How children pick up a language: new review of Wolfe (Humans)

by dhw, Thursday, November 03, 2016, 11:30 (2941 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: I acknowledge the vast mental gap between us and all other species, and in my evolutionary hypothesis (theistic version), I can even allow for divine dabbling. What I cannot allow for is the claim that your God specially designed all other forms of life and natural wonders extant and extinct for no other purpose than to pave the way for humans. That seems to be the only reason for your preoccupation with the distinction, and that is our sticking point.

My more direct answer would have to be: humans, chimps, chickens, dolphins and ants are all different in kind. So are their languages, and so are their consciousnesses, unless you believe a chimp thinks like a chicken like a dolphin etc. etc. However, although all of these are conscious in their own different ways, I believe humans have additional degrees of consciousness which make them almost incalculably more aware of themselves and of the world around them than any other organism. Similarly a dog’s sense of smell is vastly more sensitive than a human’s. “More aware”, “more sensitive” are terms that denote degree, but the degree can be part of the difference in kind that distinguishes all species (broad sense). In materialist terms, if the human brain is different in kind from the dog’s brain, the dog’s nose is different in kind from the human nose. For me, your (Adler’s) attempted distinction between degree and kind leads nowhere.

DAVID: That is not my point at all. Adler's book The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes assumes Evolution is true and that evolution always shows differences in small degree as it advances toward the more complex, except in the case of humans.

You and I have long since agreed that evolution proceeds by saltations and not by Darwin’s “small degrees”, the Cambrian Explosion being an obvious example. So we both disagree with Adler on this point.

DAVID: It is a long philosophic, not a theological argument taken from scientific findings as of 1966, that humans are uniquely different, not by degree, but totally different in kind, with introspective and conceptual consciousness, a jump not explained by evolution.

I agree with you that human consciousness is special (see my bold in the passages you have quoted.) But as we have already agreed, evolution does not explain consciousness at ANY level. Nor does it explain saltations. ANY saltations, not just that from narrow thinker to broad thinker. But since you and I believe evolution happened, we continue to search for the inventive mechanism that enabled ALL species to evolve through countless saltatory innovations from the common ancestor.

DAVID: Adler, born Jewish, died a Catholic and was a philosophic advisor to the Church. My comments about degree and kind are either not understood by you or you are trying to use the word 'kind' in a different context than in which I use it. I suggest you read his book. It has a powerful argument that we are very, very special, and allows one to conclude we are special creation.

That is the nub of the whole argument. I do not dispute that our vastly superior consciousness makes us very, very special. In my theistic version of evolution, I have even allowed for the possibility of dabbling. But – let me repeat – that does not mean God geared every innovation and natural wonder extant and extinct to the production of humans. And although I have allowed for dabbling, “special creation” loses all significance when you insist that every other innovation and natural wonder was also “special creation”.