Different in degree or kind: animal minds (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 30, 2015, 20:17 (3040 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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. DAVID: Your proposed story of the nest must assume a simple nest at the beginning, and then for some reason the Weaver family decided they must have a complex-knotted mansion and instructed countless subsequent generations to gradually improve the initial nest plans. Not at all reasonable to me. Did the birds have to do that[/i[i]]? I've not seen that the complex nest has any advantages over the average nest.-We have no idea what the original nest was like, but why on earth would one generation have to pass on instructions for gradual improvements? You seem to think that only large organisms are individuals with varying degrees of intelligence. In my hypothesis, it is individual intelligences that come up with new ideas and pass them on, and “geniuses” are not confined to a single generation. Did the birds have to do that? No, they chose to do it, for whatever reasons. I asked whether God had to do it in order to produce humans, but you have not responded.-dhw: 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 .... But all phyla are different in kind, and use their species intelligence to pursue their species ends. 
DAVID: You are just hedging. Previous phyla are different in 'kind', but by minor degrees. We are different by such a major differences in consciousness and mental power, that we are a major leap for evolution. We don't fit the pattern of evolution of small changes in kind. We are a giant change.-Maybe I've misused the word ”phyla”. I would not say the differences between elephants, eagles, haddock and ants are minor. I see giant changes from bacteria to all of them, and one such giant change is the colossal gap between our (current) mental powers and those of our fellow creatures. (I don't know about the earliest hominins.)But regardless of degree versus kind, what I cannot accept is that every other form of life throughout the history of evolution existed or exists for the benefit of humans. The higgledy-piggledy bush of varieties, extinctions and survivals seems to me to favour a free for all, though if there is a God, he could always do a dabble.
 
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.
dhw: 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.-DAVID: I'm afraid I interpreted your statement differently. Intelligent interpretation can be implanted for the organisms to use, and that can act as the intelligence you love.-A rather strange interpretation of my "exactly correct" statement. It's the first time I've seen intelligence defined as implanted intelligent interpretation, but if that is what you understand by intelligence, clearly your God has preprogrammed you to respond in this way. I'll stick to my own idea of what the word means.