Different in degree or kind: animal minds (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, January 08, 2016, 16:36 (3023 days ago) @ dhw

dhw:I was looking forward, not back. According to you, nature will still be balanced if there is nothing left but bacteria. So why all the fuss about Australians and foreign animals “messing up” the balance? You will still have your balance if the foreign animals eat up all the native animals, including the Australians. -No, the 'natural' balance of nature is the point. Balance of nature to supply food, if undisturbed, is necessary for life to continue. Nature will naturally balance if left to have its own natural adjustments.
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> dhw: I don't think even Darwin would deny that we are vastly more intelligent than our fellow animals. However, do you truly believe that the “difference in kind” (it's your phrase, not mine) between chimps and humans is greater than that between elephants, ants, sparrows and gudgeon?-I am absolutely convinced that we humans are different in kind, not degree, chimps included with all other animals.-> DAVID: No, the balance of nature through all of these contributions supported living organisms with a food supply.
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> dhw: So since human existence “has nothing to do with balance of nature”, we can forget all this stuff about “the food chain that leads up through the balance of nature to the human consumption of foods”. Now it appears that your God designed the weaverbird's nest and 3.8 billion years' worth of natural wonders so that whatever had enough to eat survived, and the rest died. Nothing to do with humans, and yet according to you humans were what God set out to produce and feed! Sorry, but if the “balance of nature” had nothing to do with the existence of humans, and everything to do with survival, you are left with the evolutionary free-for-all that I and most evolutionists have been advocating all along.-I view it totally differently: I assume God used an evolutionary process to finally produce humans. The only way the whole process could survive is if a balance of nature provided a food source for the various stages of life to survive as evolution proceeded. 
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> dhw: This does not mean your God didn't start the process of evolution, and it doesn't even mean that humans aren't special. It just means your divine 3.8-billion-year-old computer programme (and/or personal divine intervention) for all innovations, lifestyles and natural wonders, specially designed for the purpose of “balancing nature” in order to produce/feed humans, makes no sense.
> DAVID: Sorry it makes no sense to you. The induced pain in the nether regions from the picket fence may dull your thought processes.
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> dhw: So do please apply some intellectual balm by explaining how God's special design of the weaverbird's nest (by computer or personal tuition) provides a balance in nature for the human consumption of foods, although the balance of nature has nothing to do with human existence. Alternatively, have a rethink...-Already explained. The food chain is the same as the balance of nature, as the bush of life. Someone is eating weaver birds who is eaten by someone else. The weird nest is actually beside this point of discussion. The weirdness is a different discussion which raises a different point, that we have gone over and over and I present regularly as "NATURES WONDERS'. Weirdness is everywhere in life and so must be considered the normal or standard pattern not unusual. We view it as 'unusual' because it seems more complex or inefficient than it should be. That is our human analytic approach, which is more than likely wrong. Evolution worked to produce humans and advanced consciousness, which I do not see as anything necessary.