The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness
A group of distinguished scholars from various disciplines, including philosophy, neuroscience and biology, are signatories to The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, published 19th April 2024 by New York University. It concerns the likelihood of whether non-human animals can be considered subjects of experience.
[quote=NY Declaration on Animal Consciousness - Homepage]Which animals have the capacity for conscious experience? While much uncertainty remains, some points of wide agreement have emerged.
First, there is strong scientific support for attributions of conscious experience to other mammals and to birds.
Second, the empirical evidence indicates at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates (including reptiles, amphibians, and fishes) and many invertebrates (including, at minimum, cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans, and insects).
Third, when there is a realistic possibility of conscious experience in an animal, it is irresponsible to ignore that possibility in decisions affecting that animal. We should consider welfare risks and use the evidence to inform our responses to these risks.[/quote]
[quote=NYDAC, Background;https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/nydeclaration/background] What is consciousness? The term has a variety of meanings. The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness focuses on one important meaning, sometimes called phenomenal consciousness or sentience. The question here is which animals can have subjective experiences. This can include sensory experiences (say, the experience of a particular touch, taste, sight, or smell) as well as experiences that feel good or bad (say, the experience of pleasure, pain, hope, or fear). This sense of the term consciousness is what Thomas Nagel had in mind when he famously asked What is it like to be a bat?.
Subjective experience requires more than the mere ability to detect stimuli. However, it does not require sophisticated capacities such as human-like language or reason. Phenomenal consciousness is raw feelingimmediate felt experience, be it sensory or emotionaland this is something that may well be shared between humans and many other animals. Of course, human-like linguistic and rational capabilities may allow some humans to have forms of experience that other animals lack (e.g. a linguistic inner monologue). Likewise, many other animals may have forms of experience that we lack.
Which animals are conscious in this sense? The advances just described, taken together, are sending a clear message: we need to take seriously the possibility that a very wide range of animals, including all vertebrates and many invertebrates, can have subjective experiences.
It would be inappropriate to talk about proof, certainty, or conclusive evidence in the search for animal consciousness, because the nature of consciousness is still hotly contested. However, it is entirely appropriate to interpret these remarkable displays of learning, memory, planning, problem-solving, self-awareness, and other such capacities as evidence of consciousness in cases where the same behavior, if found in a human or other mammal, would be well explained by conscious processing. These behaviors make it more likely that these animals have consciousness without proving that they have it, just as the symptoms of a disease make it more likely that you have the disease without proving that you have it.
With other mammals and birds, we can now say that the evidence establishes strong scientific support for attributions of consciousnessnot conclusive evidence, but many lines of evidence all pointing in the same direction. With other vertebrates (reptiles, amphibians, and fishes) and many invertebrates (cephalopod mollusks such as octopuses and cuttlefish, decapod crustaceans such as hermit crabs and crayfish, and insects such as bees and fruit flies), we can now say that the evidence establishes at least a realistic possibility of consciousness. The chance is high enough to warrant further research aimed at addressing questions of consciousness in these animals. The chance is also high enough to warrant serious consideration of their welfare.[/quote]
Click on the links for more detail. Posted FYI.
[quote=NY Declaration on Animal Consciousness - Homepage]Which animals have the capacity for conscious experience? While much uncertainty remains, some points of wide agreement have emerged.
First, there is strong scientific support for attributions of conscious experience to other mammals and to birds.
Second, the empirical evidence indicates at least a realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates (including reptiles, amphibians, and fishes) and many invertebrates (including, at minimum, cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans, and insects).
Third, when there is a realistic possibility of conscious experience in an animal, it is irresponsible to ignore that possibility in decisions affecting that animal. We should consider welfare risks and use the evidence to inform our responses to these risks.[/quote]
[quote=NYDAC, Background;https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/nydeclaration/background] What is consciousness? The term has a variety of meanings. The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness focuses on one important meaning, sometimes called phenomenal consciousness or sentience. The question here is which animals can have subjective experiences. This can include sensory experiences (say, the experience of a particular touch, taste, sight, or smell) as well as experiences that feel good or bad (say, the experience of pleasure, pain, hope, or fear). This sense of the term consciousness is what Thomas Nagel had in mind when he famously asked What is it like to be a bat?.
Subjective experience requires more than the mere ability to detect stimuli. However, it does not require sophisticated capacities such as human-like language or reason. Phenomenal consciousness is raw feelingimmediate felt experience, be it sensory or emotionaland this is something that may well be shared between humans and many other animals. Of course, human-like linguistic and rational capabilities may allow some humans to have forms of experience that other animals lack (e.g. a linguistic inner monologue). Likewise, many other animals may have forms of experience that we lack.
Which animals are conscious in this sense? The advances just described, taken together, are sending a clear message: we need to take seriously the possibility that a very wide range of animals, including all vertebrates and many invertebrates, can have subjective experiences.
It would be inappropriate to talk about proof, certainty, or conclusive evidence in the search for animal consciousness, because the nature of consciousness is still hotly contested. However, it is entirely appropriate to interpret these remarkable displays of learning, memory, planning, problem-solving, self-awareness, and other such capacities as evidence of consciousness in cases where the same behavior, if found in a human or other mammal, would be well explained by conscious processing. These behaviors make it more likely that these animals have consciousness without proving that they have it, just as the symptoms of a disease make it more likely that you have the disease without proving that you have it.
With other mammals and birds, we can now say that the evidence establishes strong scientific support for attributions of consciousnessnot conclusive evidence, but many lines of evidence all pointing in the same direction. With other vertebrates (reptiles, amphibians, and fishes) and many invertebrates (cephalopod mollusks such as octopuses and cuttlefish, decapod crustaceans such as hermit crabs and crayfish, and insects such as bees and fruit flies), we can now say that the evidence establishes at least a realistic possibility of consciousness. The chance is high enough to warrant further research aimed at addressing questions of consciousness in these animals. The chance is also high enough to warrant serious consideration of their welfare.[/quote]
Click on the links for more detail. Posted FYI.
Comments (157)
Is NYU running out of things to do?
[Url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691180474/]Mind of a Bee[/url] is pretty cool.
Dammit! Stop making me think that I need to read that book.
Which book? Do you mean
[Url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691180474/]Mind of a Bee[/url]
[Url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691180474/]Mind of a Bee[/url]
[Url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691180474/]Mind of a Bee[/url]
[Url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691180474/]Mind of a Bee[/url]
[Url=https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691180474/]Mind of a Bee[/url]
?
:rage:
My bad.
My first reaction was very similar to bert1's. But then I realized you're right: just knowing something, or considering it obvious isn't enough to convince people who prefer to deny it. For a very long time, the official stance of the scientific community, as well as the food industry, fur trade, sport hunting, etc., was that all other species exist for us to use in any way we like. That belief is not necessarily shared by people with no personal vested interest in experimentation, meat, fashion or cosmetics businesses - but we choose not to think about it when buying their products - like canned meat, booties and medicine for our pets... We are a species of supremely capable hypocrites and double-thinkers.
It's good to have an authoritative voice speak up for our suffering fellow creatures. Also, a public announcement means it will get some mass media attention. If it helps even a few people adjust their perspective even a little bit, then it helps.
Or, there is a very nice documentary
While you're in the library, pick up The Earth Dwellers
Unfortunately, Youtube says the video is unavailable.
Probably international copyright disputes again. It's a CBC production, can probably be seen on other venues. But never mind, You Tube has a whole bunch of goodies.
Beautiful cinematography.
Thank you very much for this information. I think that the attempt of these scientists is remarkable, especially because they compromise their seriousness by involving themselves in a field that is extremely important, but also very confused and exposed to criticism. I think it is an important sign of a cultural sensitivity that we are getting more and more in last decades.
I believe it would be useful to clarify the points that can cause confusion.
The core basis of the declaration is in the few lines paragraph that starts with What is consciousness?:
What is consciousness? The term has a variety of meanings. The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness focuses on one important meaning, sometimes called phenomenal consciousness or sentience. The question here is which animals can have subjective experiences. This can include sensory experiences (say, the experience of a particular touch, taste, sight, or smell) as well as experiences that feel good or bad (say, the experience of pleasure, pain, hope, or fear). This sense of the term consciousness is what Thomas Nagel had in mind when he famously asked What is it like to be a bat?.
Essentially they say that what consciousness is is completely unclear. Their ultimate reference point is Nagels famous article, which doesnt clarify anything, remains ambiguous, so that, at the end, these scientists have no idea of what they are talking about in their declaration. I am saying this not to ridiculise these scientists, but, on the contrary, to point out their courage, as I said.
I think that the essential reference point in talking about consciousness is the dialectic relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. This is what is never clarified by Nagel, nor by these scientists, nor by anybody else, as far as I know in my quite limited bunch of information on the topic.
The paragraph I mentioned What is consciousness? is confused exactly because it mixes and messes up references to objectivity and subjectivity in trying to explain what consciousness is.
If consciousness is an objective phenomenon, it coincides with Chalmers easy problem of consciousness. As a consequence of this, suffering does not exist, since it is just a series of physical and chemical reactions happening in our body, that has been programmed by nature to favour our survival. This means, for example, that, when a human is tortured, nobody is suffering, what we have is just a series of objective, mechanical, material, measurable phenomenons, the same way when you hit a computer that has been programmed to show signs of suffering, actually nobody is really suffering, despite whatever that computer has been made able to show: it is just a show, there is not any actual somebody suffering inside that computer. This means that, even when I feel bad, I feel pain, I must interpret it the same way: I am just a theatre where a show happens. Any feelings, pain, suffering, desperation of mine, has to be considered by myself just as mechanical phenomenons. When I am suffering, actually nobody is suffering. This coincides with certain metaphysical constructions that we can find in spiritualities and religions, where everything is explained in terms of a system that works as a whole, despite its complex, diversified or even conflicting and opposing components.
For some unexplained and inexplicable reason, we humans talk also about subjectivity, which coincides with Chalmers hard problem of consciousness. To the extent that it is exactly subjectivity, it cannot be explained and it has to be impossible to explain it. When we explain something, even when I explain something to myself, we cant escape using shared concepts and reference points. To the extent that they are shared, they are not entirely subjective anymore. This means that, whenever we talk about subjectivity, we cannot escape turning it automatically into an objective concept made and expressed by objective and shared reference points, so that what we are talking about is not anymore the subjectivity we wanted to explain. This meets Wittgesteins statement What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. According to Wittgestein and to what I said, we must give up any attempt to talk about subjectivity. I disagree with this, because language is not exclusively objective and shared, otherwise art wouldnt exist, it wouldnt make sense. Actually there are people who think that art can be entirely reduced to objective phenomenons. This coincides with people who answered Chalmers that a hard problem of consciousness does not exist. The same way it is not possible to give evidence of the existence of consciousness meant as subjectivity: if such evidence exists, as those scientists agree in the declaration, then it is not subjectivity anymore, it is objectivity.
I dont think we can build any morality, as the declaration tries to do, basing on an objectivistic interpretation of consciousness. They wrote
Third, when there is a realistic possibility of conscious experience in an animal, it is irresponsible to ignore that possibility in decisions affecting that animal.
Why is it irresponsible? In a mentality that relies on objectivity, a stone that has been broken into small pieces is not something worse than when it was intact, just in one whole piece. The same way an animal, or a human, or a plant, that has been torn in pieces, it doesnt matter how much suffering has been caused, is not something worse than a living being happily enjoying their life. At the end, this is what our cruel universe shows us, not caring at all if our minuscule planet Earth exists or not.
At the end, we can see that the declaration, by talking about irresponsibility, tries to create a scientific basis upon which to build some kind of morality, which is destined to failure, because morality, by definition, cannot be scientific.
Fortunately the declaration is confused, because it contains references to subjectivity as well. They just dont realize that subjectivity cannot and mustnt be proved. As I said, if we prove it, then it is not subjectivity.
I think that, if we want to include references to subjectivity in our minds, talks, discussions, mentalities, we need to stop with Wittgesteins mentality and accept that language and philosophy have to accept and welcome their ability to refer to unprovable things and concepts. We need to welcome the methods and styles that are typical of art, poetry, music, and accept the fact that frequently, when somebody asks us to give evidence and clarity of what we are talking about, we cannot give it, they cannot claim evidence and clarity as something always essential, always required and necessary.
In other words, we need to integrate analytical philosophy, which wants clarity and objectivity, with continental philosophy, that accepts to venture into unprovable concepts.
Quoting Vera Mont
My thoughts too.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
I take your point, but I think they kind of acknowledge that:
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Quite agree, and also agree that it is something that cannot be explained.
Do we need to explain or prove the value of life or freedom or happiness before we grant people the right to it? We don't all have one another's subjective experience and we have not required that to understand that we have these experiences in common. How do we know? Because we see ourselves in one another. We see ourselves in the actions and reactions of other species, too.
No, we don't. That is Angelo's point, as I understood it.
I guess I didn't understand it. I didn't discern confusion. I thought they simply resolved to put aside the controversy - that is, the conflict between acknowledging what our senses perceive and the convenient pretense of vested interests that treat other species as inanimate objects. We've been through all this with the characterization of non-Europeans, non-Christians, non-males, non-heterosexuals as "other" and therefore subject to abuse.
Where I see this statement as being philosophically significant, is precisely because it acknowledges the capacity for experience as something inherently real and worthy of recognition. True, none of us act as if animals are machines, but the mechanistic metaphor still holds considerable sway over the scientific attitude.
[quote=Smithonian]To communicate through the network, trees send chemical, hormonal and slow-pulsing electrical signals, which scientists are just beginning to decipher. Edward Farmer at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland has been studying the electrical pulses, and he has identified a voltage-based signaling system that appears strikingly similar to animal nervous systems (although he does not suggest that plants have neurons or brains). Alarm and distress appear to be the main topics of tree conversation, although Wohlleben wonders if thats all they talk about. What do trees say when there is no danger and they feel content? This I would love to know. Monica Gagliano at the University of Western Australia has gathered evidence that some plants may also emit and detect sounds, and in particular, a crackling noise in the roots at a frequency of 220 hertz, inaudible to humans.[/quote]
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/
Wohleben now has a book called "The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion: Surprising Observations of a Hidden World". If it's as good as the tree one, it's well worth the read.
Quoting Wayfarer
Therefore, in his school of thought, all humans are also eligible for protein, slave labour, spare parts and experimentation without their consent?
Quoting Wayfarer
I get the contest between conscience and self-interest. I don't get the separate categorization of equally inexplicable consciousnesses.
That would appear to be entailed by his philosophy, however despite arguing for it all throughout his career, he never actually behaved as if it were true. It is one of the many glaring contradictions in his writing. 'He was a Darwinian materialist in his cosmology and metaphysics while also strongly affirming human dignity as well as a progressive brand of liberalism in his ethics and politics. Herein lies the massive contradiction of his system of thought. He boldly proclaims that we live in an accidental universe without divine and natural support for the special dignity of man as a species or as individuals; yet he retains a sentimental attachment to liberal-democratic values that lead him to affirm a humane society that respects the rights of persons and protects the weak from exploitation by the strong and from other injustices. He also objects to B. F. Skinner and the sociobiologists for reducing man to the desires for pleasure, power, and procreation. And he condemned Social Darwinism as "an odious misapplication of Darwin's thinking" and expressed outrage at child abuse, the exploitation of women, and President George W Bush's attempt to rewrite the Geneva Convention's definition of torture as violations of personal dignity. In short, he was a conventional political liberal of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, type whose moral doctrine is a version of neo-Kantian liberalism that assumes the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. But none of this follows logically from his Darwinian materialism and it even contradicts it, which means Dennett's humane liberalism is a blind leap of faith that is just as dogmatic as the religious faith he deplored.'
There's a lovely lyric in the late, great David Crosby's last hit song, River Rise:
'and the wind has its own language
spoken by the trees.'
(Our personal 2023 Song of the Year.)
Why has anybody got any use for him? Seems like just another blowhard talking through his....hat.
As compared to what? The religious attitude?
Can you hear the bigotry in the phrase "the scientific attitude"? Do you not recognize scientists as individuals?
Yes, poor choice of words. I meant scientific worldview, although you might say there is no such thing - and I agree, as science is more a method than a worldview. But Daniel Dennett was one who truly did hold the 'the scientific worldview' as the only real philosophy.
In this context I think we should acknowledge that there is no way to definitely, strongly, ban violence from human behaviour. This is the confusion contained in the New York declaration. They want to define a scientific ground to ban violence from humanity, but violence is subjective, you cannot avoid it by taking science as your weapon against violence. Dennett was a good hearted person, he didn't need to add anything to his objectivistic mind to be a generous heart, but that's all. The New York declaration is an attempt to go beyond this: they try to turn science into the necessary thing that religions and morality have been revealed unable to be.
This is, I think, where attention to subjectivity can not only do something, but especially show the correct methodology: the correct methodology is integrating in a dialog acceptance of unprovable arguments, of which subjectivity is the main one, and science.
The mixture, the messing up of references to subjectivity and objectivity in the New York declaration is not a completely bad thing: attention to subjectivity and objectivity need to go together, but in a clear dialog, aware of their different characteristics, rather than just in a confused mix, where science is surreptitiously tempted to fill the place that has been left empty by the deconstruction of religions.
It was actually the dominant default in natural science up into the early 70s. If you officially and/or in papers referred to animals and having motivations, consciousness, desires, etc. you were putting your career on the line. It wasn't exactly that the line was they don't have it, but the default was we don't know and people are confused if they think we do. You could say scientists were allowed to be behaviorists and talk perhaps about drives, but not to assume animals were experiencers.
Until evidence is provided, I will stay unconvinced.
You can try, but very few buck the prevailing attitude of their times.
As individual people, scientists start out as little babies. They grow up in an environment of other people, in a culture, in a religious faith, in an economic stratum, in an education system. All those influences precede their identity as 'scientist', and all those influences don't just fall off when they're handed a little scroll on graduation.
In the sciences, as in architecture, music, law or theology, there are periods and prevailing trends. A few giants of the field set the tone for a new period: their radical, original theories are internalized by less creative thinkers; become doctrine in the colleges and taught to the next generation, where they become dogma... Until a new young giant grows up to challenge the status quo and the less creative thinkers of his generation take up a new theory as doctrine....
What form would that evidence take?
Of course; I have all the proof I require.
https://rsawa.research.ucla.edu/arc/subject-experience-animals/
If I ask various AI online they agree that it was taboo to assert that animals had subjective experience before the 60s and 70s and mention things like this
Note that in 71 it was consider a question.¨
And if I shift the wording around using terms like sentience, subjective experience, animals as experiences, the answers I get all start around the 70s.
And one might ask why as late as 2004 there would be an article with the title
[i]Subjective experience is probably not limited to humans:
The evidence from neurobiology and behavior[/i]
https://ccrg.cs.memphis.edu/assets/papers/2005/Baars-Subjective%20animals-2005.pdf
The abstract here points out how behaviorism eliminated even interest in animal sentience for most of the 20th century.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159106001110
And given Behaviorism's dominance
https://www.fondation-droit-animal.org/proceedings-aw/animal-welfare-a-brief-history/
Me, I'm basing my opinion on my experience with the scientific community and given my age this includes experience before, during and after the transition. Unfortunately I can use my memories here. But it's part of why I will be extremely skeptical, not just unconvinced, about your claims in the post I responded to.
I'd like to add that while people in science, like Darwin, did talk about animal emotions, the idea that these include subjective experience were not accepted for much of the 20th century.
Obviously people outside of science have long understood that animals have subjective experience and likely many scientists in their private lives acted and believed they did. But until the 70s the default position coming out of the dominance of behaviorism (and then of course speciesism) in science was at best agnostic and given how tricky it is to prove another mind is experiencing, rather than another organism is behaving, the default position was problematic to go against.
What claim?
Quoting Bylaw
You could just quote it. I am not going to download and read the book. But the Amazon summary does say:
True.
Quoting The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Chapter 5
Quoting The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Chapter 5
Quoting The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals, Chapter 5
Darwin wasn't too long ago, and I did say in my original comment "even centuries ago".
Quoting Bylaw
It does.
"The Romantic tradition of the 19th century attributed elaborate anthropomorphic thoughts, feelings and intentions to animals."
"Behaviorists of the early 20th century side stepped the issue: because psychological states were private, they could not be characterized objectively, even in humans."
Quoting Bylaw
You see, they actually agree that it was not taboo :roll:
Besides all that, your claim that "It was actually the default [view] in natural science up into the early 70s." requires extraordinary evidence, specially because "natural science into the 70s" specifies almost an unbounded territory, whose map I don't think you have. I don't doubt that your professor may have told you that the literature avoided claiming animals have consciousness, the person who wrote the UCLA article seems to agree, but that is your professor reporting his experience with the literature he had access to. A far cry from "natural science into the 70s".
Nothing, that's why it is a sidenote.
I basically agree with @Bylaw, that, in effect, the fact that non-rational animals are subjects of experience was barely considered until very recently. Not that animals were always treated as 'unthinking machines', as there have been humane societies and people very much aware of animal suffering for a long time, although laboratory science has often paid animal suffering very little attention.
Quoting Vera Mont
Only that rationality and language allow you to reflect on experience, to make it the subject of conscious deliberation and analysis, as well as simply feeling it.
How sure are we about this baseline of 'rationality'? If evolution is a continuous, fluid process, it admits of no hard boundaries between existing and emergent species. Does it not follow that the traits of progenitors continue in a fluid way through the progeny and undergo gradual change, rather than stopping and starting at arbitrary borders?
So with intelligence, memory, pattern-recognition and cognition. Maybe Descartes was right in that dogs "do not philosophize", but they do dream; they remember persons, places, rules, and experiences. Is "reflection" very far from memory?
That much-vaunted human language ain't so unique either. Practically every vertebrate communicates in a way that is intelligible to other members of its species. Just because you don't know what a frog or starling or hyena is talking about, why assume they have no language? We may not understand what Javanese people say to one another, yet we assume that since they are human, they are speaking a language, because language is a uniquely human attribute... Like the use of clothing and tools. Ask a crow or octopus about that.
As for conscious deliberation, I have seen some pretty elaborate escape plans put into action - not by just one dog but two, working together. They abandoned the strategy we humans had discovered, and devised a new one. Several times. And when the serial escapee returned home hours later, she hung her head and walked in slow motion - you could practically see the little thought-bubble over her head "Oh, I'm in trouble... I'm gonna get it now..." And that's the semi-bright Pyrenees, not her henchman, the clever border collie X. (I also recommend video compilations on You Tube.) Animals have ideas, carry out plans, try to hide or deny their misdeeds. Where is the big black line of demarcation?
I think 'intelligible' is too strong a word.
From a review of Why Only Us? Noam Chomsky and Robert Berwick.
As I've said, I don't dispute that animals are sentient beings. i've owned dogs, one of ours had quite a large 'vocabulary' - like, he'd sometimes begin to bark when he thought he overheard one of us say 'hello' or 'hi' because it meant someone was at the door. Animals are capable of an enormous range of behaviours, and they do communicate, but as the above points out, their languages don't have an heirarchical syntax. It takes the ability to abstract and represent for that.
(Incidentally, the full story of poor Nim Chimsky was very sad. He was 'adopted' by an ambitious animal behaviourist, specifically to demonstrate that a chimpanzee could be taught language, via symbolic communication (not having a vocal tract). But alas, Nim failed, and he was abandoned to a desolate facility for unwanted lab animals, where he died in obscurity. link.)
Quoting Wayfarer
In a second language. (I've known a dog who learned German and later English) Most of ours also spoke fluent feline. Dogs are - of course! - expected to and do learn our words, but we don't all make any effort to learn theirs.
And you know, a Great Dane is hardly ever required to figure how many cars your friend's mechanic is supposed to fix. Just as well you are hardly ever required to read all the messages on a fire hydrant, because most humans couldn't pick out the smell of their own urine from a lineup, never mind a pileup.
All I mean is, every species develops the language in which it needs to communicate, to whom and what it needs to communicate. I do not dispute the extreme complexity of human life and therefore the need for complexity in human communication. But we're still talking flavours and degrees of the same medium, not isolated tanks of different media.
That is the subject of the book I mentioned. Noam Chomsky is of course famous for his theories of language, and that book canvasses how it came to be that only humans developed the capacity - hence the title, 'Why only us?' I haven't read the whole book, but I might get around to it.
Agree that humans and other species are on a biological continuum, but I also believe that humans crossed a threshold with the advent of language, tool use, and so on, and that it is a highly signficant difference, that though we're related to other animals, we're more than 'just animals'. And I think this is something mostly lost sight of in many naturalist accounts of humanity. Interestingly Alfred Russel Wallace expressed similar ideas in his essay 'Darwinism Applied to Man' albeit in florid Victorian prose.
That's your favored way of thinking about it because your Buddhist presuppositions require humans to be "more" than other animals. We can equally say that humans are, in respect of language and tool use, merely unique among, rather than "more than", the animals, which I think is a more balanced and modest assessment, and which eschews the dangers of hubris inherent in notions of human exceptionalism.
Here's a collection of human artifacts, the likes of which could have been constructed by no other animal:
I acknowledge that due to the acquisition of symbolic language that humans are capable of a kind of linguistically mediated memory and self-reflection that animals would presumably not be. But how would that amount to an ontological difference rather than just a different mode of consciousness?
As to your charge that I am biased by naturalist presuppositions, that is not true. I have come to naturalist conclusions because I see no good reason to posit anything other than nature and culture at work in humans. Do you have good reasons that you can clearly lay out for thinking that something beyond nature is needed to explain human life and experience?
Well, recall what an ontological distinction is. In information technology, the ontology of a system comprises a catalog of the different major components and also some info about the relationship between them. In more traditional terms, ontology is usually associated with metaphysics and questions about the meaning and constituent kinds of being(s).
In this case, I think the differences between humans and other animals are manifold. Apart from language and rational ability, there's also abstract skills like mathematical reasoning, art and science. We're also existential animals - we have a grasp of our own mortality that is generally absent in other creatures (although mention might be made of elephants who seem to have quite a vivid awareness of death.)
There's a book by E F Schumacher, of Small is Beautiful fame, called Guide to the Perplexed (his last book, I believe). In it there's a brief outline of an ontological scheme which I think bears resemblance to the Aristotelian.
[quote=Wikipedia]Schumacher agrees with the view that there are four kingdoms: Mineral, Plant, Animal, Human. He argues that there are important differences of kind between each level of being. Between mineral and plant is the phenomenon of life. Schumacher says that although scientists say we should not use the phrase 'life energy', the difference between inorganic and organic matter still exists and has not been explained by science to the extent of rendering said phrase fully invalid. Schumacher points out that though we can recognize life and destroy it, we can't create it. Schumacher notes that the 'life sciences' are 'extraordinary' because they hardly ever deal with life as such, and instead content themselves with analyzing the "physico-chemical body which is life's carrier." Schumacher goes on to say there is nothing in physics or chemistry to explain the phenomenon of life.
For Schumacher, a similar jump in level of being takes place between plant and animal, which is differentiated by the phenomenon of consciousness. We can recognize consciousness, not least because we can knock an animal unconscious, but also because animals exhibit at minimum primitive thought and intelligence.
The next level, according to Schumacher, is between Animal and Human, which are differentiated by the phenomenon of self-consciousness or self-awareness. Self-consciousness is the reflective awareness of one's consciousness and thoughts.
Schumacher realizes that the termslife, consciousness and self-consciousnessare subject to misinterpretation so he suggests that the differences can best be expressed as an equation which can be written thus:
"Mineral" = m
"Plant" = m + x
"Animal" = m + x + y
"Human" = m + x + y + z
In his theory, these three factors (x, y and z) represent ontological discontinuities[/quote]
There are things I would argue with but it makes sense to me. I think there's plainly an ontological discontinuity between the mineral and organic domains, and so on for the other domains.
Plainly humans are biological phenomena, but I argue, and I think Schumacher would argue, we're under-determined by biology in a sense that other animals cannot be. Of course, I also think that is the original intuition behind philosophical dualism, such as that of the Phaedo, and whilst I don't agree that such dualisms are literal descriptions, nevertheless they convey something symbolically real about human nature.
As I understand it ontology is concerned with the nature of being and with the different kinds of entities.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't understand why you would say that abstract skills, mathematical reasoning, art and science are not abilities attendant upon symbolic language, or why rational ability is not just a part of what is enabled by symbolic language.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't know what you mean by "existential animals". If it means that we exist, well so do all the other animals. We are aware of our own mortality, perhaps due to langauge, or perhaps it would be possible anyway due to viusal memory and the automatic assumption that what happens to others will also happen to me. If the latter is the case, other animals may also be aware of their mortality. Since they can't tell us, how would we know?
Quoting Wayfarer
You are yet to present an argument as to why you think we are underdetermined by biology in a sense that other animals are not or cannot be, and absent such an argument Schumacher's agreement is either irrelevant or an appeal to authority.
Why do you think that philosophical dualism conveys anything more about human nature than its being due to our linguistically enabled capacity for binary thinking?
Not quite. All kinds of sciences deal with 'different kinds of entities'. Ontology strictly speaking is about kinds of beings. It might be considered obsolete by some. I'm not appealing to Schumacher as an authority, simply as an example of what I consider a valid ontological schema.
This aligns with Nicolai Hartmann's "ontological strata" approach also, for another perspective.
Can you show me the threshold? Tool use is not unique; language is not unique; the 'so on' is built-up levels of complexity. The problem of "more than" is that it is far too easily read by the beneficiaries as "superior to" (rather than "more accountable") and the odious phrase "just animals" is far too easily read as "things". ...
Quoting Wayfarer
If it were, the priests are still there to set us straight: "just animals" have no souls.
Quoting Wayfarer
A bigger, busier, less organized and far less peaceful termite mound.
Bigger, richer, more more voracious, more complex doesn't equate to better. It just means a unique capability for destruction. That should have meant we are also aware and refrain from doing more damage, and some of us have always been that way inclined. But the double-thinking human mind with its complexity and linguistic agility guarantees that this species is unique in its internal conflict and the variety of ways it can go mad.
I've seen you state this before, and I find it interesting and would like to see it better supported. What type of "threshold" are you talking about here? would this be an objective, or a subjective threshold, and in what form does it exist?
By "subjective threshold", and "objective threshold" let me give you an example of what I mean. Suppose that within a given species there is a significant degree of variation, but not enough variation to warrant sub-classes, as sub-species within a species, the sub-classes are only variations. Now suppose one particular variation refuses to interbreed with the other variations, and only breeds amongst others of that particular variation. Then, suppose that this variation branches off and becomes a distinct species. When it was a variation within a species, the "threshold" was subjective, because it was by choice that they bred only amongst themselves avoiding the other variants. But when it became a distinct species, it can no longer breed with the other variety, by physical impossibility, so the threshold is an objective threshold, supported by that physical impossibility.
So what I am asking about your claim "that humans crossed a threshold with the advent of language, tool use, and so on", is to say whether this is objective or subjective. Is it the case that we, as human beings, have subjectively decided to say that we are different (perhaps referring to human intellect), and that our minds have produced some sort of mental, or psychological threshold, or barrier, or is it the case that there is real physical principles (opposing thumb?) which supports your claim of a threshold?
:100: :up:
That's a very interesting anthropological question. It wasn't easy to divide early hominids into classes, and even for a very long period into the species definitely identified as human, we have very few clues as to their thinking. We see rock art and cave art, but can't really know what it meant to the people who made them, or how they regarded themselves or their place in the animal kingdom. Remnants of early mythology (that is, well within the last 50,000 years or so) suggest a respectful attitude toward other species as well as overlap between the human, the animal and the divine spheres.
The hard demarcation line doesn't show up until the after the Neolithic Revolution, with the advent of sophisticated urban societies. If a deliberate psychological threshold was set, I would date it to about 6,000 BC. One of the remarkable features of the ensuing several thousand years is the appearance of human/animal totems as objects of worship and the celebration of hunting as an elite sport. It suggests to me an attempt not merely to dominate, but to subsume the species humans prized, admired or feared.
That wouldn't wash; there are a dozen or more similar hands, and not merely among primates: it includes rats, raccoons and lizards.
Quoting https://www.history.com/topics/pre-history/neolithic-revolution
Quoting https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-urban-megasites-may-reshape-history-first-cities
:victory:
Interesting, I'll look into it.
Quoting Vera Mont
I'm more inclined to the Buddhist view, that all sentient beings suffer and deserve compassion. Buddhists also believe that humans may be reborn into the animal realm (presumably from behaving like animals, as plenty do :-) ) Nevertheless Buddhists still recognise that only in human form can one progress in dharma, as only humans have the required intelligence (notwithstanding that the Buddha appears as an animal in the Jataka tales his previous lives.) Like them, I don't think there is a hard-and-fast boundary between humans and other animals, but I do think that the distinction between animals and humans is a difference that makes a real difference. There are horizons of being open to humans that are invisible to animals (and amounting to considerably more than just 'quarreling and fighting' as you seem to say.)
One of the consequences of popular Darwinism is negation of those real differences, which are existential, spiritual, intellectual, and philosophical. I'm not in favour of intelligent design, other than with respect to the shortcomings of reductionism. But as far as biology is concerned, and as the evolutionary ideologues such as Dennett and Dawkins continually say, human life can be ultimately reduced to, and explained in terms of, the fundamental drives that characterise all other existence, summarised as 'the four F's' (Feeding, fighting, fleeing, and reproduction.) As I mentioned in another thread, that attitude effectively negates the possibility of philosophy at least as it was always understood by those who developed the tradition.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Objective - and obvious, isn't it? Again, actual language, as distinct from linear communication through calls or displays, is unique to h. sapiens. As is tool-making, philosophy, technology, art, science, mathematics, music, drama. As is the capacity to reflect on the nature of being and question the meaning of existence.
Hey even plenty of naturalists see this. Julian Huxley said:
His brother Alduous, with whom he discussed these ideas all his life, agreed with that, but also added the spiritual dimension absent from Julian's account, in such books as The Perennial Philosophy, a modern spiritual classic.
Of course, that's much better. But the Christians have an out for that: things without souls are not sentient. And that brings us full circle to the behaviorists. Categorize, dismiss, ignore the evidence of your senses and reason, stick to the dogma, and you can do anything you want to rats, cats, monkeys and pigs.
Quoting Wayfarer Not for behaving like animals; for behaving like bad humans. And that - being reborn as a sparrow - may be what it would take to convince some anthrosupremacists that we all experience pretty much alike.
Quoting Wayfarer
What other animals needs it? They're already okay. They don't require enlightenment, salvation, transcendence or any other supernatural nonsense. They're content to live in the real world. Each and every one of the blessed creatures is a staunch atheist.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't see why. Just add another F - fantasizing. That includes telling stories, creating art and inventing religions. That story-making drive is very strong in humans. If you're looking for a single unique feature of the species, that's the one I'd recommend. Cats may act like prima donnas, but I don't believe they imagine themselves the star of a movie the way each of us does.
Quoting Wayfarer
Nope. I've mentioned this twice before. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/g39714258/animals-using-tools/
Quoting Wayfarer
That one is a distinctly unique liability.
Looks like misrepresentation to me. Citations?
We are survival machines robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.
? Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Im a robot, and youre a robot, but that doesnt make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions, Daniel Dennett said. Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable?
Examples could be multiplied indefinitely.
Fecundating? Or fertilizing?
Come on now.
This bit is slightly out of date. There have recently been some quite convincing virtual reality attempts to help humans what cats see, hear what bats hear, etc. It's not the full experience - we will never really know what it's like to be a dolphin or hummingbird - but we can get an approximation.
The important point here is the effort. Still using scientific equipment, we're trying to see the world from another species' perspective, the better to understand. I think the key is to distance ourselves from rigid 'objectivity' - which is often another term for objectification - and let our other faculties participate in a quest for knowledge; accept the information we get from our senses.
If you can identify the yellow paint spot on your own nose in the mirror, you can also identify the distress of a robin defending her nest or the rage of an abused elephant or the sorrow of a donkey who has lost his friend.
Oh? I work in the VR space, I'm interested in this. Do you have a link?
Of course, we can make a stab at mapping the sensory ranges of other species onto our own. But this doesn't truly give us the slightest idea of what it is actually, subjectively like to be another animal.
Quoting Lionino
Oh! :yikes: Of course, "father".
Sure. But youre aware of David Chalmers distinction between the easy and hard problems? I would think approximations and simulations are the former.
:100: But when it comes to the question of the nature of being, there might be more to consider than the empirical.
These are expressions of physicalist reductionism, but this doesn't entail the more drastic reduction to "the 4 Fs".
Quoting Wayfarer
Aw, I had a few more Fs lined up.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, per Dawkins, chickens are literally nothing more than an eggs way of replicating itself. Hence, all phenotypes (both physical and psychological) are utterly unimportant biologically other than for their capacity to replicate genotypesmore specifically, the immortal selfish genes from which genotypes are constituted.
And this, then, seems to me too to essentially result in an exceedingly biased valuing of the four Fs addressed in terms of biology. Which, btw, I often hear echoed in many a layperson who proclaims that the sole purpose to human sexual intercourse can only be that of reproduction (to me utter BS, but this would be a different topic).
That said, it is however to be acknowledged that Dawkins also tells us:
We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.
? Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
Which to me, sure as the earth I walk on, directly entails there occurring some form of Cartesian dualism between biology and the biology-resultant human ego(?). This being something that no monist would accept.
-------
Personally, while I fully acknowledge the exceedingly large gulf between humanity and all other, hence, lesser lifeforms, biological evolution necessitates that all life is constituted of the same stuff but in different ways and in different measures (here specifically thinking of humans' capacity for sapience)this irrespective of whether this stuff of life is understood to be in any way spiritual (such as Buddhism and Hinduism can, for example, uphold) or else strictly material. Hence, if our highly evolved consciousness is contingent on the workings of our complex CNS, then animals with less complex CNSs would necessarily be endowed with less evolved forms of consciousness. For example, such that dogs are more sapient than are ants.
What's the difference between "kinds of entities" and "kinds of beings"?
Why do you consider this obviously anthropocentric 'great chain of being" idea a valid ontological schema? I mean on what logical, conceptual or empirical grounds apart from simply preferring it because it accords with how you would like things to be.
Well Vera Mont clearly doesn't think that it is objective and obvious, and I'm not convinced either way. Let me see if I can put this in another way.
Look at the difference between plants and animals. If there is such a thing as a "highly significant difference" which marks a threshold in evolving life forms, wouldn't this qualify as such a threshold? Plants are rooted in the ground, whereas animals are free to move around and sense things. Now, look at the difference between human beings and other mammals. Human beings communicate, socialize, cooperate, and build things. So we might also say that this is a highly significant difference which marks a threshold. But how many other things can we look at as highly significant differences which mark a threshold? do the development of a heart, lungs, brain, legs, wings, hands, not qualify as highly significant differences? It appears to me like we may call the difference between human beings and other mammals a "highly significant difference", but that's just one in a multitude highly significant differences we observe between life forms. Therefore, in reality life is rife with "highly significant differences" and "thresholds". But this makes that one specific difference or threshold, just another difference, and nothing special.
Neither of those say, "human life can be ultimately reduced to, and explained in terms of, the fundamental drives that characterise all other existence, summarised as 'the four F's'".
So it still looks like were misrepresenting Dennett and Dawkins to me.
Sorry. I saw it on "The Nature of Things" a couple of years ago, but don't recall which episode. There have been quite a few, since about 2018 dealing with animal intelligence, perception and behaviour.
Quoting hypericin
It does give us the slightest idea. Nobody can ever truly know another's subjective experience - that's a constant. But it's not important to be a rat or a marlin; what's important is to put yourself in their place, as any compassionate human being would put himself in the place of another human being who has different capabilities, experiences and world-view from ones' own, to recognize the feelings, impulses and motivations as being similar to our own.
Quoting Wayfarer
Not really. I'm not terribly interested in solving the "problem" of consciousness, because I don't consider it any more of a problem than sunlight. It just is. And ain't we lucky to have it?
Quoting Wayfarer
Like what?
It's a question in philosophy of mind, and one I'm interested in.
Quoting Vera Mont
Philosophical questions, such as the one above, and the one we're discussing.
Quoting javra
I do give credit to Dawkins for at least recognising the issue. I saw him in a TV debate once, and an audience member asked him if we should live according to evolutionary principles, and he said heavens no, it is a terrible way to try and live. But he seems completely unaware that his polemics, as distinct from his science writing, are aimed at methodically destroying any idea of there being a higher purpose or higher life. Like, he recognizes that the selfish gene gives no basis for ethics, but then what does? Science has no inherent moral orientation, it is concerned with facts, not oughts (as per Hume and the is/ought division.)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure, I already acknowledged that in the post above about Schumacher's ontology. You know perfectly well that Aristotle said reason marked the difference between humans and animals.
[quote=Wiki]While the term Rational Animal itself originates in scholasticism, it reflects the Aristotelian view of man as a creature distinguished by a rational principle. In the Nicomachean Ethics I.13, Aristotle states that the human being has a rational principle (Greek: ????? ????), on top of the nutritive life shared with plants, and the instinctual life shared with other animals, i. e., the ability to carry out rationally formulated projects.[2] That capacity for deliberative imagination was equally singled out as man's defining feature in De anima III.11.[3] While seen by Aristotle as a universal human feature, the definition applied to wise and foolish alike, and did not in any way imply necessarily the making of rational choices, as opposed to the ability to make them.[/quote]
You can see the Platonic lineage in the distinction between the rational and appetitive parts of the soul.
Quoting Janus
Ontology is concerned with classification of types, not the enumeration of all the different kinds of things. Anyway, the point is only that I'm arguing for the ontological distinctions between inorganic, organic, sentient, and rational. That while h. sapiens is clearly descended from a common ancestory with simians, reason, language, self-consciousness, and so on, make us different from other animals. Why this point has to be laboured, why it is controversial or needs argument, I confess that I don't understand.
//
I would have thought an obvious difference between humans and animals, is that we're capable of moral choice (unless you accept determinism, which I don't.) As philosopher Richard Polt puts it:
[quote=Anything but Human; https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/anything-but-human/]People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in not in explaining how were built, but in deliberating on our own future acts.Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesnt help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense.
In fact, the very idea of an ought is foreign to evolutionary theory. It makes no sense for a biologist to say that some particular animal should be more cooperative, much less to claim that an entire species ought to aim for some degree of altruism. If we decide that we should neither dissolve society through extreme selfishness..nor become angelic robots like ants, we are making an ethical judgment, not a biological one. Likewise, from a biological perspective it has no significance to claim that Ishould be more generous than I usually am, or that a tyrant ought to be deposed and tried.
In short, a purely evolutionary ethics makes ethical discourse meaningless.[/quote]
Quoting hypericin
The point is, as far as a purely biological theory is concerned, what else can there be? We forget that On the Origin of Species is exactly that - an account of the origin of species. One can completely accept the evolutionary account of human origins, as I do, without accepting that, therefore, evolutionary biology explains everything about us, as the 'ultra-Darwinists' seem to want to do. It has the effect of depicting all our faculties and attributes in terms of the way they 'contribute to survival' (or not.) As such, it results in a kind of biologically-oriented pragmatism.
I get that there is a question, or maybe more than one. What I'm asking is, what do you have to consider? What information do you have to work with beyond the empirical?
Quoting Wayfarer
Once again, classifying degrees as distinct and different categories. Wolves and groundhogs have rules of behaviour - they just don't make a big verbose fuss about it: if somebody misbehaves, they snarl or snap at him; they don't put him on the rack or cut out his tongue.
However, I agree that we are unique in inventing the notion of sin and taboo. So that's two exclusive characteristics of the human animal.
What can be inferred, what it means that something is the way it is.
Quoting Vera Mont
Right! They're not moral, nor immoral. They don't consider the consequences or weigh up their decisions. They act; they don't bear the burden of self-consciousness. Sin and taboo are more than just 'inventions' - they arise from the fact that we can sense right and wrong. That's what I meant before about humans being 'existential animals' - we can ask, what does existence mean, why am I here?
Having read much, if not most, of Darwins works, I judge that just as Darwin was opposed to the notion of what become known as Social Darwinism, he would have also been staunchly opposed to the notion of the selfish gene. Ive mentioned this before on the forum: there are very well argued (both empirically and rationally) opposing views, with The Genial Gene being one such example.
As to a higher purpose or higher lifeto fan the flames a bitwe all live by this credo as undoubtedly as we all know in our heart of hearts that solipsism is frigging joke (if it even warrants laughing at). All evolutionary biologists know that, when objectively addressed, all life without exception is equally evolved from predecessors. But no evolutionary biologist thereby holds that the eating of lesser lifeforms somehow equates to a form of cannibalism, or that the killing of weeds equates to the killing of humans. We all (sanely speaking) know that the value of a human life far exceeds the value of chickens life, to not even mention that of grass as a lifeform. We all sanely know that humans are more evolved than chickens, which are more evolved than weeds or grass. And we thereby hold more compassion for chickens than we hold for grass. Yet, unlike in the first sense of evolution wherein all coexisting lifes intrinsic value is identical, in the second here mentioned sense of evolutionwherein some lifeforms are more evolved than otherswe as a sapient species appraise the value of a chickens life to be of greater worth than that of a weeds. Not because we dislike weeds per se, but because we recognize that the chickens degree of awareness is far more advanced than that of the weeds. This second sense of evolutionwithout which we might starve to death or else might become more depraved than any lesser lifeform has ever beendirectly speaks of an evolution toward greater sapience.
This evolution toward greater sapience, then, to me directly speaks of the chain of being you are making mention of. Something we, again, innately acknowledge in our day to day living of life but which physicalism/materialism cannot easily, if at all, account forother than, maybe, by the proclaiming of absolute relativity when it comes to values the very same values by which physicalism/materialism is upheld making the physicalists position sorta self-defeating. Something like the notion of "the Good", on the other hand, can account for this very type of evolution toward greater sapience.
Quoting Wayfarer
Here addressing pure empirical science--rather than scientism: I find that science and scientists in general are at times voraciously interested in discovering the ever-truer nature of reality and that, just as with the best of philosophy and philosophers, this interest is deemed to be a good in itself, i.e. of intrinsic value. As such, it is not facts per se that are of concern but greater and deeper understanding regarding the nature of reality, maybe ultimately of being itself ... which to me again speaks to an evolution toward greater sapience, this via desire to so become.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'll try no to belabor this issue much. We humans are on average far more familiar with domesticated animals than with wild ones. As such, anyone who has had a dog will know that dogs give good enough indications of experiencing shame and guilt at things they know they ought not have done (according to their owners). And some dogs have been known to be quite altruistic. This isn't any proof of lesser animals having some awareness of right and wrong (and, hence, a far less evolved sense of moral judgment by comparison to the average human) ... but then, neither is there any definitive proof of lesser animals being anything else but automata. :wink:
Couldn't have said it better. And yes, and there are notable acts of animal bravery and even self-sacrifice. There are service dogs (even service pidgeons!) of extraordinary courage and fortitude.
This is what I think is not at all objective and obvious, and I also disagree with it. I see an ontological discontinuity between inanimate and alive. That discontinuity (signified as x above) is what Aristotle explained with his concept of "soul", and which forms the basis of vitalism. And, it is this ontological discontinuity which renders the common notion of abiogenesis as inadequate.
The other differences mentioned above as y and z display no such discontinuity. In fact, there is very much evidence for a continuity between them, as demonstrated by Darwin in support of his evolutionary theory. Furthermore, the continuity between them is described by Aristotle in "On the Soul". He describes all the powers of living beings as potentials, capacities, the powers of self-nutrition, self-movement, sensation, and intellection. Notice that intellection is classed with the others.
Each of these various potentials, are dependent on the material body, matter as potential, but they are properly attributed to the soul which is the active principle that activates and operates them. So there is a continuity between all the powers of the soul (intellection included), as shown by Darwin, each being dependent on the material body which provides the specific potency/act relation, as described by Aristotle, and these are all understood through their similarity.
However, there is a distinct discontinuity between living and inanimate, and this is understood through a principle of actuality, the active principle responsible for the causation of the material body which provides the potential, and this is known as the soul.
That's not information; that's conjecture. AFAICS, there is no reliable source of information on what it means to be what it is. Who assumes there has to be a meaning?
Quoting Wayfarer
Of course they do! They have strategy and method and rules and consequences. Less convoluted ones than in human societies, but that's degree again, not kind.
Quoting Wayfarer
Then why do these concepts change from culture to culture, age to age?
Here is the contradiction:
Humans attribute rationality to mankind (ignoring evidence of gross irrationality on the part of individual specimens as well as mobs and nations). Humans claim exclusive possession of this rationality (ignoring the rational behaviour of other species). Humans assume that a sophisticated intelligence and communication system makes us superior to all other life on earth (ignoring exclusive capabilities that other species have and we lack). Humans declare that no other species is sentient, because we can't conclusively prove that they are (ignoring the evidence of our own interaction with them). Humans deny that other animals have a subjective experience, because it's not measurable by scientific means nor directly experiencable by human beings.
At the same time this complex intelligence and communication skill, tool making and skyscraper building ability and complex hierarchical thinking is presumed to exist in every single member of the human species (I don't always see it in my fellow humans). All humans are credited with subjective experience and sentience, even though it's not measurable by scientific means nor experienced from outside the individual experiencer.
And the cherry on top of the whipped cream of our tippy-toppery is a 'moral sense' that can't be located, measured or verified by scientific means, but is presumed to exist (without evolutionary antecedents) and humans to have a monopoly on it. This unproven assertion proves our categorical distinction from other animals.
Do the various species possess consciousness? It seems to be difficult to explain consciousness in ourselves (how it works, where it is located, and so on), so it will be difficult to explain how the dog laying at my feet is conscious, or the squirrels cleaning out the fire feeder, or the crows collecting in the trees... possess consciousness. Maybe it isn't explainable by us, paragons of animals, and if so our inability to explain it doesn't deprive us of consciousness. I think but I can't witness myself producing thought from many billions of neurons.
I'm late to this discussion, so somebody has probably said this already.
*** A science fiction writer spoke these words through a character: "You have to stay alert! In the jungle, everybody is thinking." 'Everybody' being all the predator and prey species.
Quoting Janus
How is "classification of types" not equivalent to being concerned with the different kinds of entities?
Quoting Wayfarer
I believe other animals are capable of reasoning and presymbolic language. The only difference I see is the advent of symbolic language with humans. I also think this is pretty much the standard view, so I'm not sure why you seem to think it isn't the standard view.
The other point is that all kinds of animals are different to the other kinds, more or less. Human ability to use symbolic language does make us unique, but I see no reason to think that signals any kind of supernatural influence, if that is what you think is missing in the modern view.
Quoting Wayfarer
Symbolic language allows us to reflect on our experiences, actions, lives and deaths. This is where the idea of moral responsibility comes into play. I see no reason to believe in any libertarian idea of free willas Schopenhauer puts it " "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants", which I take to mean that, apart from external constraints, you are free to do whatever you want but you are not free to choose what it is that you want.
.
Not so. Reasoned inference enables discoveries of facts impossible to obtain by observation alone. Science relies on it, not to mention everyday rational thought.
Quoting Vera Mont
Those very means you call into question in your initial response. And here, you're verging on positivism.
I think humans need to take responsibility for the fact of their difference to other species. We hold their lives in our hand - something which, of course, many dedicated biologists and environmental scientists are highly aware of.
Quoting BC
I don't find it difficult. Sure, I don't know what it's like to be a dog, but it's also not something entirely remote or alien from human experience. I mentioned before the Buddhist categorisation of 'sentient beings', which casts a pretty wide net, covering basically any organism with senses. There's vast diversity amongst them but also something in common. (Mind you I also don't believe that consciousness as such is something that can or should be explained, but that's another argument.)
Quoting Janus
I agree that h. sapiens evolved and that language also evolved but my argument is that we've crossed an evolutionary threshold which sets us apart from other animals. We are able, among many other things, to interrogate the nature of being through philosophy, or the size and age of the Universe, through science.
All of that is just on account of symbolic language, and no one with half a brain would deny that we do those things that other animals don't. But I believe you want to infer from that a supernatural influence, and that is really the unspoken premise in your complaints about modern culture.
If you are not wanting to infer a supernatural influence, then we have nothing to disagree about. And note, I'm not outright denying the possibility of a supernatural influence, I'm just saying we have no valid warrant for such an inference, and that we have no way of making discursive sense of the idea.
So it really comes down to how you feel about it, it comes down to your intuitions or what "feels right" to you, and that is not a basis for argument at all, because it is a personal matter.
Where have I said that? :rage:
You haven't. That is why I wrote "unspoken premise". It is also why I wrote that if you don't hold that unpsoken premise, then we have nothing to argue about. You don't seem to be a very close reader.
All that said, the impression I have had from years of reading your posts is that you do believe in a spiritual reality and even hierarchy (which would, if it were actual. amount to a supernatural influence).
Well, you could make an essentialist argument that understanding is exactly the discontinuity between humans and other animals, even if understanding itself is a power among others like movement etc. One can find many features that is shared by all (not deficient) humans and absent in other animals and claim that as the discontinuity, no matter whether the feature chosen is important.
I quite like Aristotle though. I'm just pointing out that there are many lines that can drawn between us and animals.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Is there? What do you make of viruses? Specially something like a mimivirus.
What does "presymbolic language" mean? Isn't all language by the meaning of "language", symbolic in some way? Adding "symbolic" to language, to say that human language is "symbolic language" is just redundancey.
Quoting Janus
Why not? I see no problem with a man choosing ones wants. That's what we learn how to do in moral training, mastering our habits.
Quoting Lionino
I do not agree. I think its' very clear that other animals "understand". We had a dog which clearly understood that it ought not get on the table, and so it did not ... as long as someone was around. But as soon as we went to bed it would be on the table. To me, that's obviously a form of "understanding". Of course, you can tailor a definition of "understand" to suit your purpose, but what's the point in that?
Quoting Lionino
And I'm just pointing out that the vast majority of those lines are arbitrary. In a similar way, we could draw a line between child and adult, and say that only an adult is responsible for one's actions, because an adult understands. But such boundaries are arbitrary.
Quoting Lionino
I think viruses are quire clearly living. You should ask about something like cancer, or prions, and things like that.
Science confirms or disproves it through experimentation.
Quoting Wayfarer
I call all means into question. Here, I was merely pointing out the self-contradiction of a particular hard-line position.
Quoting Wayfarer
What's that to do with the topic? The power of humans was never in question; the sentience of other species was.
Quoting Wayfarer
We did cross a threshold, but it wasn't an evolutionary one; it was a cultural one. Once humans turned into settled farmers, their attitude changed: land and water became commodities; herbivores became cattle or vermin; carnivores became rivals and enemies; insects became pests. Humans alienated themselves from other species.
A complete side-track. We had one of those. We had a fairly big table in the kitchen, off limit to animals. We hardly ever saw her on it, but when I put my key in the lock, there was a scramble and clicking of nails on tile, a big white dog coming to greet me, and a Pyrennees-shaped puddle of sand on the table. It was a perfectly rational thing for her to do: lying on the table enabled her to see out the windows in comfort.
But you're missing the point. The claim I took issue with was this:
Quoting Vera Mont
If by 'the empirical', you mean 'only what is available to sensory perception' (per John Locke and David Hume), then rational inference goes well beyond what is available to sensory perception. Through it, we have discovered endless things that you could never learn only by observation. These discoveries are then validated (or refuted) by observation and experiment, but conjecture plays a vital role, as do the paradigms within which results are interpreted, and neither of those are strictly or only empirical.
Quoting Vera Mont
And also an existential one, more to the point.
That's the 'point'. Conjecture, intuition, imagination, projection, gut feeling are all valuable starting points for the investigation of some phenomenon or the search for an answer to some question. They often point to where one should look for information; they do no themselves supply information.
Quoting Wayfarer
What is an existential threshold? Apes exist; humans exist; humans are apes but apes are not human. Every speciation is a threshold of sorts, and so is every conception. What makes this branching off more special than all of the others?
As far as what more is there than information theres the whole question of interpretation, of what information means. I mean, I can fully accept the biological account of human origins without thereby accepting that were fully determined by biology.
Of course it is. But the ways in which that difference is interpreted by humans is also significant.
Quoting Wayfarer
No; they exploit real differences.
Quoting Wayfarer
what more is there than information Why is that in single quotes? It looks suspiciously like a disinterpretation of my asking what information is there in the extra-empirical?
Yes, interpretation is the sticking-point.
Concepts are crucial to cognition and to understanding of that perceived, but are in themselves extra-empirical. One for example does not perceive the concepts of "animal" or of "world" or of "number" but simply understands them - this when perceiving signs, for example - and any perception we might have of an animal or a world or a number (be it of the imagination or not) will necessarily exclude many if not most elements which the concept itself encompasses.
[s]Thats only one way of looking at it, but it will fit right in here[/s]
So viruses are living?
Enter poliovirus:
A virus that is made of a simple RNA and an icosaedric capsid. If this is living for you, there is no reason why a simple RNA without capsid is not living. Being that RNA is a nucleid acid, a molecule, then other molecules must be living too, like proteins and lipids. And if those are living, other organic molecules must be living too, like ethanol and glycosis. Then it seems your line between alive and inanimate are just as arbitrary as humans and animals.
Sorry Lionino, I am not a biologist, and spoke hastily without understanding what I was saying. Google has told me that viruses are not alive, so I apologize for the misleading comment.
And still contain no information which is beyond observable reality.
Quoting javra
Not sure what this means. One [person?] simply understands the concept of animal, world or number - okay. But before that one can understand the concept of something, at least one example of the original had to exist in either reality or imagination. One wouldn't have much use for a concept that corresponds to nothing in the universe. The ideal triangle would be quite meaningless without we can draw imperfect real ones.
This, I understand not at all.
Who are we to disagree then?
Despite what Google told you, there are many biologists that do defend viruses should be classified as life:
I don't agree with them, but that is just a personal preference of mine.
I think people get to this in different ways, but I can think of a few examples. There is Sokolowski's "The Phenomenology of the Human Person," (excellent work blending Husserl, Aristotle, Aquinas, and modern science informed philosophy of perception). For Sokolowski, there is a very good reason (grounded in phenomenology, and perception) for positing that things have an "intelligibility." Intelligibilities are a potency in things. We do not actualize them simply by perceiving things (they are in Aristotlean second potentiality in perception). Words and other symbolic systems like mathematics are what actualize intelligibilities. An intelligibility might be thought of as "the sum total of true things that can be said of a thing."
We never fully grasp an intelligibility seen there are seemingly infinite contexts from which to approach any entity, but we can come to grasp them more or less. Grasping an intelligibility is in many ways a social project, something that occurs across the entire historical "human conversation," including the arts, sciences, etc.
We have good reason to believe in intelligibilities because it does not seem like they should spring up uncaused or be the sui generis results of a magical human power. We should believe in them particularly from a naturalist frame.
But then the grasp of thing's intelligibility involves understanding its species and genus (scholastic sense of the terms), its telos (at least for living things; the healthy adult versions of living beings are phenomenologicaly "present" to us even when observing the immature or diseases for ), and the universals involved with it. Animals may potential grasp intelligibilities in their own weak way (although Sokolowski denies this because for him language is essential for actualization), but they don't grasp essences and universals. But if these things have ontic reality, and there are good arguments that they do, than human beings, through being the "rational animal," very much live in a different world from animals. We have access to a higher ontic plane (in the sense of vertical reality one finds in Hegel and Plato, where what is more self-determining is in a way more real because it is not merely a bundle of effects of causes external to it).
In such a view, the relationship between knower and known is a very special relationship. It is the place where many of a things properties can be present at once, whereas in nature things only manifest a small number of their properties vis-á-vis their current context at any time. So things most "are what they are," in the mind of the knower, whose mind becomes like the things known.
The human attunement to universals makes it distinct then. Sokolowski doesn't look at the Transcendentals, but we could throw them in here too. For example, only the human mind seems to grasp the unity of being, the way in which the Many must also be One. This isn't just a graduation in experience of the world, but access to the depths of its ontic structure. Reason is ecstatic, transcedent, pushing people beyond current belief and desire beyond themselves. Love, attuned to Beauty and Goodness, is like this too (will vs intellect). But reason seems to require words and syntax, and so, in the form that gives access to the Transcendentals, human reason is unique.
But the Transcendentals and universals are natural. They are just transcend finite nature in a way, a "yes, and..." E.g., Plotinus' notion of the Good as the first principle of nature, but also as transcending it.
Humans throughout history have conceived of many different possible worlds. Not all these possible worlds which exist among humans as concepts are within the boundaries of observable reality. For one example of this, the monads of Leibnizs monadology are non-observable. Yet the concept of monadology still holds (non-observable) information.
Quoting Vera Mont
Perceptually focus on any exemplar of animal. Once this exemplar is visualized (or heard, smelled, touched, etc.) either via the imagination or otherwise, it will exclude all other possible exemplars of animal which the concept of animal by its very definition encompasses. For example, if the visualized exemplar of animal is a bird, this will exclude all dolphins, all insects, all reptiles, etc. Because of this, the concept of animal is itself non-observable, for it includes all individual exemplars of the concept that can be individually observed all at once. And such a thing cannot be seen, nor heard, nor smelled, etc.
----
EDIT: p.s., The same non-observability will apply to all concepts, even those that are far more specific. For example, the concept of a red apple will by its very delineation include all possible hews of red, all apple shapes and sizes, and all apple species (which can be in any way any shade of red) all at oncethereby making the concept of red apple non-observable when one gets into the nitty-gritty. And any given visualization of a red apple we might find ourselves holding will, then, necessarily exclude all the other possible exemplars of a red apple which the concept necessarily encompasses.
To emphasize: when I previously mentioned that we think and understand perceptions via concepts, but that concepts are in themselves extra-empirical (else non-observable), it is this analysis of concepts that I held in mind. Controversial though I know this can be.
No it doesn't! The concept encompasses the general as well as the particular; domains, classes, orders, families, genera, species, every member thereof as well as the specimen under observation. Concepts begin with the particular and expand up and out. Only the particular is real; the rest of whatever classifications apply are symbolic or imaginary.
The human awareness of other animals did not begin with an idea; it began with individual real entities. The human realized that every example of a certain kind of prey was like every other in some ways in which it was unlike another kind of prey. He then generalized that quarry as 'deer' - because whichever particular deer they killed, there would be enough meat for the clan. If, however, that stone age man went after a mammoth, his strategy would have to be different from the deer-hunting strategy, and this would hold true for all the very large creatures that had long curved tusks and a trunk. But the deer and mammoth had this in common with each other and with rabbits and wild pigs: unlike roots and berries, they resisted being killed, screamed and bled when they were. Kind of like other people....
Quoting Vera Mont
Quoting Jacques Maritain, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism
And he has intuited all this about a mind of which he has not clue#1. Clever man!
@Vera Mont- what Javra says here is similar to 'Kant's answer to Hume'. Kant's response to Hume addressed Hume's skepticism about the ability of human reason to understand the world beyond sensory experience. Hume - the textbook empiricist philosopher - argued that our knowledge is limited to what we can perceive through our senses. He was particularly critical of the notion of causality, claiming that our belief in cause and effect is merely a habit of thought formed by observing repeated associations between events.
Kant agreed that all our knowledge begins with experience, but he disagreed with Hume's conclusion that it therefore arises solely from experience. Kant introduced a critical distinction between the forms of intuition (space and time) and the categories of understanding (including but not limited to causation), which are necessary for us to interpret sensory information.
According to Kant, these categories are not derived from experience but rather are the preconditions that make experience intelligible in the first place. They are the innate structures of the mind that organize sensory data into coherent perceptions ('percepts'). For example, when we perceive one event following another, our understanding interprets this as causation, allowing us to see one event as causing the other, rather than just as two events occurring sequentially. Thus, Kant argued that Hume's reduction of knowledge to mere sensations and perceptions overlooks the active role of the mind's inherent structures, which underpin experience.
Generally speaking, your posts seem to exhibit a straightforwardly empiricist approach, hence are susceptible to this kind of critique.
:up: You're a fount of interesting book recommendations!
In the case of symbolic language symbols stand for something they don't physically resemble and they have no causal relationship with what they signify. A pictograph, for example, resembles what it stands for. Smoke indicates, is a sign for, fire. Animals may have language, that is they emit sounds or perform gestures that might be indicative of danger or an aggressive attitude or their desire to mate, and so on, but those sounds or gestures are signs, not symbols. It is with symbols that generalization and abstract thought becomes possible.
We have body language and musical language which are not symbolic. And in the visual language of painting, for example, the subjects do not symbolize what they resemble or evoke, but represent it.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
We know things are intelligible to us and to other animals. They need to be intelligible otherwise we and they could not survive. I see intelligibility as being primally and primarily dependent on pattern, on form. It's all about similarities and differences.
I agree that we should understand them from a naturalistic perspective, the whole notion of real, independent transcendent forms or essences is most plausibly a fantasy, I think.
The first point is that what is significant to you, what is important to you, conditions your desires. We all have first order desires for pleasure, satisfaction, gratification, stimulation and so on. But in case those desires lead to habits that are unhealthy, they may be countermanded by stronger concerns like personal health, social harmony, or even simply by introjected moral prescriptions and proscriptions.
The second point is that what you desire in the first order sense; food, warmth, shelter, sex, and so on simply is what it is. You are thrown, so to speak, into the midst of these kinds of desires, and some people have stronger desires than others, or a different balance of desires. For example, food might be more important to you than sex. We are also thrown by our educations into the midst of our second order desires. We may be able to cultivate those desires and we each have different capacities for change, for re-inventing ourselves.
The third point is that each person's capacities just are that person's capacitiessome are more capable than others at overcoming their compulsions or addictions. Some people simply don't and cannot, feel empathy, for examplethey cannot force themselves to care for others, although is they are smart, they may at least be able to bring themselves to act as though they do.
To sum up we are free to act according to the dictates of our natures at any point in our lives, (and the dictates may change with or without our conscious intention) but we do not create ourselves, so the radical libertarian notion of free will and absolute moral responsibility is absurd.
Where is that "first place" supposed to reside? In the embryo? On the ovum? Surely not in the genes of apes that oh so recently could not philosophize at all? What is the origin of this mind that preconceives?
Quoting Wayfarer
We fist interpret it as a story. It is not until the same kind of event is followed by the same kind of event repeatedly that we begin to understand cause and effect. (For some people, it can happen with monotonous predictability and they still go on television to say "Nobody could have foreseen this!") Moreover, the intelligent among us observe, experiment and discover whether we ourselves can cause the same thing to happen. That's how we learned to control fire and ride logs down a river and build airplanes.
Quoting Wayfarer
They're both dead enough not to trouble me overmuch, and they were both smart guys, yet disagreed, so it's possible that they were both wrong about some things that have since become easier to study, like neuroscience.
Shows.
Just wanted to say I'm in agreement with what you've expressed. ...Including your accolades regarding @Count Timothy von Icarus's posts. :up:
Quoting Vera Mont
To even write your response, you're drawing on your innate capacities of reason and speech, which you must have to mount an argument in the first place.
That's what it means.
Quoting Vera Mont
It seems an obvious, common-sense answer, but the point is that a dumb animal, for instance, might be likewise 'exposed' to a series of events but never form any idea of a causal relationship, unless in terms of stimulus and response. Our ability to discern cause and effect goes beyond just observing repeated patterns and constructing stories. According to Kant, and an important point even though he might be a dead white male, the concept of causality is a fundamental 'category of the understanding' that we rely on to make sense of our experiences. This isn't merely a habit or a learned response from observing the world; it's a precondition for how we perceive and interact with the world. When we perceive one event following another, it's our mind's inherent structure that compels us to see this sequence as causal. This isn't simply a narrative we construct after the fact; it's an immediate and automatic application of our cognitive faculties. This means that our recognition of cause and effect is not just a result of experience but a lens through which we interpret all experiences, enabling us to engage with the world in a meaningful way.
Now, as per Jacques Maritain's quote, dogs and cats surely perceive some level of causal relations. After all they're highly intelligent species. But they lack the ability to abstract from that to understand general ideas (or ideas generally!) It is that abstractive and intellectual ability, easily taken-for-granted, that differentiates h. sapiens from other species.
All this, I take as evidence that we do not know what "life" is. We seem to believe that there is something called "life", (and it's sort of odd that we name it as a thing, harkening back to "the soul"), but we really do not understand what it means to be alive.
Quoting Wayfarer
I would think that since having these categories is actually having a form of knowledge, then we cannot truthfully say "Kant agreed that all our knowledge begins with experience". There is a bit of inconsistency here, whereby it is necessary to either break knowledge into two types, a priori and a posteriori (such as innate and learned), or else we need to provide different principles for understanding the a priori as something other than knowledge.
The latter, which appears to be the direction you've taken, is a very strenuous task. This course of explanation drives toward the resolution of Plato's "knowledge is recollection" problem. Without a proper separation between the potential for a specific form of knowledge, and actually holding that knowledge, the two become one and the same, with something separating them. So as Plato demonstrates, learning is nothing other than recollection. That produces the problem of infinite regress, and the conclusion that all knowledge has eternal existence.
Aristotle offered a resolution by portraying this as two distinct layers of potentiality. Kant's a priori can be understood as the capacity, or potential for learning. This potentiality underlies all a posteriori, or empirical knowledge, which is describe by Aristotle as the capacity, or potential to act. Notice the two distinct levels of potentialities. Knowledge proper, is the potential to act in a specific way. But in order to act in a specific way, we must first learn how to act in that way. Below this though, supporting it as a foundation, is the capacity, or potential to learn, which is a necessary requirement to learning. This, the lower level capacity to learn, appears to have all the characteristics of being a form of knowledge itself. Learning is a type of acting, so the capacity to learn is itself a capacity to act.
What separates these two forms of potential (two types of knowledge) is a form of activity. That type of activity is described by Aquinas as the creation of habits. This is how the one type of potential, the capacity to learn, becomes the other type of potential, as the capacity to act in a specific learned way. The former "capacity to learn" is the more general, and the latter is to focus the general potential in a more specific way. The importance of habits in the shaping and forming of living beings through evolution is what Lamarck focused on in his evolutionary speculations.
Quoting Janus
This seems to support my claim rather than yours. Since you name a multitude of types of desires, and the human being must prioritize one over the other in many situations, this seems to support what I said, that we can choose what we want. Please note, that having a general inclination in some way, is not the same as having a want. The want is for something specific an "object". So for example, I may have an emptiness in my stomach producing a general uneasy anxious feeling called "hunger", but this is completely different from the "want" of "I want a hamburger".
Quoting Janus
Notice, that all these so-called "desires" manifest simply as general uncomfortable, or even painful feelings. You only call them "desires" because you assume that there is an object involved. A desire is for something specific, this is the end, or object. The objects of all your mentioned desires, "food, warmth, shelter, sex," are very general. These generalities do not serve as objects at all, in reality. You just mention them as if they do, because it makes your argument. In reality, the desire is for a specific object, and since the person has the choice between many different objects, you can use the general terms, ""food, warmth, shelter, sex,".
Suppose for example, that you have the general feeling which we know as "hunger". This you seem to describe as "the desire for food". Hunger is clearly not the desire for food. It is a feeling within your body having an effect on your mind. The effect is not the general "desire for food", it is the desire to eat something. Then that desire to eat something is turned more specific by the conscious mind, toward the desire to eat a specific thing. The saying, "the desire for food" is simply a feature of the mode of description. Since we observe that the desire to eat something may be satisfied by many different food substances, we can simply call it "the desire for food". However, when hunger, the desire to eat something, actually manifests in the particular circumstances that it does, there is the opportunity for the hungry person to choose from many different food items, so that the feeling of hunger transforms to the want for a specific item, without ever actually being "the desire for food". That generalization is just the way that we describe the reality that the hungry person, the person with that feeling, has the freedom of choice to choose whatever object that one wants, to eat.
Quoting Janus
This is simply a copout, the position of a determinist, fatalist, defeatist. As described in my reply to wayfarer above, a person's capacities are multilayered. And, through habit forming we are very able to shape and direct our capacities. This is because they are based in the most general, yet are actualized in the most particular, as in my description of hunger above. Because there are layers, and the opportunity of choice at each layer, and what is formed at the higher level is a further capacity, we very clearly have the ability to shape and form our own capacities. This for example is what we do when we grow up from childhood to being an adult, we shape our capacities in the directions that we choose, and eventually take on a career. And this ability to shape our capacities continues through our lives.
I did not preconceive language: I learned it. I did not preconceive reasoning; I developed it over many years, with the help of other people, living and dead. I didn't start arguing 'in the first place'; I just dribbled and grizzled and responded to stimuli like every other infant. The languages I learned did not spring fully armed from the forehead of some progenitor; they evolved from grunts and snarls over three million years. Reasoned argument didn't suddenly burst forth from Athens 400BCE; people debated over everything from whether a berry was safe to eat to how many angels can dance on a pin to whether a newly discovered planet way the hell out in space could theoretically support life.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
Recognition is not precognition. Most of the people who claim to have that are charlatans.
There is an innate potential, which varies greatly among humans, as it does in other animals, and if the environment is favourable, some of us, and them, attain the most mental agility of which we are capable.
Quoting Wayfarer
Okay, you've found another invisible threshold. I think the difference is of degree; you insist (along with many other humans loath to give up their god-given exceptionality) that it is of kind. I accept that.
Maybe in English you don't. In other languages we have no trouble using the word that comes out of Google translate when you write "life".
Because you were born with the capacity to learn both, which animals are not, the cleverness of crows notwithstanding.
Fair point. On the other hand, Kant said 'concepts (innate) without percepts (acquired) are empty' - if an infant is not primed with the right experiences, their innate capacities will not be activated. Children raised by wolves - there have been some - do not learn to speak.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Also true. There are continuities between Aristotle and Kant, after all, Kant adopted Aristotle's categories nearly unchanged.
Not true. Do a little research.
Quoting Kant, Metaphysics, Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy
Every sentient being is born with the capacity to learn - and no two of those capacities is exactly the same. Some chimps, gorillas and dolphins may have a greater capacity for learning than some humans. Nevertheless, we draw a hard line between species, not IQ's. Every human ability is a quantitaive advance on some ability possessed by other species, yet we draw a hard line between species, not abilities. Every species has abilities or senses that no other has, yet we value as 'higher' only those we consider exclusive to ourselves, and never wonder how come not one of us can light up his own backside.
This is bullshit. Of course there will inevitably be some categories that appear in both sets, but that would not be evidence that Kant "took" those that match from Aristotle. Reflection on possible predicates is sufficient to explain the matches. Do yourself a favour and put the two sets of categories side by side and you will see they are nowhere near the same.
Then why did you say there is no agreement between you and some biologists on the question of whether or not viruses are alive? Isn't this an instance of "trouble"?
So if I were to ask you (in some language other than English), if you believe that there is "life" in some places of the universe other than on earth, would you be able to tell me exactly what I mean by "life" in this context?
Are you saying that people do not use "life" in that way, in languages other than English?
No, I am saying that in some other languages that I know , people use "life" with no issues. You claim however that we don't know what "life" means. Surely, that is an English word, and I don't speak for it. But in other languages, everybody knows very well what the equivalent for "life" means.
The point is that we do not determine sui generis what is significant for us, what we care about, So what I have said does not support your claim at all.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No they are not. The object of the desire for food is food, the object of the desire for warmth is warmth...and the same goes for shelter and sex. The fact that there are many sources, and kinds of sources, of food, warmth, shelter and sex is irrelevant, so I hope you are not trying to make that sophistical argument.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Oh, you are trying to make that kind of sophistical argument...if the desire is merely for "something" to eat how is that different from the general desire for food? In any case the argument is not over whether our desires are general or specific, but over whether we are able to determine by fiat what we desire, and/or are able to determine by fiat whether we desire one thing more than another.
Your last paragraph is merely hand-waving. We are what we are and want what we want, and think what we think, and we cannot change any of that simply by fiat. Of course, people do change, but they only do so insofar as they have the capacity for change, and they cannot simply conjure up such a capacity if they don't already possess it.
For example, if you are addicted to tobacco, you won't be able to give it up unless you care about something else that contra-indicates smoking more than you care about smoking. You will either be able to do that, or you will notwe do not create ourselves from scratch.
I was clarifying what is meant by "hunger". And, rather than being sophistical, I was exposing your sophistry. When we say that someone has "the desire to eat", we recognize the generality of the supposed "object" by showing that what is actually desired is a particular type of activity, "to eat". There is no actual object, until the person forms a specific desire to eat a particular food item. That particular item is "the object" of the person's desire. When you insist that the very general concept "food" is the object of the hungry person's desire, instead of identifying the activity, you are employing ambiguity to obscure the reality of the situation, in a sophistical way.
Quoting Janus
It appears like you paid no attention whatsoever to my argument. Allow me to rephrase in a very simple way. First, you need to distinguish between the very indefinite feeling of want, or need, from the very specific desire for a particular object. The feeling, which gives rise to the desire, allows for many possible sources to serve as the means for satisfaction. The specific desire for a particular object is the result of a choice from one of the apprehended possibilities. The feeling of hunger for example, allows for a vast multitude of possible food items to serve as the means for satisfaction. The hungry person will choose from the multitude of possibilities and form a desire for one, or a number (perhaps a hierarchy in order of preference) of particular food items. Very clearly, the person determines "by fiat", the particular objects which are desired, and any hierarchical order of preference.
Quoting Janus
OK, so you believe that a person is what a person is, and what that person is, is "the capacity for change". Since you insist that the person has no capacity to choose, "by fiat", in relation to that capacity to change, I assume you are a hard determinist.
Quoting Janus
You clearly understand nothing about will power and determination. The way to quit smoking is to have the will power to quit smoking, and this allows the person to choose a method which is suited for that particular person. It may require numerous attempts of trial and error, as some methods may fail. It is not necessary that the person substitutes the desire for a smoke with the desire for another object, though this may work for some people. The only thing which "contra-indicates smoking" to the extent required to guarantee that the person gives it up, is the will for non-smoking. Therefore, if to give up smoking, it is required that one cares about something else more than the person cares about smoking, this "something else" must necessarily be "not-smoking".
Only in an attempt to further your argument:
Hunger is a physiological sensation or pang. The experiencing of hunger, though, does not even necessitate a person's conscious "desire to eat". Case in point: a person who is on a diet (or else fasting, such as for religious purposes) might well at times experience what is relative to the person extreme hunger ... yet the (conscious) person might nevertheless in no way intend to eat anything, thereby having no such desire.
However, when the conscious will concerned aligns, else assimilates, itself with their experienced hunger, then, and only then, will the person consciously desire to appease this physiological sensation which goads: the very appeasing of this physiological sensation then being the immediate object (or maybe better, objective) of concern. And this appeasing of the sensation as a now primary telos will then occur via a very generalized secondary telos of eating something. The specifics of what is to be eaten yet being a matter of choice between available alternatives. Only once this choice between available alternatives is made will there then be a concrete and specific object (or objective) to be realized ... this so as to satisfy the primary (consciously held) telos to all this, which is that of alleviating the underlying pangs of hunger.
I believe that is the essence of freedom of choice. Possibility is general, it is then divided by the mind, individuated into a multitude of specific possibilities. Then what is chosen is a particular. What puts the final nail in the coffin of determinism is the reality of the decision not to choose. Out of all the possibilities, not one is chosen. This is the case in your example of the person fasting. The person is hungry, and has an abundance of possible foods to choose from, yet decides to choose none. Plato used a similar example, of a thirsty man who has an abundance of water in front of him, yet he does not drink because he knows the water is not suitable.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think hard determinism can have a mind of its own, meaning that it could find justification even for this. But yes, I'm in general agreement with you.
If you accept that smoking is detrimental to your health, and you care more about maintaining good health than you do about gratifying your desire to smoke then you will give it up. if you care more about gratifying the urge to smoke you won't. The point is that you cannot simply decide by fiat what will be more important to you.
Oh yes you can. I was a totally addicted smoker aged about 17 until about 40. Until aged about 60 I was an occasional smoker (= asked other people). When I was addicted I often did things I am ashamed of to get my fix (like, stealing cigarettes.) I was on nicotine gum for a long time (my then-small children called it smoking gum.) In the end, the principle that got me off it was Buddhist - I realised that cravings are transient. I worked out that if I could hold off for just as long as it took to smoke a cigarette - about 2-3 minutes - then the craving would pass. That did the trick - before then I was always fantasising about being without for 6 months. It was the minutes that actually counted.
The last cigarette I smoked was at my 60th birthday, 10 and a half years back.
This is wrong in multiple ways Janus. First, addictions do not work like that. To break an addiction is not a matter of deciding that there is something you care about more than the addiction. It's actually the opposite of this, one must make the addiction, and breaking it, the top priority itself. Second, deciding by fiat is exactly what is done. It is decided that the addiction must be broken.
Yes, that's exactly what it is. You can't take appropriate action - whether it's seeking medical help, our counselling, or a support group, whether you go on a retreat or find a displacement mechanism or substitute a different vice - until after you've made that decision. The physical craving hurts, and is easy to give in to. There must be a resolute mental discipline to overcome it.
Right, so you cared more about Buddhism and its ideas than you did about smoking. I have no doubt that your advanced age and the sense of the increasing risk of something going wrong with your body if you continued smoking contributed to your desire to quit and enabled you to finally do it. When we are younger it is easier to tell ourselves that the risks of detrimental effects are far away. I have no doubt that if you hadn't cared about those things sufficiently you would have continued to smoke.
No, not at all. It was the recognition of the momentary nature of craving, that it was something that would pass in a few minutes, rather than fixating on the idea that if I could only stop for six weeks, then the craving would pass. It wasn't until later I realised the connection with the Buddhist 'anicca', impermanence, but I thought it a practical application of that principle.
I didn't say or imply that it is a matter of deciding anything and then making the feelings follow suit, in fact that is precisely what I have been denying. You simply come to care about something more than the addiction, and are thus able to let it go, or you do not come to care about something more than the addiction and are thus unable to let it go.
The point is that if you hadn't cared about something more than the addiction, then you wouldn't have given up smoking.
It's pretty obvious that the exact thing which you need to care about more than smoking, to stop smoking, is not-smoking. If you look into the scientific research on the subject, as my brother did when he quit smoking, you'll find that what has been proven as the best way to quit smoking is to have a strategy, a method, or procedure, and to adhere to it. Having the will to following the prescribed method is not a matter of having something else which you care about more than smoking, unless you name that something else as "not-smoking".
The issue here is the possibility of failure, which is very strong with addictions. If a person proceeds toward quitting by caring about something, or someone, more than smoking, then the smoker depends on this other thing, or other person, to support one's own will power, as a sort of crutch. And of course this can, and often does work. However, if the other thing which the smoker cares about more than smoking fails in its capacity to support the quitter, then the support will be lost and the person will resume smoking without the will to quit. On the other hand, if the smoker approaches quitting with the pure goal of not-smoking, quitting, then the person may move ahead from one failed attempt to another attempt, with the will and determination to keep trying. In this way the appropriate strategy which is suitable to the particular person will inevitably be found. Failed attempts are very common with addictions, and the only thing which bridges the gap from one attempt to quit to the next is the will to stop the addiction.
I cared more about living. On previous occasions, when I concentrated on "not-smoking", I was still thinking all the time about the cigarette I was "not-smoking"; it was still the focal point. Once you move your focus to the better goal - e.g. survival - you don't think quite so much about the thing you're giving up and that saves a lot of energy.
Notice your reference to "previous occasions". That's what I described, the will to get past the failed attempts, until you find the strategy which is appropriate for yourself. The overarching desire was to quit smoking, and it took you a few attempts to find the method suited to you. Then you found success. But you need to remember that the method suited to you is not necessarily the method suited to everyone else. So we can say that what works is to have a method which will bring you to the end goal. The end goal is to quit, but the successful method varies depending on the person. Therefore we cannot say that this or that method is the best method, only that it is necessary to have that one specific end goal, to quit.
Not exactly. The previous attempts were at the urging of spouse, or because of the usual arguments about what's good for you. They worked for a while - I mean, I really tried to quit for those reasons, and the resolve lasted from three to six weeks. But I couldn't write on just cheese and coffee, and i was crabby all the time and didn't like myself. When it became a matter of life or death, it suddenly got a lot simpler.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure. I'm just saying that for success, it's more productive to concentrate on the positive outcome - what they want - than to dwell on the negative - what they want not to. And that the decision must be made.
Right, but I don't disagree with that, and haven't said anything that should lead you to think I have. You will give up smoking if you care more about stopping than you do about smoking. You could have any number of reasons as to why you care more about stopping.
My point has only been that we care about what we care about, and we can't just magically decide to care more about something we previously cared less aboutwe need incentives to shift our concerns.
Attempting to discuss anything with you is usually an endless battle against strawmen. :roll:
I think that may be the most difficult and important issue in philosophy - can we change the orientation of our will, at will?
I think our society would be better without praise and blame; it is necessary to restrain criminals but there seems to be no rational warrant for wanting to take revenge out on them. I think revenge-seeking is emotionally, not rationally driven.
Quoting Vera Mont
So these attempts were a matter of caring about something else (your spouse, your health), more than smoking. And this is what actually failed for you, the method which involved caring about something else more than smoking.
Quoting Janus
OK, so do you agree, that this is pure will power? Attempting to quit smoking because one cares more about not smoking than smoking, and having success this way, is a matter of the will deciding to change, for no other reason than to change, and this is successful. That is purely, and absolutely a matter of determining "sui generis what is significant for us, what we care about". And that contradicts what you said earlier: "The point is that we do not determine sui generis what is significant for us, what we care about".
Quoting Janus
Yes, people often do "magically decide to care more about something we previously cared less about", this is known as changing one's priorities. That is what deciding to quit smoking because one cares more about not smoking than smoking, is representative of. Its actually very common, and it is what gives the person incentive to shift one's concerns. You have the causal order reversed. You seem to think that some random event must happen in the universe, a change in the star signs or something which pulls at the superstitions, and this provides incentive for change to a person. In reality what is required is simply a decision by the person, change my concerns, along with the will power, and that is what creates the incentive, the decision itself, and the capacity to adhere to the judgement made.
Quoting Janus
Such statements are an indication of denial. You reveal to me, through what you say, your own ideas, and when I interpret what you've said, you claim it to be a strawman. This is because what you say, and reveal about your own beliefs, is not consistent with the metaphysical principles which you hold. Instead of recognizing that your beliefs are inconsistent with your principles, and acknowledging that the principles you hold are not consist with your own experience, so that you ought to change those principles, you simply deny my interpretation of what you've already told me, as a strawman. In reality, as demonstrated above, when pressed, you contradict yourself because the metaphysical principles you profess are inconsistent with your beliefs.
No. What I wanted most was to not smoke. The method failed because it centered on a negative and thereby kept the craving ever in focus. What works is making a conscious decision to change direction and then proceed in that direction, concentrate on a positive goal and leave the habit behind, make it irrelevant.