Cognition: Human vs Non-human Animal

Hi Steve,

Let me focus just on your steps 3 and 4.

3) Some routine is able to label the combination of short duration sound from a human who is looking at Fido while speaking as a possible command. An association previously established this and it is hooked to positive motivation.

The otherwise unclarified "some routine [that] is able to label," is, I think, best viewed as a process that identifies the combo of short sounds with the close-by person speaking as one instance of a specific kind. The routine is evidence having concepts.

4) A search routine goes to work to see if this sound is a known command. The routine somehow compares this particular 'sit' to the set of learned commands to find similarities (certain ranges of frequency, duration, volume, etc.) - automated. If this routine finds a match, there is an implied identity. Philosophically all things that exist must exist as something - have some identity, but not necessarily as identified objects.

Here you even used the term, "set," which I take as synonymous with category, group, and concept. The subject has a mental group of 'SIT' and is determining whether a specific sound fits in that group. Again, this otherwise unclarified "routine [that] somehow compares," is, I think, best viewed as a process that is determining whether a particular belong to a specific kind. The routine is evidence of having concepts.

At this point it seems to me untenable to maintain that the dog has not omitted particular measurements in order to identify the sound of 'sit' and then to correctly lump it into the correct set of sounds. It looks like you're even describing as much, just in different terms. If no measurement omission is going on, the dog won't be able to pick out a different instance of 'sit' as belong to the correct set of sounds. Each new voicing will sound novel.

It might be the case that we need to delve into the nature of association a bit more. I'll hold off on that for now.

It is that leap into imagination

Hey! That is what I wanted to explore in my dissent thread. :-)

Hi Ed,

Fine, but I'm not satisfied that it is controlled adequately.

Hmm. What counfounding variables are you worried about? I think I referred to some studies either early on in this thread or in the dissent thread.

Anyway, I suspect the Innuit example accurately reflects my point, but I'm not sure. But my point is rather basic. My set of concepts differs from your set: I probably have tons more concepts about legal minutiae while you have tons more about fitness and nutrition. And my individual concepts might differ from yours: Some of the nutrition concepts I have might be quite "shallow" compared to yours, maybe even a bit fuzzy such that I've inadvertantly subsumed items that don't under those concepts, but I wouldn't know that because I just thought all was swell and had no reason to go digging around for problems.

Anyway, this is not subjectivism nominalism. No Wittgensteins here! Sure, each person has a personalized mental context, but mental contexts aren't prisons; they are islands whence each person can build bridges to the contexts of others. People can talk meaningfully so long as they remain in a shared context. Meaning is lost when one of them has jumped context by, say, talking about an item subsumed in an otherwise shared concept, but an item the other person has not yet subsumed under that concept. Its's just a case of one person relying on a context that the other doesn't share. (Confusion arises when one strays from shared context, and confusion -- or cognitive dissonance, if you like -- is typically what compels us to grow or shrink our concepts.)

Nothing here should suggest that anyone's mental context (or concepts) is arbitrary or unrelated to the facts of reality. One's mental context can be quite reasoned and reality-based but quite different from another's because of their past experiences.

Jordan

Post 61

Monday, October 6, 2008 - 5:56pm

Jordan,

Hmm. What counfounding variables are you worried about?

Jordan, please either pick studies I've posted here, or pick your own -- but pick some first. It will make it easy for me to show the confounders.

Show me some animal research claiming animals form concepts, and I'll show you some confounders (or I'll eat crow).

Ed

Post 62

Monday, October 6, 2008 - 8:10pm

Hi Ed,

I'm not sure why it's not enough for my to talk about sorting rather than reference specific experiments, but . . . I checked, and I referenced concept studies in post #7 of my dissent thread on concepts and imagination. Here's the relevant portion:

So there are a number of studies I'm thinking about here, all having to do with an animal's ability to classify objects, which is what concept formation is all about, and which I don't think can be attributed to mere association.

To name a few, field studies indicate that chickadees and crows respond to danger calls from other birds. They discern a particular *kind* of call, separate that call from other calls, and respond the same way to that kind of call regardless of what beak it's coming from.

Chimps can identify a *kind* of twig that's good for ant fishing, distinguishing them from lousy twigs.

Countless animals can identify *kinds* of other species, which are their kin, which are friendly, which are dangerous, which are prey.

In the lab, lots of animals (dogs, cats, horses, mice, crows, parrots, gorrillas, chimps, elephants, seals, and more) have been tested in the games of "which of these is not like the other?" and "what item in this pile belongs in the group over here?" -- the basic tests to indicate whether a subject "gets" concepts.

I think it's reasonable to conclude from these studies that animals understand certain "kinds."

If you want more, I'm going to be cheap and easy and paste here an excerpt from an article found in the online Stanford Encyclopedia:

Rather than identifying concept acquisition with sorting behavior, Allen and Hauser suggest alternative methodologies for identifying concepts in other species. For example, they offer a possible (though, they admit, ethically untenable) test for a death concept among vervet monkeys (Allen & Hauser 1996). Vervet mothers are capable of recognizing the alarm cries of their infants, and when they hear such a cry the mother will look towards her infant, and the other females will look towards the mother. Allen and Hauser suggest that playing a recording of a recently deceased infant's alarm cry would help to determine whether vervets have a concept of death. If the mother responds to these recordings in an atypical fashion, unlike the usual response made to a living infant, that response provides evidence of a death concept. According to Allen and Hauser, having a concept permits different responses to identical stimuli. The actual sound of the infant's alarm cry during life is identical to the sound played back after death. If the response to this stimulus is different, this is evidence that there has been a conceptual change associated with the stimulus. Allen presents the general strategy for attributing concepts to animals as follows: �An organism O may reasonably be attributed a concept of X (e.g. TREE) whenever:
O systematically discriminates some Xs from some non-Xs; and
O is capable of detecting some of its own discrimination errors between Xs and non-Xs; and
O is capable of learning to better discriminate Xs from non-Xs as a consequence of its capacity� (Allen 1999, 37).
One way to study the conceptual structure of other species is to use the same methods that are used to study concepts in another group that lacks language, namely human infants (Hauser et al. 1996; Hauser & Carey 1998; Berm�dez 2003; G�mez 2005). The preferential looking time paradigm, also known as the dishabituation paradigm, is used to study human infants' understanding of the physical and social world (Baillargeon & DeVos 1991; Spelke 1991). Dishabituation experiments are thought to help us understand what kinds of predictions infants make about their word, and this information can help us determine how they see the world. The methodology is simple; an infant is repeatedly shown a stimulus, and after becoming habituated to the stimulus the infant becomes disinterested. At this point, a new stimulus is shown. If the infant sees the new stimulus as different from the target stimulus, or impossible given the target stimulus, the infant will look longer at the new stimulus. If the infant takes the new stimulus to be similar to the target stimulus, then she will not show any additional interest. The idea is that by comparing responses among groups of individuals, a researcher can learn something about how that group conceptualizes the world.

In one study using this method, Marc Hauser and colleagues investigated numerical concepts in different primate species, including rhesus monkeys (Hauser et al. 1996) and cotton-top tamarins (Uller 1997). The researchers tested the monkeys' ability to keep track of individual objects placed behind a barrier. They found that like human infants, the monkeys look longer at impossible outcomes. For example, in one test condition the rhesus monkeys were shown two eggplants serially placed behind a screen, and then the screen was lifted showing only one eggplant. The monkeys looked longer at the one eggplant than they did when shown the expected two eggplants, suggesting that they represent the eggplants as distinct sortals.

Another way we might learn how different species organize the world is to teach individuals a symbolic communication system. For example, the biologist Irene Pepperberg trained an African Grey parrot named Alex to sort objects using meta-level concepts that categorize other concepts. Alex was able to sort objects according to color, shape, and matter, and he was able to sort sets of objects according to number. In addition to sorting, Alex could report which feature makes two objects similar or different. For example, when presented with a red block and a red key, Alex responded to the question �What's same?� by uttering �color.� He could also report similarities and differences in shape and matter. Pepperberg claims that her studies demonstrate Alex's understanding of categorical concepts, and reveal the classifications that Alex devised (Pepperberg 1999). However, one might be worried that the concepts exhibited by symbol-trained animals are an artifact of the communication system, and not typical of the species.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognition-animal/

In sum: we have empirics that test sorting, response to miscontextualized stimuli, dishabituation, and symbol use -- each claiming to test a subject's concept skills.

Anyway, that Stanford article is a handy article, by the way. I think it actually references an account of concepts that overlaps with Steve's take on the subject. Might be worth checking out.

Best,
Jordan

Post 63

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 7:12am

Thanks, Jordan, it helps me to put your arguments in context.

To name a few, field studies indicate that chickadees and crows respond to danger calls from other birds. They discern a particular *kind* of call, separate that call from other calls, and respond the same way to that kind of call regardless of what beak it's coming from.

But the sign that you're talking about -- the sign that is a bird's call -- is an instrumental sign that functions merely as a signal, not as a designator naming something. It's definitely not a formal sign that functions as a designator (e.g., a word defined by other words), let alone an instrumental sign (i.e., a sign that has gained meaning via direct acquaintance with something) that can also function as a designator. Here's Mortimer Adler in Ten Philosophical Mistakes (p 74-6):

==================================
Another mistake about language that follows as a consequence of the failure to distinguish the human intellect from the senses is, strictly speaking, not a philosophical mistake. It is one of which animal psychologists and behavioral scientists are for the most part guilty, though many contemporary philosophers associate themselves with the position taken by students of animal behavior.

In their study of the evidence of animal communication, they seldom if ever note the difference between signs that function merely as signals and signs that function as designators--as names that refer to objects. Almost all of the cries, sounds, gestures, that animals in the wild, and domesticated animals as well, use to express their emotions and desires, serve as signals, not as designators. It is only in the laboratory and under experimental conditions, often with very ingeniously contrived special apparatus, that such higher mammals as chimpanzees and bottle-nosed dolphins appear to be communicating by using words as if they were names, and even to be making sentences by putting them together with some vestige of syntax.

The appearance is then misinterpreted by the scientists as a basis for asserting that the only difference between animal and human language is one of degree, not of kind--a difference in the number of name words in an animal's vocabulary and a difference in the complexity of the utterances that are taken to be sentences.

This misinterpretation arises from the neglect or ignorance, on the part of the scientists, of the difference between perceptual and conceptual thought. That, in turn, stems from their failure to acknowledge the difference between the senses and the intellect or their denial that the difference exists.

That these differences should not be ignored and cannot be denied would have to be conceded by anyone who looked at the evidence with an unprejudiced eye--by anyone who did not start out with the firm intention of showing that humans and brutes differ only in degree. While there is evidence that chimpanzees under experimental conditions do use artificially contrived signs to designate or name things, the things they name are all perceptual objects. There is not a single piece of evidence showing their ability to use signs to designate what is not perceived through their senses or what lies totally beyond the sensible realm and is intrinsically imperceptible.

Therein lies the difference between the animal's power of perceptual thought and the human power of conceptual thought.
==================================

You continue:

In the lab, lots of animals (dogs, cats, horses, mice, crows, parrots, gorrillas, chimps, elephants, seals, and more) have been tested in the games of "which of these is not like the other?" and "what item in this pile belongs in the group over here?" -- the basic tests to indicate whether a subject "gets" concepts.

See above.

One way to study the conceptual structure of other species is to use the same methods that are used to study concepts in another group that lacks language, namely human infants (Hauser et al. 1996; Hauser & Carey 1998; Berm�dez 2003; G�mez 2005). ...

If the infant takes the new stimulus to be similar to the target stimulus, then she will not show any additional interest. The idea is that by comparing responses among groups of individuals, a researcher can learn something about how that group conceptualizes the world.

See above.

Another way we might learn how different species organize the world is to teach individuals a symbolic communication system. For example, the biologist Irene Pepperberg trained an African Grey parrot named Alex to sort objects using meta-level concepts that categorize other concepts.

See above.

However, one might be worried that the concepts exhibited by symbol-trained animals are an artifact of the communication system ...

Yes, as described above.

Ed

Post 64

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 8:12am

Thanks, Ed, for posting the excerpt from Adler. Interesting stuff. However, maybe his "wedge" between human and animal thought is not as big as he portrays it when it comes to human infants. I mentioned Katherine Nelson in post 24. Here is a brief article by her about a book by Jean Mandler about infant cognition. It looks very relevant to this dialogue. The other articles at the link look interesting, too.

On the other hand, I read something a while back that supports your position. I believe it was Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness by Donald R. Griffin (link), but am not sure. Regardless, the author claimed that animals can learn but not teach. One animal can learn by observing another, but the latter cannot teach the former in the manner of observing the former and correcting its errors.

While I was searching for the book on-line, I discovered that Griffin wrote another book with a very interesting title (to me at least) -- Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience (link).

(Edited by Merlin Jetton on 10/07, 8:24am)

Post 65

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 10:04am

Ed,

The experiments I mentioned evince a subject's ability to form mental categories; they say nothing of a subject's ability to use language. For purposes of determining categorizing ability, it doesn't matter whether a call is a signal or a designator. All that matters is that a specific call comes into play in response to a kind of stimuli. Adler's bit is thus not relevant to this discussion.

Jordan

Post 66

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 11:32am

Thanks for the links, Merlin. I'll check them out ...

Ed

Post 67

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 11:59am

Jordan,

Ed,

The experiments I mentioned evince a subject's ability to form mental categories; they say nothing of a subject's ability to use language.

But your view of mental categories is that they are concepts -- and the "ability to use [some kind of] language" is required for using concepts:

In order to be used as a single unit, the enormous sum integrated by a concept has to be given the form of a single, specific, perceptual concrete, which will differentiate it from all other concretes and from all other concepts. This is the function performed by language. Language is a code of visual-auditory symbols that serves the psycho-epistemological function of converting concepts into the mental equivalent of concretes. Language is the exclusive domain and tool of concepts. Every word we use (with the exception of proper names) is a symbol that denotes a concept, i.e., that stands for an unlimited number of concretes of a certain kind.

Concepts represent a system of mental filing and cross-filing, so complex that the largest electronic computer is a child�s toy by comparison. This system serves as the context, the frame-of-reference, by means of which man grasps and classifies (and studies further) every existent he encounters and every aspect of reality. Language is the physical (visual-audible) implementation of this system.

The primary purpose of concepts and of language is to provide man with a system of cognitive classification and organization, which enables him to acquire knowledge on an unlimited scale; this means: to keep order in man�s mind and enable him to think.

The first words a child learns are words denoting visual objects, and he retains his first concepts visually. Observe that the visual form he gives them is reduced to those essentials which distinguish the particular kind of entities from all others�for instance, the universal type of a child�s drawing of man in the form of an oval for the torso, a circle for the head, four sticks for extremities, etc. Such drawings are a visual record of the process of abstraction and concept-formation in a mind�s transition from the perceptual level to the full vocabulary of the conceptual level.

I suggest that you consider what an enormous intellectual feat Helen Keller had to perform in order to develop a full conceptual range (including a college education, which required more in her day than it does now), then judge those normal people who learn their first, perceptual-level abstractions without any difficulty and freeze on that level, and keep the higher ranges of their conceptual development in a chaotic fog of swimming, indeterminate approximations, playing a game of signals without referents, as Helen Keller did at first, but without her excuse. Then check on whether you respect and how carefully you employ your priceless possession: language.

From:
aynrandlexicon.com ("Language")

You conclude:

For purposes of determining categorizing ability, it doesn't matter whether a call is a signal or a designator. All that matters is that a specific call comes into play in response to a kind of stimuli. Adler's bit is thus not relevant to this discussion.

But when you say "kind of stimuli" -- you mean: a perceptual imitation. A percept that is instantiated in a number of different instances involving a number of different birds, but always getting the same results (when heard). There's no conceptualization in that. It's just treating similar percepts as being similar -- and remembering.

In the same way, you could teach a dog to eat food in front of it when you flash a green light and to stop when you flash a red one. The dog will very likely eat if you flash a blue-green light -- and very likely stop if you flash an orange-red light -- but that's not because the dog conceptualized the colors. It's because the dog remembered the perceptions and felt they were similar enough to be commands just like before.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/07, 12:03pm)

Post 68

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 12:42pm

I'm not sure what I can contribute to the discussion, but I have my own ideas on it that might be interesting (at worse) and possibly useful (at best).

First, consider the fact that in terms of evolution that animals that exhibit 'complex' methods to perceive their environment do not always have complex methods to store as memory that which they perceive. I can think of a good example of this in the American Opossum, which as one of the few animals that one could quite literally call stupid in that it has a terrible capacity for memory, but it has a decent perceptual acuity of its environment. It makes up for this in both having simple digestive and reproductive systems (which means they eat just about anything and breed at a higher rate compared to similar animals). So, from an evolutionary perspective, sentience (awareness) does not always give way to sapience (thinking).

Second, consider those animals that both have complex methods to perceive and to store what they perceive as memory. Humans, certain birds, some other primates (chimps), and possibly a couple other species exhibit such traits of being able to perceive their world and remember quite a bit about it. And not only just remember what they've perceived, but to reflect on it in some function as to modify their behavior (Examples: to avoid certain dangers, to move through a terrain more effectively, knowing where water/food sources are often found in general, and so forth). That's the part about memory that makes it interesting is at some point an organism that can remember has to manipulate that part of their memory, and do so at a regular basis to weed out extraneous information and condense from seemingly unconnected entities and events the more universal 'essence' that connects them.

As to why evolution would give way to such a coupling of memory to perception, I can only think of one possibility: that how one perceives the world isn't too different how one 'perceives' memory. What I mean by that is when one tries to remember an experience of the past, often one seems to attempt to remember it in the same fashion as to 'project' the layout of how the experience occurred (space, time, entities, and events (in sequence)).

Granted, such recollection becomes distorted, but that's the part of memory that I think gives a hint as to what makes perception of a memory different from a perception of sensation(s), since if both were totally analogous then there would be no real argument for most other animals (like the American Opossum, again) are not intelligent as perception of sensation would be analogous to intelligence (which it isn't). Hell, by that logic, a computer is intelligent since it can perfect perceive inputs and respond with its outputs.

... [I plan to post further, but right now I'm sorta at a writer's block, sorry] ...

Post 69

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 1:18pm

Hi Ed,

But your view of mental categories is that they are concepts -- and the "ability to use [some kind of] language" is required for using concepts. . .

I disagree. Not that it would change my view on the subject, but the lexicon quotes seem to be saying that language needs concepts -- and concept capacity develops greatly though use of language -- not vice versa: The quotes do not say that concepts need language. It just says that concepts don't get very far off the ground without language. Language gives concepts wings much like how concepts give percepts wings. But percepts don't need concepts anymore than concepts need language.

But when you say "kind of stimuli" -- you mean: a perceptual imitation. . . . It's just treating similar percepts as being similar -- and remembering.

I mean category of percepts. Under Objectivism, the first step in categorizing is differentiating something from all else (i.e., "this percept differs from that one"). The second step is lumping that differentiated item with others like it based on a common trait (i.e., "this percept is like that one" -- a step you actually mention above). This process is exactly what the birds are doing with alarm calls (and what the dog is doing with the colors, but I'll just concentrate on the birds for now). The birds distinguish different kinds of calls based on different kinds of danger, regardless of which bird is squawking the call and regardless of variations like timbre or register in each squawk.

If remembering is at play, then it is a remembering of a kind, not merely of a percept, because the bird will respond to an alarm call even if it's from a new bird's beak. Birds (and all else for that matter) can't be said to remember the voices they've never heard before. The fact that birds respond a particular way to the same kind of squawk each time, even novel squawks of that kind, indicates they have a mental category for that squawk.

Jordan

Post 70

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 1:30pm

Jordan,

The fact that birds respond a particular way to the same kind of squawk each time, even novel squawks of that kind, indicates they have a mental category for that squawk.

But what do you say to the criticism that you just made instinct into a mental categorization ("performed" under the "volition" of the animal)?

Ed

Post 71

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 4:35pm

Hi Ed,

But what do you say to the criticism that you just made instinct into a mental categorization ("performed" under the "volition" of the animal)?

I don't understand. :-/ Is the criticism that I'm allowing mental categorization to be instinctive, as opposed to solely volitional?

Confused,
Jordan

Post 72

Tuesday, October 7, 2008 - 4:49pm

Jordan,

Birds instinctually respond to calls in a certain manner, like a beaver responds to trees in a manner that results in a built dam. In the case of the beaver, there's "beaver-selectivity" in the choice of particular trees from a group of them (little green ones aren't used). In both cases, the beaver involves "selection" from a perceptual background. But that doesn't mean that birds or beavers have innate concepts. Nothing living has innate concepts (of anything). Instincts aren't concepts. That's my point.

Is it clear now?

Ed

Post 73

Wednesday, October 8, 2008 - 10:32am

Hi Ed,

I agree that categories aren't innate. I'd say most if not all animals (including humans) have strong propensities for forming certain categories. These categories are just inevitable and quickly acquired through speedy differentiation/integration. That's what I suspect is happening with the bird calls and beaver dams.

Incidentally, I'm wary of the term "instinct." Too often it's wrapped up with non-sensical "innate knowledge."

Jordan

Post 74

Thursday, October 9, 2008 - 8:23am

Jordan,

Instinct is simply a stimulus-response mechanism. The weather gets cold, the birds migrate. The weather stays warm, they don't. It has nothing to do with knowledge of the weather cycles of Earth -- locked up into a bird brain.

In the same way, the trap-door spider doesn't "know" about physics (even though the idea of building a trap-door requires knowledge of physics), and the diving-bell spider doesn't "know" about aquatics/hydrophysics (even though the idea of building an air-filled submarine, or SCUBA gear, requires knowledge of aquatics/hydrophysics).

It's simply 'anthropomorphysticism' to make conjecture that birds and spiders "know" the science behind their un-thought-out responses to environmental stimuli.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/09, 8:24am)

Post 75

Thursday, October 9, 2008 - 11:59am

Hi Ed,

It's simply 'anthropomorphysticism' to make conjecture that birds and spiders "know" the science behind their un-thought-out responses to environmental stimuli.

"Anthromorphy...": quite the term! But you're shifting away from a discussion of concepts. All I'm saying here is that evidence suggests that animals can form concepts. I'm not saying anything about whether they know that they are forming concepts, much less whether their activities are the product of their scientific thought. Some animal behavior is indeed reflexive (or perhaps you might call this "instinctual"), but that shouldn't change the assessment that animals can and do mentally differentiate and integrate unlike and like items, thereby forming concepts.

I might want to talk more about reflexivity later, as it might get to the crux of our diverging views. But I'll hold off for now.

Jordan

Post 76

Thursday, October 9, 2008 - 12:53pm

Ed, Jordon,

We all agree that there is a significant difference in the mechanism that permits a diving-bell spider to perform the feat for which it is named, and the conceptual activities of a human scientist that invents a new kind of diving apparatus. The argument seems to be as to whether there is something that it is valid to call a "concept" or a "conceptual mode of operation" that is performed by animals other than humans. The spider examples show that it is not something that can be judged by outside activities, as the behavioral and determinism schools are fond of doing.

Is it easier to approach this from the direction of what is it that a human does that can not be done by any other animal?

I ask this because I often find myself thinking that under determinism's influence all creatures have often been seen from too simplistic a viewpoint. I think that one decidedly human capacity is the ability to mentally project that which does not exist, mentally compare that imagined product to what does exist and to other non-existing possibilities, and then to choose among them according to a self-made value system. I could be stuck in traffic on the way to work and start imagining a different route to take, analyze it, and make a choice. A computer program can be created that makes it appear that the same process is being done, but it only looks that way. The spider is not a scientist. Neither other animals, nor computers can truly invent new scenarios or exhibit volition, agency, or choice.

Is there agreement on that? What other attributes of the human mode of awareness appear to be unique?

Post 77

Thursday, October 9, 2008 - 3:48pm

Hi Steve,

Neither other animals, nor computers can truly invent new scenarios or exhibit volition, agency, or choice.

Why not?

And while I think our capacity for imagination tends to far exceed that of our animal counterparts, research shows that many animals can and do mentally model reality.

Per what makes humans unique . . . there's just too much! Humans create loads of art; we pass tons of info from generation to generation. We learn extensively in triangular fashion, where both teacher and student can focus on a third object. We are very technologically savvy. All these lovelies are products of our mental prowess, but I'm tempted to side with Darwin on this one and say that our difference, at least from a generalized evolutionary standpoint, is a matter of degree rather than kind. Our brains are just so flexible!

Jordan

Post 78

Thursday, October 9, 2008 - 5:41pm

Steve,

Neither other animals, nor computers can truly invent new scenarios or exhibit volition, agency, or choice.

Is there agreement on that? What other attributes of the human mode of awareness appear to be unique?

I agree but I'll bet that that wasn't a surprise. Animals lack creativity. Animals don't do true art in nature. When an animal acts artistically in nature -- when a bird sings, or a peacock struts, or the bowerbird creates a bower with hundreds of specific-hue blue flower petals or similarly colored objects-- they always do the same damn thing. The bird sings the same song -- again and again and again. The peacock struts the same way -- he never tries new things, like a pimp-walk, or walking backwards, or kicking his legs out and saying to ladies: "Yeah, you know you want some of this!" And the bowerbird creates the same bower (with only meaningless differences) each time he tries to score a new chick (pun intended).

That's not art, it's instinct (each member of the species doing the same thing as every other similar member of that species).

Ed

Post 79

Thursday, October 9, 2008 - 5:57pm