Different in degree or kind: animal minds (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, January 05, 2016, 18:31 (3245 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: You admitted that you didn't know how the weaverbird's nest, the parasitic wasp, the parasitic jellyfish and the hundreds of other examples provide “consumable energy requirement plant” for humans. How, then, can your anthropocentric concept of evolution seem logical to you? -Because you may not have recognized the food chain that leads up through the balance of nature to human consumption of foods. Remember Malthus and is worries? Inventiveness keeps the world's population fed.
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> dhw:You keep arguing that humans were not required, and must therefore be the purpose of evolution. I keep pointing out that NOTHING beyond bacteria was “required”, since they have survived from the year dot.-But, since you are using my original arguments, remember something had to drive evolution to complexity. Each illogical step up the complexity ladder drives that conclusion. What is more complex than the consciousness of humans. And I don't see further complexity beyond that. Humans are the endpoint.-> dhw: A much more convincing theistic argument in my view would be that with their unique levels of consciousness, humans alone appear capable of communing with God, and so they have a special place in his universe. However, this still won't explain how the weaverbird's nest feeds humans, so a free-for-all, perhaps with divine dabbling, still seems to me a far more logical explanation.-Your theistic thought fits my point above. And I've explained the weaver over and over. You seem to gloss over nature's balance as vital to the process.
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> dhw: Yes I believe in evolution. -By what reasonable mechanism?-> DAVID: I can accept that point, but if we are the only life, it is more likely that God exists.
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> dhw: You wrote: “If we are the only life, then God exists”...I am merely pointing out that if you believe in God, he will still exist for you even if we are not the only life.-But with a very special planet, as the only life it strongly appears human life was planned for and protected.-
> dhw: As I keep saying, the balance of nature is constantly shifting. Before humans arrived, nature “messed up” the balance far more catastrophically than the Aussies. But you don't see those changes and mass extinctions as “messing up”.Those “messings up” of the balance were apparently all part of the “balance for everyone”, though everyone presumably didn't include the 99% of extinct species.-Your statement is exactly on point. If evolution is a progress in complexity, then 99% were less complex, served their purpose and are gone. Balance is here to stay.
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> dhw: I would say that the complexity of life is already so apparent that belief in chance appearance requires a leap of faith just as great as that needed to believe in an eternal mind that encompasses the unfathomable vastness of the universe, which it created all for the sake of you, me, the weaverbird's nest and the duckbilled platypus.-Still back to chance or design or the picket fence. Only design offers a valid conclusion. Of course, like Nagel you could be wishing for a third way.