Back to David's theory of evolution of abstract thought (Evolution)

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 14, 2020, 19:09 (1591 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Same old story: the bees must do abstract thinking to connect biting leaves to later more immediate flowering.

dhw: This is not abstract thinking "in terms of universals"! It is "just particulars", in this case the ability to link cause and effect, which in animals involves observing and learning from and about concrete events, connected in some way with survival... Non-human animals observe, experience, remember, and act upon what they have learned and remembered. But I agree with the article: we can think abstractly at a level way, way, way beyond that of our fellow animals.

The bite/earlier flowering of course is obvious to us. For the bee is requires the same degree of conceptual thought that we use. You are implying reasoning ability to bees they do not have. they only think concretely.

DAVID: I know your brain is an exceptional human brain, based on your debating techniques of distortion and twists of my statements, and also upon your very clever prose (books I've read) and poetry. But the bee brain is nothing like our prefrontal and frontal cortex in volume and complexity. Habilis could barely conceptualize, compared to us. It took 600 more cc's of complexity! Human brain function exceptionalism is not an accident of chance. As Adler states it proves God beyond a reasonable doubt. You are joined at the hip with all those distressed folks who want to purposely get rid of the exceptionalism. The campaign is obvious and a gross distortion of the difference. Read his article in which he describes how he handle his dog, Pippa. Similar to my horse discussion.

dhw: I have ALWAYS agreed that we are exceptional, and your persistent efforts to claim otherwise are a gross distortion of my beliefs. And I do not believe that bees have our brain or intellectual capacity or ability to philosophize and conceptualize and analyse. Nor do I have a problem with Adler using our brain as evidence for the existence of God. Once again, you erect a straw man in order to dodge the issue between us, which is your insistence that your all-powerful God directly designed every non-human life form etc. in the history of life although his sole purpose was to directly design H. sapiens.

Same tired illogical complaint about my theory and Adler's. You want an impatient God!

Under “Earwig wing folding”:
"'Nature has consistently been an everlasting source of inspiration," says Prof Zhong You, from Oxford University's Department of Engineering Science and co-author of the work. "Bioinspired technologies keep offering some of the most efficient and sustainable ways to meet many of the challenges of the future.[/i]'" (DAVID’s bold)

DAVID: Nature continues to be smarter than we are, or might I say the designer is smarter.

dhw: So in order to specially design H. sapiens, your God specially designed the folding wing of the earwig, presumably as part of the food supply we need. And the programme for earwig wing-folding was already contained in the first living cells, and all God had to do was remove the other billions of programmes, or pick this one out from among the billions, firstly so that the earwig could exist, and secondly so that it could fold its wings. And this is a more likely explanation than your God giving cell communities the intelligence to work out their own designs. But I would emphasize that this is a different kind of intelligence from ours. It does not entail abstract thinking "in terms of universals". It entails finding concrete ways to improve chances of survival.

You are still describing Brainy Cells that are designed by God to follow His instructions, nothing more.