Different in degree or kind: animal minds (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, December 29, 2015, 20:52 (3252 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I thought this had covered your comment. You see the finished product, so why would you also have seen trial and error? Once the nest existed, there may have been modifications, but all initial ”problems” required solutions by the original builders.
DAVID: Again, you are denying the initial complexity of the nest. Generations of birds would have had dabbled with design to get the knots just right. That is trial and error. Was that type of nest so important that they had to keep pursuing it? No bird brain could have planned it from the beginning.-I have no idea how much trial and error was involved (nor do you), but I don't see a problem with the idea of the original perfectly habitable nest being improved on by later generations without prior planning from the beginning. Was that type of nest so important for the production of humans that your God had to preprogramme it in the first living cells, or had to give weaverbirds private tuition?-dhw: I would have been shatteringly surprised if they had found that animal/bird/ insect/bacterial intelligence was on the same track as that of humans.
DAVID: Wow! You've just said humans are different in kind! -dhw: I have said all along that you should stop equating animal/bird/insect/bacterial intelligence with human intelligence. I would not expect a parrot to think like a human or a tiger or an ant or a bacterium. In that sense, they are ALL “different in kind”, which might be a definition of phyla. But they all use similar methods to achieve similar ends: e.g. perception, processing information, communication, decision-making - the purposes being to survive, to reproduce, to make optimum use of the environment, to improve.... 
DAVID: Yes they do, to a much lesser degree. Our consciousness is so far superior and different in kind, not degree.-Yes indeed, our intelligence has enabled us to expand our use of the environment to a far greater degree, and I agree that our consciousness is superior in the sense that we appear to have a far greater degree of awareness than that of our fellow animals. But all phyla are different in kind, and use their species intelligence to pursue their species ends. -DAVID: All organisms need is intelligently prepared instructions which is placed in their genomes for interpretation.
dhw: I would say all organisms need is information both internal and external, plus the intelligence with which to interpret and use it.
DAVID: Exactly correct.-I have replaced your “intelligently prepared instructions”, which clearly entails a fixed programme planted (presumably by your God) in every organism, with “information both internal and external”, which removes the prescriptive element from the process. I'm glad you approve of the change.