Different in degree or kind: animal minds (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, January 09, 2016, 15:50 (3028 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: 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: Whaddayamean ”NO”? Your criterion for balance of nature is that there is enough food for life to continue. Are you now saying it doesn't count if Australians change the balance?-The Aussies changed the balance and are trying to get it back. It does count!-> dhw: if a comet wipes out all life except bacteria, there will still be life, so according to you there will still be balance of nature. Another non-argument, which started out as an attempt to justify your anthropocentrism but then lost its way.-Your confusion surprises me. If we are back to bacteria, evolution will start all over again with nature in balance, as it was 3.6+ billion years ago.-> DAVID: I am absolutely convinced that we humans are different in kind, not degree, chimps included with all other animals.
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> dhw: I know you are. But that doesn't answer my question. ALL species (broad sense, as illustrated above) are “different in kind”, so what is your point?-All advances in evolution created differences in degree until humans, who because of their vast advance in consciousness are truly different in kind. That is Adler's point 
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> dhw: I expect we'd all agree that if life had been wiped out before the arrival of humans, there would have been no humans. There would have been no weaverbird's nest either. That doesn't explain why your God had to design the nest.-I don't know when the weaver's nest appeared; could be before any hominins. The theory is the nest is too complex for the birds to do it alone so God helped.-> dhw: And the same with all the other weird wonders extinct and extant in a free-for-all that provides a simple explanation for the higgledy-piggledy bush of evolution. But for some reason, you'd rather not consider a free-for-all (even if set in motion by your God).-Simply because I think God ran the process of evolution. See my today's article on the control of mitotic spindles. Darwinian chance could not do that.