@Wayfarer Do you think it would follow from that definition of intelligibility that nothing can ever be intelligible (in that specific Platonic sense) because, to whatever explanation is provided, one can always ask 'Why?'.

Whether it be 'things fall towards the Earth because of Newton's inverse square law of gravity' or 'the world exists because Yahweh manufactured it / Brahman dreamed it', one can still ask why.

If so, doesn't the concept of intellligibility become useless, since it does not distinguish?

The qualifier ruins it. In the traditional understanding, something is either intelligible or it isn't. — Wayfarer

Do you think so?

I think 'intelligible' traditionally relates to ordinary speech, not to philosophical discourse, and means that we can make out what the person is trying to communicate.

In most spoken sentences we hear, we do not catch every word, but we can still understand the sentence because there is redundancy in the language and we can interpolate. Sometimes we miss so many words that we are unable to interpret the sentence, but then, usually a few sentences later, we are able to make up for the loss of that sentence by the redundancy between that and the other sentences. This effect is amplified when listening to a language in which one is not fluent. That's why, when one is speaking to another adult in front of one's young children about something one doesn't want them to understand, one talks fast and in big words, to prevent the child from using redundancy to understand.

So we are usually able to understand one another, even though we miss much of what we each say. We could say that the message of a speech is still fully intelligible, because the redundancy enables us to capture the full meaning despite the missed words and sentences.

But in anything other than a short passage of speech, there are likely to be multiple themes. We may capture some of them but not all. For instance a prosecuting barrister may argue the defendant is guilty because of reasons A, B and C. A juror may not capture C, but be convinced by A and B, and vote to convict. I suggest that in that case the barrister's speech is only partially intelligible to the juror.

I am trying to learn German, and am reading short stories in it to improve my comprehension. I don't understand many of the words but I can get the meaning of most sentences via redundancy. There are some sentences or paragraphs that escape me entirely. I generally get the overall drift, but I never found out whether Eskol the Viking was angry or just sad when he was telling the others that their ship was broken and they'd have to stay in America. I would say the story is partly intelligible to me. Maybe even mostly intelligible, but that may be flattering myself.

I suppose I'm not really arguing here. It's just that your interesting comment set up a chain of thought in my head about intelligibility that I found curious.

Where do we draw the line in what we call a story? Because if the sequence of if-then statements a computer uses to understand a given problem is a story, "story" becomes a rather swollen and meaningless term, no? — IVoyager

I would say that a necessary condition for something being a story is that it have a conscious narrator (story-teller) and at least one consciousness listener. They may be the same entity - as we sometimes tell ourselves stories - but usually they are different.

But unless a computer is conscious, a computer executing a series of statements, or even printing out a story written by somebody else, is not telling a story. And I don't think the primitive computers we have now could possibly be conscious.

A consequence of this, to which some may object, is that a computer typing out random symbols endlessly, that by a sheer fluke prints out a sequence at some stage that reads just like Thumbelina, has not told a story. The same applies to a tree branch tapping against a cliff that by fluke produces a Morse Code version of Thumbelina.

Trying to produce necessary and sufficient conditions for what a story is would be challenging, and I don't have an answer for that right now. It would have difficulties similar to those in trying to define a 'game'. But the above necessary conditions are enough to rule out computer story-telling.

When do we know when we are actually studying nature, or the nature of nature, or if we're just telling ourselves a story? — darthbarracuda

In my view, we are ALWAYS telling each other a story, and there's no 'just' about that. Story-telling is the pinnacle!

On the question of intelligibility, I'm always a little mystified at questions like that, or the similar 'why is mathematics so effective'. It's like asking why the person that won the lottery won the lottery (what are the odds!!?!). If the world were not at least fairly intelligible, we would be unable to survive. So its partial intelligibility is a logical consequence of our survival. Similarly, if mathematics we were not so effective we would not use it. It is so effective because we chose it as the most effective thing we could get hold of. And again, if there were nothing nearly so effective, we would not have survived.

In my view the universe is predominantly, and ultimately, unintelligible. The fact that some minor aspects of it are intelligible to us should not come as a surprise. It could not be otherwise.

I wonder then how many Jews are out there who converted around the time of Jesus. I guess they'd still be Jews. — Hanover

That's a very good point, with an interesting historical context. All the original Jesus followers were Jews. From what I've read on the early years of Christianity - mostly John Shelby Spong - the Jews who followed Jesus very much considered themselves Jews, and considered their religion either a part of the Jewish one, or a natural evolution of it.

Tensions arose between the Jesus-following Jews and the non-Jesus-following Jews, which escalated and I think the former got kicked out, in some sense, after a few decades when the non-Jesus-following Jews gained enough power in the institutional religion, and were motivated enough to take that step.

Just think what a different world it would have been if that had not happened, and Christianity had remained a part of Judaism. All those centuries of persecution, predicated on Jews being 'other' and 'Christ-killers', might not have happened. On the other hand, maybe not: being part of the same umbrella religion doesn't seem to stop radical Wahhabi Muslims from killing Shiite Muslims.

The definition that, once a Jew, you remain a Jew unless you convert to another religion works for me, because it allows Woody Allen to still be considered one - since he appears to be an atheist. It rules out Felix Mendelssohn, who was a Christian, but his Jewish heritage is not a major part of people's perception of him.

However, conversion to Christianity didn't save people from the hatred of Jew-haters like Richard Wagner or the Nazis.

'Synthetic' means requiring the use of experience — TGW

Here's the first part of section IV of the intro to CPR (first edition):

In all judgements wherein the relation of a subject to the predicate is cogitated (I mention affirmative judgements only here; the application to negative will be very easy), this relation is possible in two different ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A, as somewhat which is contained (though covertly) in the conception A; or the predicate B lies completely out of the conception A, although it stands in connection with it. In the first instance, I term the judgement analytical, in the second, synthetical — Immanuel Kant

To me, that says they are antonyms. I also note that he does not mention experience.

you can define this containment relation is various ways — TGW

Can you provide an example of one? I have never seen an attempted definition. People just seem to assume that its meaning is obvious - which it isn't.

If you think math is learned synthetically, then you're going to deny this.

I am unable to form an opinion on whether mathematics is learned synthetically, because I don't know what 'synthetic' means. If I did, I would then know what 'analytic' means, since my understanding is that they are supposed to be antonyms.

I feel the same.
But I can see no other distinction between the assertion
'P1: If X is a bachelor then X is not married'
and
'P2: 7+5=12'
Statements such as 'P1 is true by virtue of the definition of bachelor' are meaningless. P2 is also true by virtue of the definitions of '7', '5', '+', and '12'. Given the definitions, one executes a sequence of deductive steps and arrives at the sentence '7+5=12'.

Similarly, given the definition

'D1: X is a bachelor at time T if X is a live, adult, male human at time T that has never been married at any time T2<T'

we can execute a series of deductive steps to arrive at the sentence

'If X is a bachelor then X is not married'

I must own that I cannot see any substantive difference between the two cases other than the length of the deductive sequence.

If Kant's claim was that statement D1 is an analytic proposition because it is identical to the definition of bachelor, then we would have a clear meaning of 'analytic proposition'. An analytic proposition is simply a sentence that is also a definition.

But under that approach, as soon as a deduction is needed to get from the definition to the sentence - even if that deduction is only a single step - the sentence ceases to be analytic.

'Bachelor --> Unmarried' is NOT true in virtue of the words.

The definition of bachelor is not 'an object that is unmarried'. It is something like 'An adult, male, live, human that has never been married.' To get from there to the Theorem 'If X is a bachelor then X is unmarried' requires several steps of logical deduction.

For example one such step, but by no means the only one, is that, given ' X AND Y', we can conclude 'X'. This involves applying the rule of inference in Natural Deduction that is usually called either 'Simplification' or 'AND elimination'.

Similarly, to get '7+5=12' from the axioms of arithmetic requires a series of steps of logic. The series is longer than the series required to prove that from 'X is a bachelor' we can conclude 'X is not married'. I can see no other material difference between the two cases.

Is it then the length of the proof that determines whether deducing B from A is analytic or synthetic?

If so, what is the maximum number of steps before something can no longer be considered analytic?

I introduced the two propositions about bachelors in my above post because they are theorems that require longer proofs than 'if X is a bachelor then X is not married'. They are also not immediately obvious, yet they are true. I am trying to explore the boundary between analytic and synthetic, to see what the maximum length of proof is.

I find the 'synthetic/analytic' distinction impossibly woolly. I have never encountered a definition that can achieve both clarity and internal consistency while still enabling Kant's conclusion that
'All bachelors are unmarried'
is analytic while
'7+5=12'
is synthetic.

I wonder how Kant would class the following true proposition:
'If P is a bachelor at time T then (if P marries at time T2 then if (T2<T) it is the case that 1+1=3)'

And if that's still analytic, how about:
'If P is a bachelor at time T then (if P was born at time T2 then if (T2>T-5 years) it is the case that 1+1=3)'

For me it can be summed up as 'try to be kind'.

I'm not saying I'm particularly good at following that principle. But that's my aspiration.

The point of my thread is to suggest that the claim, "you can't get an ought from an is" may not actually be binding. — anonymous66

I'd just like to point out that Hume never said those words. What he said was

'For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given' — David Hume

So he's not saying it can't be done. He just says that if you do it, you need to explain how you did it, and why that's valid.

Lest anyone accuse Hume of trying to get oughts from is-es himself, let me point out that his 'tis necessary' and 'should' can be understood from the context to be instrumental oughts. They are things you need to do in order to get people to accept that your argument is a logical one. There is no moral obligation to do those things.

She is a firefighter. Therefore she does whatever a firefighter does.

This works. But the obligation only has meaning when there is the possibility of not 'following one's function/nature. — unenlightened

I really like that. It's like the converse of Kant's important
'Ought implies can'

This one says
'Ought implies can not'

'can not' here has a very different meaning from 'cannot'

And yet I am able to tell a random person on the street who I know nothing about and who may not share my worldview that I find lying wrong, and he'll know just what I mean.

Curious I can accomplish that there, but the OP can't do that here. — Hanover

The OP can easily accomplish what you are talking about here. What he can't do is what he was talking about in the OP. There's a critical difference between the two, that involves a first-person pronoun.

The sentence contains a subj and pred. One thing that bothers me is the pred. "is not true". That must be a truth-predicate as it function as one — Jaydison

The biggest problem is not with the predicate, it is with the subject - 'this sentence'. The problem is that, when one tries to formally state the sentence, the predicate expands recursively without limit. It's like the delightful joke that, when fractal pioneer mathematician Benoit B Mandelbrot was asked what the middle initial 'B' in his name stood for, he replied 'Benoit B Mandelbrot'.

It is well stated proposition — Jaydison

Under my analysis, that's where it falls apart. It is a sentence, but not a proposition. Propositions have truth values. Sentences only have truth values if they can be translated into propositions.

But that sentence is incapable of being translated into a proposition, because the attempt to formalise the subject 'this sentence' (ie to express it in symbolic logic) generates an infinite regress.

If a string of words cannot be translated into symbolic logic, it is not a proposition, regardless of how grammatical it may be, or how reasonable it may sound.

How did Hume get us to believe reason Ought to be slave to the passions? Because he says so? — anonymous66

Did Hume say it 'ought to be slave'? I thought he just observed that it is - or at least appears to be - a slave.
I'd be surprised if he said 'ought to be' but will accept correction if precise references are given. I'd look it up myself (in the Treatise, I'd imagine) but I'm a bit distracted this morning so maybe somebody else will do that.

I suppose you could assume that [mathematical facts are testable]. But, how to prove it's anything more than an assumption on your part? — anonymous66

I think you know me well enough by now to not be surprised that I don't believe that that, or anything else, can be proven beyond doubt. All of everybody's beliefs rest on assumptions, so it adds no information to say that any particular statement rests on assumptions. One has to either challenge the assumptions by asserting that one considers them to be false, or provisionally accept them.

What we can do is demonstrate a test of a purported mathematical fact, that almost everybody will agree is a valid test, and that it confirms or denies the purported fact. That would satisfy most people's definition of 'testable'.

Whereas with a purported moral fact, we couldn't even find a way to try to demonstrate it.

Unless of course, we want to take a very heuristic definition of 'moral fact', such as 'something that most people in this society would agree is immoral'.

Is the question of moral facts, and where they "come from" or what they might be, really any more odd than any other facts? What about if you think there are facts about math? How weird — anonymous66

I am sympathetic to Nietzsche's adage 'There are no facts, only interpretations', which might suggest believing that mathematical facts are no less substantial than moral ones.

But even though I don't find the notion of 'fact' useful, I think there is more substance to the notion of mathematical facts than moral ones, because purported mathematical facts are testable, whereas purported moral facts are not.

I didn't notice anybody saying that Jews don't exist, but I don't think it can be defined solely in terms of religion.

One difficulty with trying to define Judaism solely in terms of religion is that what defines a religion is almost as energetically debated a topic as this one. Another is that, even under a very broad definition of religion, it would have trouble encompassing non-religious or even anti-religious people that I believe would self-identify as Jewish - such as Stephen Fry, Noam Chomsky and Woody Allen. It would also exclude people that are generally considered as Jewish despite being members of a religion that explicitly makes claims that are in conflict with those of the Jewish religion, such as Felix Mendelssohn.

My impression is that in modern usage, the term 'Jewish', when used positively, refers to people that self-identify as Jews. There is a strong correlation between such self-identification and religious practices, cultural practices and ancestry, but none of those three on their own accurately match the group. When used negatively by an anti-Jewish person, it refers to anybody that the person doesn't like and that they think of as Jewish. I don't think there would be hope of getting any coherent definition from such a person as to what they meant by Jewish. They would likely contradict themselves from one day to the next, as well as contradicting each other.

I think it is possible to accept that 'racist' is a meaningful term without also accepting that 'race' is a meaningful concept. In recent years I have become fairly persuaded by some of the scientific arguments that the concept of 'race' is unscientific, and in fact was only invented in the last century or two.

Given that, we can still think of a racist action as one that treats one or more people badly because the action's author has decided those people belong to a category of the author's own invention, and the author dislikes people that belong to that invented category, or regards them as inferior. Hence identifying an action as racist does not imply acceptance that race is meaningful, but only that the author of the action thinks it is meaningful.

I prefer to talk in terms of racist actions rather than racist people, because I believe that racism, as part of a more general rejection of the Other, is instinctive to humans (as it is to nearly all animals), and is reduced to the extent that people become educated and civilized. Some people have been far more successful than others in liberating themselves from such innate prejudices, but I doubt anybody has been entirely successful.

Good works is normally the criterion for any reward, whether you have faith or not. — YIOSTHEOY

Not at all. The Calvinist view is that good works play no role whatsoever in salvation. Luther also argued vehemently that only faith mattered - his doctrine of 'sola fides'. That is particularly ironic given that Lutheranism these days is one of the most open, tolerant and good-works-focused of the Christian denominations. In contrast to Martin Luther and John Calvin, Roman Catholicism officially places a strong emphasis on good works - one of the nicest things about an otherwise often harmful religion. But even RC stops short of saying that only good works matter.

The topic of whether good works matter, or whether only faith matters, has been one of the most hotly contested issues in Christianity since the middle ages. Views on either side have been considered heresies by the other, and occasioned purges and horrible punishments.

I mostly avoid pro or anti god-belief arguments these days, as I find the m pointless.

But this one was refreshingly different, on account of taking an emotional approach rather than claiming to prove with cold logic the (non-)existence of god - something I am convinced is impossible either way.

@Reformed Nihilist, your argument is very similar to the one I have settled on, after having been through all the attempts at purely logical arguments pro and con that are touted about in the market. I find it viscerally compelling, as opposed to merely without obvious logical flaw, which is the best that can be said for the logical attempts.

Where I differ from you is only in my conclusion. I no longer feel the need to conclude that God doesn't exist. All I need to conclude is that, if there is any immense, powerful, intelligence such as might be called a God, it is absolutely nothing like what is described by the Abrahamic religions, and all the positive claims made by those religions are pure nonsense.

I say, partially in jest, when discussing philosophy, that there are days of the week that I'm atheist and others when I'm theist,deist, pantheist, panentheist or polytheist. It's only partly jest, because I do sometimes find God to be a useful myth or metaphor (using myth in the positive, non-pejorative sense advocated by Alan Watts) that helps in coming to terms with a universe that is, in the final analysis, fundamentally incomprehensible.

There may be a God but, per the OP argument, if there is one, it's a nice, helpful one - not the one described in the Bible, Tanakh or Koran.

The hypothetical killer's thread reminds me of the very-real-life threads that are occasionally started on philosophy forums by people who sound suicidal and are asking if there are any reasons to stick around. It is generally understood and agreed that these people need to be implored to obtain professional psychiatric help. But amidst the many posts that do that, it is hard to avoid the temptation of adding a sentence or paragraph that tries to be encouraging, and maybe referring to something that has helped the (non-OP) poster cope with dark times of their own.

These things are indeed best left to professionals, and sometimes it is difficult to be firm enough to do that.

I think the 4chan killer was never caught. — TSBU

Do you have a credible source for that?

The wikipedia article on 4chan lists various threats of violence and one actual murder but in all cases the threateners, including the sole actual (non-serial) murderer were swiftly apprehended.

The only thing that sounds like what you are talking about, that I could find via a quick web search is this, of which there seems to be little doubt that it was just a hoax by an attention-craving person.

The OP was a hypothetical stating that "they can't catch him." — Hanover

Then it is a question pertaining to ethical systems of another universe, not this one. With that condition insisted upon, the question (as with so many ethical hypotheticals) is properly posed to an inhabitant of such an alternative universe.

In this universe, there will be a very good chance of the person being caught, so most ethical systems will recommend that actions be taken towards catching him, not pandering to him. The decision to delete or not delete, to allow responses or not, should be taken based on expert police advice as to which gives the greatest chance of catching him soon. These sorts of decisions have to be taken frequently often by police incident response teams in negotiating with hostage-takers. Sometimes it is better to give them rope. Sometime it is better to shut them down and close them off.

My understanding is that, if they were public message boards - rather than transient websites such as are operated by terrorists and other criminals - the killer would be caught in no time. We had somebody doing bomb scares around the country a few months ago using messages on mainstream internet sites, and they were soon caught.

The question, though, is whether or not is correct now to say that Pluto was a planet. — Michael

It depends, as (nearly) always, on context. That statement actually has two time inputs, but they are hidden, making the statement ambiguous. Let us define a predicate N with four arguments. N stands for 'noun' - common noun in fact.

N(x,t1,n,d) is true iff object x at time t1 qualified to be described as noun (category) n according to definition d. But definitions change over time and place, so d actually is itself a function of two arguments: time t2 and location l. Let's use a function def of three arguments such that def(u,v,w) refers to the definition of word u that was generally accepted in the vicinity of v at time w.

So we write our applied predicate more fully as
N(x,t1,n,def(n,t2,l))
In words:
'x was at time t1 an n according to the definition of n that was generally accepted at time t2 in the vicinity of l.
In the Pluto planet case we substitute 'Pluto' for x and 'planet' for n so the expression is, in precise form:
N(Pluto, t1,planet,def(planet,t2,l))
and in words:
'Pluto was at time t1 a planet according to the definition of planet that was generally accepted at time t2 in the vicinity of l.

A statement like 'Pluto was a planet in 1980' is neither correct nor incorrect. It is simply ambiguous speech, because it has not specified what definition of planet is to be applied. Two time coordinates are required in order to avoid ambiguity. Only one has been supplied, and it is not clear whether the 1980 is supposed to serve as t1, t2 or both.

In ordinary speech we usually do not supply all the necessary arguments to the implicit predicates and functions in our sentences, because they can be readily inferred by the context. But not infrequently, ambiguity arises because the context does not allow all the missing inputs to be uniquely inferred.

It's like when my partner says 'can you help me with this?'

For me it's getting a little far from common usage to say that Pluto was not a planet and now is.

I think a more accurate rendering of how the words are used is to say:
1. When people referred to Pluto as a planet (not a planet) in 1980 they were correct (incorrect); and
2. When people referred to Pluto as a planet (not a planet) in 2015 they were incorrect (correct).

What has changed is simply what the wider linguistic community - in this case heavily under the influence of public announcements by astronomers - considers to be correct use of the word 'planet'.

The key point is that, in assessing a statement for correctness, we often need to know who is saying it, and where and when. Statements don't exist outside of space and time. Context is (almost) everything.

Given that framework, it's only if one wants to take an essentialist or Kripkean view that there is some 'essential nature' of a planet (or a rigid designator) that gets dilemmatised.

It worked pretty well for General Motors. They bought metropolitan public transit systems and then wrecked them so that they could sell more cars. The citizens of those cities have been paying the price ever since.
http://www.trainweb.org/mts/ctc/ctc06.html

Several years ago, I tried to define a planet. Maybe it was inspired by the Pluto issue, or maybe by something else. I can't remember. I started off convinced that of course there were sensible necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be considered a planet, and I just had to work hard enough to be able to articulate them.

I was very dismayed when, after much hard work and many scrumpled pieces of paper, I had to give up. IIRC the problem that finally stopped me was the question of at what point an oxygen molecule in space somewhere near the Earth stops being part of the Earth. No matter how hard I tried, I could not find a way to answer that which didn't involve drawing an arbitrary boundary, eg at a specified distance from the Earth's centre of mass. And I couldn't discard atmosphere because then a gas giant like Saturn would not be a planet.

I think these days I would - if challenged to do something like that - instead try to define a planet as a phenomenon (not an object - to avoid the problem of the atmosphere) and set different sufficient and necessary conditions for it. For instance a necessary condition might be that somewhere in the phenomenon there is a spherical region whose average density is greater than that of balsa wood, with a radius greater than 100km and less than the radius of the sun. But a sufficient condition might be that the radius is at least half that of Mercury. There will be a huge fuzzy region between that encompassed by the necessary conditions and that encompassed by the sufficient.

Pluto would be in that fuzzy region.

if that mystic discovers the existence of God, it remains impossible for that existence to be communicated between people, other than by one person trusting another to be correct in their affirmation. — Punshhh

But what about communities of faith, discourse and practice? For example monastic and ecclesiastical movements and organisations. These provide the means to validate individual experiences, which is fundamental to the teacher-student relationship in a religious order. — Wayfarer

I see no conflict between these two statements. In other words I agree with them both except that I see no need for the 'But' at the beginning of the second one. The members of a spiritual community validate one another's experience because they trust each other's affirmations to be correct, which was the 'out' offered by Punshhh. I would imagine that that atmosphere of trust is one of the great attractions of living in a spiritual community.

Personally, I like the mystical approach and the idea of a quest of discovery. But there is another alternative which is to just believe the affirmations of those around you, provided one feels comfortable with that. Not everybody wants to be a mystic or a philosopher, or to go on a quest. It's OK to just believe simple scriptural stories if that is enough to satisfy the individual. It only causes problems when those stories and communities generate anti-social effects, like inquisitions, persecution of non-conformers, or anti-infidel jihads.

What I said was, there is a difference in kind between beings that use language, science, technology and so on, and animals, who don't. I can't see what is difficult to grasp about that distinction. — Wayfarer

It's not difficult to grasp. It's just impossibly vague. What does the 'and so on' mean? Walking sticks perhaps? If it was clear, it wouldn't need the 'and so on'.

The boundaries of language, science and technology are also unclear. Many life forms communicate, even coral, so language will need to be much more tightly defined if we want to exclude that (and why should we want to exclude it?).

Use of technology is not confined to humans either. There is a small minority of life forms that use inanimate tools. There is a far greater proportion that use live tools. For instance both parasites and symbiotes use other species to achieve their ends.

It seems to me to be a particularly Western-centric view of the world to say that we are special because only we do an arbitrary collection of things that only we do. It's special pleading.

My view is an amalgam of Eastern influences and pan-psychism. I see all life, and possibly all existence, as one. It is an enormous, rich, unfathomable mystery. For me it is life and consciousness, that are the great mysteries, not the fact that humans just seem to be smarter and more articulate than the other life forms we've encountered thus far.

I'm not saying that's the 'right' view. I don't think there is such a thing as a 'right view'. But I can point out that human exceptionalist positions tend to be either as foggy as Victorian London, or completely lacking in supporting evidence.

The claim is yours, not mine (although I am a little perplexed as to exactly what you are claiming bats don't do. It started off as 'think', then changed to 'have language' and seems to now be 'speak'). Onus of proof, etc....
OTOH if it's just a working belief then there's no need to debate it. We all have plenty of working beliefs, but don't elevate them the status of philosophical theories.

Language, mythology, story-telling, not to mention, science, civilization, technology, space travel, computers, the periodic table -this could be quite a long list — Wayfarer

Would it be correct to infer that your definition is that there is a 'difference in kind' between two species if one of them does at least one of the things on your list and the other does none of them?

If so, the list needs to be completed before one can reasonably consider it.

If you believe bats have language, present the evidence. — apokrisis

I gave no indication of whether I believe that bats have language or not. What I do believe is that you don't know the answer to that question.

But bats? Not so much.

Hearing noises and comprehending messages are unarguable differences in kind. — apokrisis

Are you then the first person to ever know what it is like to be a bat?

As for unarguable differences - nobody disputes that there are differences between humans and bats, just as there are differences between weasels and stoats. What I am still left wondering is what does it mean to say that the differences of humans are 'different in kind'. So far there has not been even an attempt to define what that might mean.

Again - who knows that? Only h. sapiens. — Wayfarer

First, you and I, and everybody else, have no idea what all non-human animals know. We don't even know what most other humans know.

Secondly, even if it were true, what would be its relevance to the claim that humans are especially special. I could as easily say
'Who could hear that statement if it were transmitted at a frequency of 40,000 Hz? Only a bat'

The question remains: what is a 'difference in kind'?. So far you have not answered the question, but just given two questionable examples. Examples are not definitions.

I think a threshold has been reached at which point humans can no longer be comprehended purely through the lens of the biological sciences — Wayfarer

This isn't limited to humans. No life form can be comprehended through biology, because what we know of biology is so little of what might be out there - and that's only contemplating the known unknowns, leaving aside the unknown unknowns (thanks Donald. No, not that one, the other one). That's why biology is such a fascinating field of study. Every direction we look, there are a whole bunch of things we don't understand. Sometimes I think I should have been a biologist, because of that fact, even though I always have been much more drawn to physics because of its mathematical content.

Biology enables us to appreciate a number of very important and useful regularities that are observable amongst life forms, but I don't think many biologists would be prepared to say we understand life. I just think you are way under-selling the amazing incomprehensibility of life, relative to which, IMHO, the stand-out intelligence of h.sapiens relative to other species on Earth seems rather mundane.

...my philosophical view is that h. sapiens crossed a threshhold at some time in its development, at which point it becamedifferent in kind to other animals, or, to put it another way, it was no longer simply an animal; it transcended the merely biological (a fact which is represented in many myths and cultural tropes).

Can you explain what you mean by the bolded bits? They fit in the sentence with grammatical correctness but when I try to think of what they might mean, I find myself facing a complete blank.