under “A new synthesis”, you do not consider any of these gaps to be holes in your theory. And finally, you respect and admire certain scientists who are convinced that cells are intelligent beings, but you have read books that argue the contrary, and so you are sure that the respected and admired scientists are absolutely wrong.-I hope that is a fair summary, and the answer to the question asked by this thread is going to be the key to future progress on the subject. Just how intelligent are the organisms from which we are all descended? Thank you for the article on parrots using tools and for the many other articles you have posted on the subject of animal (and bird and insect and plant) minds. Every one of them opens new windows onto the intelligence of our fellow organisms, or alternatively adds new items to God's 3.8-billion-year-old list of Things to Programme (or Things Requiring a Dabble). I fear neither of us will be around when the winner is announced...