New Miscellany 2: animal intelligence, human feet, the quest (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 04, 2025, 09:30 (1 day, 20 hours, 11 min. ago) @ dhw

Intelligent cuttlefish

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

dhw: That did not invalidate the tests, which proved the cuttlefish’s ability to solve new problems, but also showed that some individuals are more intelligent than others. Nothing to do with “depth of conceptualization”. And you continue to demand tests for the resin insects, and to insist that your God had to teach the opossum to feign death.

DAVID: Only dead opossums would leave a clue as to how to stay alive by pretending death. Really!?

Pete the opossum sees Willy the Wolf approach a dead opossum, have a sniff, and then walk away. One day he sees Willy before Willy sees him, and he remembers the incident, realizes he’s too slow to get away if Willy sees him, and hopes that playing dead might save him. It does. And then he tells all his mates. Do you think this is less credible than God saying to himself: “I must teach opossums to play dead, because otherwise wolves might kill them and eat them, and I really need them to survive so that humans can kill them and eat them”?

Our special feet

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.

dhw: Your only response to this argument was to repeat your own theory that your God designed our feet, presumably along with our legs and pelvises, BEFORE we left the trees.

DAVID: Under your scheme why migrate if your feet don't feel like doing it?

It is perfectly possible to walk on non-human feet, as you may have noticed when you take your dog for walkies. Many animals can trek for miles in their search for food. My point is that walking on two legs would create different pressures on the feet, and the cells would adapt accordingly. In other words, we didn’t migrate because we had well adapted feet: our feet adapted to the demands made by migration. Under your scheme, God operates on the feet and then tells humans to go walkies, just as he operates on pre-whales’ legs to turn them into flippers, and tells them they go and have a swim. Same old story: you can’t bear the thought that cell communities may adapt and even innovate IN RESPONSE to new conditions. Your God always has to preprogramme or dabble every change in advance.

DAVID: Mindless cells cannot produce a new species. Only a designing mind.

As usual, you assume that you know it all. We are not talking only of new species. You apply your prejudice to all levels: cuttlefish passing tests, weaverbirds’ nests, bird migration, the opossum’s survival trick, the adaptation of feet to the demands of bipedalism, and of legs to the demands of life in the water. And looming over all this is your nonsensical theory of evolution, as dealt with in Part 1.

First land animals

DAVID: This finding satisfies dhw's wish for more fossil discoveries by filling a recognized gap in specimens. That is what is left to find, just specimens to fill recognized gaps in the fossil record. New, dramatic, theory changing discoveries are most unlikely.

dhw: Thank you once more for your integrity in providing more evidence against your own wished-for theories. Sadly, though, you have never understood my motive for writing the brief guide and setting up this website.

I shan’t repeat my arguments.

DAVID: A true agnostic statement, and thank you.

I trust that from now on you will stop distorting my quest for answers to all the mysteries as some kind of atheism. But I do remain profoundly grateful to you for remaining with me during this long quest, and for all the educational articles you keep providing.