Animal language (Animals)

by dhw, Saturday, January 17, 2015, 14:09 (3380 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I don't expect a straight line from protocells to humans because I'm challenging two of your beliefs. Two questions will suffice: 
1) Do you believe your God preprogrammed the first cells to pass on his design for the weaverbird's nest? -David: God played a role in part or in whole.-Same problem as under “Epigenetics”. If God had provided the first cells with an autonomous inventive mechanism, that would be “in part”. “In whole” would be either preprogrammed or the result of a dabble. I can't see any theistic alternatives, so are you now giving these hypotheses equal ranking?
 
Dhw: 2) Do you believe that the weaverbird's nest was essential for the production of humans?
DAVID: Yes, to provide a balance in nature. I see no other explanation. Does it have to be that specific nest? Of course not. But obviously since life exists in such a huge variety, it must exist that way with many oddball things on exhibit.-Do you think nature would have been unbalanced without the specifically, divinely planned weaverbird's nest, and thus unable to produce humans? 
 
dhw: Can you or can you not see an orderly progression from animals and early humans living in caves to modern humans living in huts, houses, skyscrapers; from animals and early humans communicating by sounds to communication by writing, telephone, Internet?
DAVID: You neatly skipped my point, which is the size of the gaps. Of course, I see the progression, but I concentrate on the unexplained gaps, and I have my own explanation. -You have claimed that humans are different in kind from our fellow animals because ”the giant leap to us doesn't fit any orderly form of evolution.” I am trying to show that the gap we now see is the result of an orderly progression, which can be traced as I've described above. Please explain what you see as the giant leap in the examples I have given.-dhw: So once the intelligence is there (perhaps God-given), it builds on each generation's experiences, knowledge, memories and inventions to create more and more improvements. Exactly the same process for intelligent humans as for other intelligent cell communities, except that the latter appear to stop innovating when they reach a certain point of efficiency, whereas humans go on.-DAVID: Our complex brain, which we barely understand at present, must first develop before all the steps you describe can happen. Cell communities, in my view, are given their small capacities in the original instructions for life.-You wrote that “there is no evidence that our brain which appeared about 250,000 years ago was not equal to the one we have now. We simply needed time to learn to use it.” Do you disagree with my description of how we learned to use it? Your second sentence suggests that the original instructions for life contained an inventive mechanism (= God's role “in part”) rather than detailed instructions on how to build a weaver's nest (= “in whole”). We too are a community of cell communities, but with larger capacities. And so we too could be the product of the same inventive mechanism.-dhw: So do you think our fellow animals are capable or incapable of emotion (including love), reason, design, planning, communication, learning, organization, invention?

DAVID: Yes, to a much lesser degree than humans in the areas of reason, design, planning, communication and invention. With emotion they can show more love than we deserve, can show disappointment, depression, excitement etc.-Thank you for using the word “degree”. Much more appropriate than the word “kind”.