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The future of the human race

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Dindraug
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Posted: Wed 23 Mar , 2005 8:14 am
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Sorry, I was not totally clear on my definition of self aware I think. I agree with MariaHobbit that most animals are self aware in that they have an awareness of self. You cannot be around most higher beasties (I do hate that phrase but consider it to mean mammels, birds, reptiles, some fish, amphibians, ceplapods and a few others) without noticing that they are aware of thmselves as seperate beings and thier place in the world.

I was not sure what level of self awareness though we were using here. there is a huge gap between 'me' and 'I think therefore I am'. I am not sure that 'abstract thought' covers it, mainly becaue I am not sure how you define that, what constitues that or what level of abstraction would dictate intelligence.

Most abstract thought paterns, by definition, are abstract from human norm. How can we use such patterns to judge animals?

For example, a dog that pulls on a table cloth to drag food onto the floor is probably using instict, but if he uses his paws to open a door handle is he using abstrct reasoning, or mimicking? A crow that bends a piece of wire to use as a tool to pick a bean out of a jar is using abstract thought, a man sitting by a pc who uses the phone to order pizza is using training.

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MariaHobbit
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Posted: Wed 23 Mar , 2005 3:08 pm
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Din,
By abstract thought, I mean thinking about things you cannot see or touch. When we talk about migrating to another solar system in 100 million years because our sun will go red giant.... that is the sort of abstract thought that people indulge in, and animals don't seem to.

Reasoning, figuring out the solutions to concrete problems, that is something I see quite often in my animals. My parrot has figured out how to undo the clip latch on his cage door. We have to use multiple latches to keep him caged while we are gone. My dog likes to steal eggs from our hen house. We punished her severely when we caught her at it, and she got downright sneaky about it. She ONLY takes eggs when we aren't at home, or at night when it's dark, and takes them out in the field to eat- so we won't find the shells. She made the logical leap to understand that if she didn't get caught, she wouldn't be punished.

That's all reality based reasoning. Abstract reasoning is manipulating symbols to arrive at knowledge that you did not have before. Mathematics, for example. It's talking about things that cannot be experienced directly. It's telling a fictional story. Animals do not show evidence of doing any of these things.

That's what I mean by abstract thought.


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Winged Balrog
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Posted: Wed 23 Mar , 2005 3:52 pm
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Din: In my post I wasn't talking about either self-awareness or abstract thought. Clearly humans are the only species we can definitively show to have abstract thought. My point was that the development of a brain that was capable of abstract and rational thought was necessarily preceded by the evolution of brains with a sufficient level of neural complexity. Human brains are the most complex brains in the animal kingdom, and my point was that you need a step below before you can get to the human brain. Such complexity is only present in the brains of higher mammals.

Also, decision-making does not imply intelligence. Bacteria can make "decisions" such as whether they will move towards a nutrient source or away from a toxin (chemotaxis). They can detect how many other bacteria are around (quorum sensing) and decide whether they want to keep dividing. Such decisions are "rational", but no "rational thought" is obviously behind them. They are based on a string of signalling reactions and changes in gene regulation. In the same way, what may seem like "decision-making" in a jellyfish can just be a preprogrammed genetic response to a stimulus.

Last edited by Winged Balrog on Fri 25 Mar , 2005 4:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Guruthostirn
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Posted: Wed 23 Mar , 2005 6:43 pm
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I think we're being a bit unfair...parrots are the only animals who can talk, and I don't think the connections between their brain and their speech abilities are that strong. Without communication abstact thought cannot be detected. Din's example of the crow may be the closest...because the bird had to figure out what would get that bean out. But how can we tell the dog isn't dreaming of running around in a field of purple grass on Jupiter?

Ok, so I'm kinda going far afield...but seriously...inability to express something does not imply absence of it. I should take a ruler to all your hands for making such a terrible error in thinking...

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Winged Balrog
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Posted: Wed 23 Mar , 2005 8:39 pm
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Quote:
Clearly humans are the only species we can definitively show to have abstract thought.
What about that comment isn't true, Guru? I also acknowledge the possibility that other creatures might have abstract thoughts, but we can never know if they do for the reasons you gave. :)

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Guruthostirn
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Posted: Wed 23 Mar , 2005 8:47 pm
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Lol, wasn't thinking of that sentence...since that Is accurate, we Can't see what other beings think. It's when we say humans are the only ones that Do have abstract thought that we err in judgement.

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Dindraug
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Posted: Fri 25 Mar , 2005 12:36 pm
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Quote:
Clearly humans are the only species we can definitively show to have abstract thought.
This is both the point and the paradox. We can only share with other humans because we have a shared language. We cannot with any other species, and cross species communication is basic in the extream. We can teach apes, parrots, dogs etc the meaning of human words, but they are limited. We can also understand the difference between a dogs various barks and whines. Not to the level of abstraction though. We truely have no idea what they are saying.

I remember a programme on TV a couple of years ago where two eminent experts were arguing about Elephant death rites in Africa. The animals beahviour was odd, but could be explained by instinct as one scientist did. The other was convinced that what the elephants were doing was a ritual which implied spiritual or religious belief. Use of religion to explain the world is one of the first abstract that humans discovered or used. For most, especially now, it is an instinct to carry out the rituals, but understanding what lies beyond that is abstract. But because the first scientist could not communicate with the Elephants, he could not concieve that it could be abstract.

In a similar vain, there was an astronomer called Galileo who was tried for heresy because he argued that the Sun did not revolve around the Earth. Paradigm's change.

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