Animal Minds; how much can we learn about them? (Animals)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, December 07, 2015, 13:10 (3056 days ago) @ dhw

Jumping in a set of words that popped out...-> My evolutionary “drive to improvement” depends on this sense. NB: for those of us who believe in common descent, it is logical that humans would have inherited this drive - as opposed to being its originators.
> DAVID: Of course. Early hominins are today's Homo.
> 
> Common descent did not begin with hominins. Common descent goes back to the first forms of life, and if they had not had the “drive to improvement”, there would have been no evolution.
> -Agreed, although to me, the only "drive" in evolution is the instinctive desire to stay alive, one of the few instincts that we *know* all life forms have. (Even the non-sentient ones.) Evolution can move "forwards" or "backwards." To be a hero, you don't need to step forward, if everyone else steps back!-I'll be posting about a "new synthesis" soon, inspired by the work of Jablowski that discusses four "levels" of evolution and actually incorporates conscious choice into the mix. -> dhw: Here are more quotes from Denyse O'Leary's brilliant article:
> DAVID: I thought you'd like it. Her background is as a devout clear-thinking Catholic.
> 
> Then it will be interesting to see how much autonomous intelligence she attributes to our fellow creatures.
> 
> QUOTE: “Life forms communicate with each other to a degree that often surprises researchers [...] evidence suggests that plants can communicate too [...] Plants, it seems, have a social life that scientists are just beginning to understand.”
> 
> DAVID: Again you presume too much. Plants use gases and chemicals to communicate through their roots and through the air. There is much and growing research on this aspect of their lives. 
> 
> This is not just my presumption. You have kindly posted many articles emphasizing the mental activities of even the lowliest organisms. But for some reason, you always focus on the means of communication, which in all organisms - including ourselves - rely on automatic processes. The presence of intelligence is shown by WHAT is communicated, not by HOW communication takes place.
> -Ants and bees are also sentient, and communicate via scent and in the case of bees, through dance. Chemical communication between plants isn't a far stretch at all, especially considering the role of beneficial fungi. -
I'm just jumping in half-cocked here, so I apologize if I'm not actually assisting...

--
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\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"