Simon Conway Morris on animal intelligence (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, January 15, 2017, 12:04 (2869 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: “Since we doubtlessly did originate from animal ancestors, the gap between us and them must have been bridged at some point in time. Perhaps it was not a jump, but a continuous evolution. Were the mental abilities of the cavewoman or caveman really as advanced as today’s humans? How much ability for abstraction and appreciation of complex numbers did they have?”

This seems to me to miss the obvious point that each generation builds on the experience of its predecessors, and so it is not an alternative between jump and continuous evolution, but a combination of the two. At some point, humans developed an enhanced degree of consciousness (the jump). We can only speculate on what might have triggered it, but once the first questions had been asked, the process would have become unstoppable: a continuous evolution of questions and answers, discoveries and applications of discoveries, extending to all areas of life.

QUOTE: "Since modern humans are the evidence that bridging the gap is possible, we might ask why it wasn’t bridged earlier, perhaps by an intelligent octopus, a smart dinosaur, a dolphin, or another ape? They’ve had millions more years to evolve than we have, but in their case the gap was not overcome. Are we really so special? If so, what it is it, exactly, that makes us special?”

What makes us so special is an enhanced awareness which other organisms do not have. In my view, all our differences spring from that one source.

QUOTE: "This lies at the core of the Fermi Paradox (or better called the Great Silence)—the puzzle of why we haven’t seen any spacefaring aliens. How often is the intelligence gap bridged on other planets? I agree with Conway Morris that we likely live in a Cosmic Zoo. And if he still believes in his earlier principle of convergent evolution, would that not also extend to the rise of intelligent and technologically advanced aliens?"

Pure and pointless speculation. There is no puzzle – simply a collection of open questions. Is there life on other planets? If so, might it have evolved or remained at, say, bacterial level? If it has evolved, into what forms might it have evolved? The current answer to all three questions is that we do not know. Anything is possible, including nothing.

David’s comment: The brain became bigger and more complex. That is true. How about recognizing that God did it on this planet and nowhere else?

I don’t know if the complexification of the brain triggered the enhanced awareness or resulted from it.
Whether God exists or not, there is no reason why ours should be the only planet with life, but until we find another one, we can only speculate.