`Human Consciousness: Role of the unconscious (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, February 15, 2016, 16:47 (3205 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: Immaterial conceptualizations connected with the quest for knowledge, morality and aesthetics are the whole point of O'Hear's anti-evolutionary argument, which you say echoes Adler, and I have suggested that they are explicable in evolutionary terms of human self-awareness building on our animal ancestors' own explorations, social structures and “appreciation of beauty”. You accept that these are “an evolutionary extension, just the magnitude is extremely surprising.” Magnitude = degree. You then claim that “we are so different in degree it is obvious we are different in kind because that degree in difference could not have been created by undirected evolutionary processes.” According to you, even the weaverbird's nest could not have been created by undirected evolutionary processes, so if that is the point you are trying to make, why not use the same argument for both: human intelligence, like the weaverbird's nest, is too complex to have been created by undirected evolutionary processes. We may not agree, but at least we can then dispense entirely with the non-argument of degree versus kind. (My new bold)-DAVID: That is exactly what I have [been] stating.
DAVID: I'm simply pointing out that Adler and Nagel agree: evolution does not explain the human mind. And I'm with them.-May I ask you please to reread the whole of the paragraph above, which covers both the anti-evolution argument and the non-argument concerning kind versus degree, which you have been “stating” ever since you read Adler. According to you, God had to preprogramme or personally supervise the production of the human mind and of the weaverbird's nest (plus the rest of evolution's innovations, lifestyles and wonders), and so kind versus degree is as irrelevant as it is confusing. All species (broad sense) think and act in their own way. Would you therefore accept the summary I offered earlier:
 
dhw: BBella and I are simply trying to sort out the linguistic mess, which has led to your claiming that difference in degree (capacity, like magnitude, is another difference in degree) = difference in kind. All species (broad sense) are different in kind, and all species have different degrees - sometimes massively so - of intelligence [and of manoeuvrability, adaptability, perception, social organization] etc. Simple.