New Miscellany 2: Our brain contd., animal intelligence (General)

by David Turell , Wednesday, June 18, 2025, 19:22 (9 days ago) @ dhw

Our brain

DAVID: Repeat "Did the environmental challenges to our survival require such a brain, as per Darwin? No, it is overkill." Please answer.

dhw: You obviously did not understand my first answer. It is yes: whatever caused our brain to expand in the first place would have been connected with our survival (maybe a new discovery or invention or response to new conditions). The new cells would have continued to be used for these purposes for many generations, but there came a point (in relatively modern times) when our knowledge, experiences and requirements led us into fields no longer restricted to survival. And because our brain could not expand any further, the SAME cells complexified, whereas in pre-sapiens stages of human evolution, new cells were required to meet new requirements. Complexification of existing cells is not a “de novo” creation.

DAVID: Still with Darwin. God gave us our very special brain.

dhw: You asked about the role of survival in the formation of our brain. I have offered you a full explanation, and you have not disputed one single point that I have made. You simply go on parroting your hatred of Darwin and your belief in “de novo” creation, even though you believe in the theory of evolution.

Don't you realize you are spouting pure Darwin just-so stories? God made evolution.

Animal intelligence: the opossum

DAVID: Your opossum story would require some degree of repetition of observation to make the point. A single observation isn't enough.

dhw: How the heck do you know?

DAVID: From my own learning experiences. Are you all pure theory?

dhw: So during your career as a doctor, if your first patient died as a result of your wrong treatment, you needed a few more deaths to get the message. I wonder who invented the theory that you cannot learn from a single experience.

No response.

Learning as an MD requires more than one episode, medical biology is so variable.

DAVID: It is still clear each individual ant knows his role to play as part of a colonies reactions.

dhw: Yes, indeed, just as each individual human being knows his role to play in whatever job he is doing. Now please explain: when ants (and other creatures) solve new problems which test their intelligence, how does that prove they are not intelligent?

DAVID: Intelligent action from instinct does not mean active intelligence. The individual ant is an automaton.

Yes, of course, an action performed out of instinct does not require active intelligence. But it takes intelligence to find solutions to new problems, and every strategy must have had its origin as an intelligent response to a requirement. The same applies to individuals as to groups, and to insects as to humans. The factory worker’s task may not require “active intelligence”, but you have no doubt that he/she is aware of what he/she is doing. How can you possibly know that the ant is unaware that the removal of the pebble is essential for easier access to the food on which it and its colleagues depend for survival? You are accumulating massive piles of evidence that our fellow creatures are possessed of “intelligent awareness”, and yet you still insist that God must have provided a 3.8-billion-year old book of instructions for the ant and the opossum, or created them as stupid automatons which would need his personal tuition to show them how to survive.

DAVID: See new intelligence in animal entry.

Prairie dogs and curlews

DAVID: This is a careful learned behavior which has gotten to be instinctual. We are slowly learning how smart bird brains really are.

dhw: You can’t learn anything if you don’t have some form of intelligence. And yes, if you have learned that the cry “There are predators on the way!” means that there are predators on the way, you will instinctively grasp the fact that you are in danger and need to find a way to avoid becoming the prey. You, David, are slowly learning how smart birds and dogs and plants and octopuses etc. can be, but you still refuse to believe that ants and the opossum can also be intelligent. Why? Thank you for all these examples confirming animal intelligence.

DAVID: Of course they have intelligence.

dhw" So why do you believe that opossums and ants can’t possibly have intelligence?

Opossums have a degree of intelligence, ants are primarily automatons.

Animal intelligence in phytoplankton

DAVID: once again in a single cell, is it DNA instructions handling the problems or is something intelligent occurring?

dhw: “DNA instructions” is not the issue, since you insist that it is God who has created the instructions. Stick to the point: either God controls the phytoplankton or (theistic version) God gave them the intelligence to do it themselves.

God controls