New Miscellany 2: eco, intelligence, human feet (General)

by David Turell , Monday, June 02, 2025, 18:19 (3 days ago) @ dhw

Ecosystems

DAVID: The Earth evolved to allow our development and control as much we can and do.

dhw: I thought you thought it was your God who controlled what the Earth did. And according to you, he kept changing the conditions, designing new species to fit the new conditions, culling 99.9% of them, and for some reason went on doing this for 3.X billion years, creating and destroying 99.9 out of 100 species and econiches that had no connection with us, in order for us to exist and develop. You have no idea why he would have fulfilled his one and only purpose this way, except that he must be a messy, inefficient designer, but you will go on repeating your theory rather than accept the possibility that it or at least part of it might be wrong.

My theory as defined in Part 1 needs no corrections: "Our magnificent brain, the most unusual item in the universe, defines His goal. My criticism of His method notwithstanding."

Intelligent cuttlefish

dhw: You went on and on about “testing” the resin-using insect before you would accept that it is intelligent. Now you completely ignore the tests made on the cuttlefish (as quoted above) and focus only on a form of behaviour which would have developed naturally out of experience. The tests prove the cuttlefish’s intelligence (which unlike instinctive actions varies from individual to individual) but no, prejudice wins again.

DAVID: Not my prejudice. From the article:

(We both provided sets of quotes, which I shan’t repeat here.)

dhw: The authors speculate that there is a connection with foraging – an instinct no doubt developed from experience – but these tests demand instant decisions. Learning on the spot to solve a totally new problem requires intelligence, and crucially it is clear that individuals differ in their ability to solve such problems. In other words, some cuttlefish are more intelligent than others.

dhw: You have already accepted that parrots, corvids, some insects and animals are intelligent, but you still deny the possibility that others may be intelligent too. Your God has to make all their decisions for them.

DAVID: No, animal intelligence is world wide.

dhw: But according to you, cuttlefish are not intelligent, and the resin-using insect needs to be tested, and the opossum needs a lecture from God on how to feign death, and we humans could not survive if God hadn’t designed them all and taught them what to do.

It all depends on how deeply an animal can conceptualize. The authors, themselves, questioned the use of foraging experience helping the cuttlefish.

Our special feet

DAVID: another aspect of our exceptionality. Mobility.

dhw: I really don’t think we are any more mobile than our four-footed friends, and I would suggest that it was not the shape of our feet that enabled us to tackle long-distance locomotion, but our desire to go further and further afield that gradually produced the changes described above. [I shan't repeat the whole argument here.]

DAVID: God gave us migrating feet. Another example of your anti-exceptionalism prejudice.

dhw: There is no “anti-exceptionalism”. I am not denying that our feet are different from other animals’ feet! I am offering an explanation of HOW those feet may have evolved BECAUSE we migrated and not in order to allow us to migrate. Instead of considering my proposal, you simply repeat your own theory, that your God operated on our ancestors' legs, pelvises and now feet, and then told them to go walkies. NB: The ability of cells to make changes to their structure in response to new conditions does not exclude your God, who may have given them this ability in the first place.

DAVID: Back you jump to your neutral position.

dhw: And away you jump from answering the argument. To the above I would add that your talk of “improvement” in Part One is illustrated by this example. Improvements are the changes made to enable species to adapt more efficiently to their environment. Elephants are not an “improvement” on dinosaurs. But the changes to the human foot, like the changes to the pre-whale’s legs, are an improvement in the ability to cope with new conditions.

Elephants are less dangerous than dinosaurs was my point. How does guideless evolution produce such masterful designs? That is what you claim happened.