I agree that h. sapiens evolved and that language also evolved but my argument is that we've crossed an evolutionary threshold which sets us apart from other animals. We are able, among many other things, to interrogate the nature of being through philosophy, or the size and age of the Universe, through science. — Wayfarer
Where have I said that? — Wayfarer
He describes all the powers of living beings as potentials, capacities, the powers of self-nutrition, self-movement, sensation, and intellection. — Metaphysician Undercover
there is a distinct discontinuity between living and inanimate — Metaphysician Undercover
I believe other animals are capable of reasoning and presymbolic language. The only difference I see is the advent of symbolic language with humans. I also think this is pretty much the standard view, so I'm not sure why you seem to think it isn't the standard view. — Janus
"A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants", which I take to mean that, apart from external constraints, you are free to do whatever you want but you are not free to choose what it is that you want. — Janus
Well, you could make an essentialist argument that understanding is exactly the discontinuity between humans and other animals, even if understanding itself is a power among others like movement etc. One can find many features that is shared by all (not deficient) humans and absent in other animals and claim that as the discontinuity, no matter whether the feature chosen is important. — Lionino
I'm just pointing out that there are many lines that can drawn between us and animals. — Lionino
Is there? What do you make of viruses? Specially something like a mimivirus. — Lionino
Science confirms or disproves it through experimentation.Reasoned inference enables discoveries of facts impossible to obtain by observation alone. Science relies on it, not to mention everyday rational thought. — Wayfarer
I call all means into question. Here, I was merely pointing out the self-contradiction of a particular hard-line position.Those very means you call into question in your initial response. And here, you're verging on positivism. — Wayfarer
What's that to do with the topic? The power of humans was never in question; the sentience of other species was.I think humans need to take responsibility for the fact of their difference to other species. — Wayfarer
We did cross a threshold, but it wasn't an evolutionary one; it was a cultural one. Once humans turned into settled farmers, their attitude changed: land and water became commodities; herbivores became cattle or vermin; carnivores became rivals and enemies; insects became pests. Humans alienated themselves from other species.we've crossed an evolutionary threshold which sets us apart from other animals. — Wayfarer
A complete side-track. We had one of those. We had a fairly big table in the kitchen, off limit to animals. We hardly ever saw her on it, but when I put my key in the lock, there was a scramble and clicking of nails on tile, a big white dog coming to greet me, and a Pyrennees-shaped puddle of sand on the table. It was a perfectly rational thing for her to do: lying on the table enabled her to see out the windows in comfort.I think its' very clear that other animals "understand". We had a dog which clearly understood that it ought not get on the table, and so it did not ... as long as someone was around. But as soon as we went to bed it would be on the table. — Metaphysician Undercover
Reasoned inference enables discoveries of facts impossible to obtain by observation alone. Science relies on it, not to mention everyday rational thought.
— Wayfarer
Science confirms or disproves it through experimentation. — Vera Mont
What information do you have to work with beyond the empirical? — Vera Mont
We did cross a threshold, but it wasn't an evolutionary one; it was a cultural one. — Vera Mont
That's the 'point'. Conjecture, intuition, imagination, projection, gut feeling are all valuable starting points for the investigation of some phenomenon or the search for an answer to some question. They often point to where one should look for information; they do no themselves supply information.then rational inference goes well beyond what is available to sensory perception. Through it, we have discovered endless things that you could never learn only by observation. — Wayfarer
What is an existential threshold? Apes exist; humans exist; humans are apes but apes are not human. Every speciation is a threshold of sorts, and so is every conception. What makes this branching off more special than all of the others?And also an existential one, more to the point. — Wayfarer
Of course it is. But the ways in which that difference is interpreted by humans is also significant.And that the difference is significant. — Wayfarer
No; they exploit real differences.What I will acknowledge is that I believe that elements of the religious account of mankind signify real differences. — Wayfarer
‘what more is there than information’ Why is that in single quotes? It looks suspiciously like a disinterpretation of my asking what information is there in the extra-empirical?As far as ‘what more is there than information’ there’s the whole question of interpretation, of what information means. — Wayfarer
my asking what information is there in the extra-empirical? — Vera Mont
I think viruses are quire clearly living. — Metaphysician Undercover
And still contain no information which is beyond observable reality.Concepts are crucial to cognition and to understanding of that perceived, but are in themselves extra-empirical. — javra
Not sure what this means. One [person?] simply understands the concept of animal, world or number - okay. But before that one can understand the concept of something, at least one example of the original had to exist in either reality or imagination. One wouldn't have much use for a concept that corresponds to nothing in the universe. The ideal triangle would be quite meaningless without we can draw imperfect real ones.One for example does not perceive the concepts of "animal" or of "world" or of "number" but simply understands them - this when perceiving signs, for example - and any perception we might have of an animal or a world or a number (be it of the imagination or not) — javra
This, I understand not at all.will necessarily exclude many if not most elements which the concept itself encompasses.
Google has told me that viruses are not alive — Metaphysician Undercover
Raoult and Forterre (2008) even argue that we should reclassify all biological entities into two major groups: the ribosome-encoding organisms (archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotes), or REOs; and the capsid-encoding organisms (viruses), or CEOs (Figure 2).
But how would that amount to an ontological difference rather than just a different mode of consciousness?
Concepts are crucial to cognition and to understanding of that perceived, but are in themselves extra-empirical. — javra
And still contain no information which is beyond observable reality. — Vera Mont
will necessarily exclude many if not most elements which the concept itself encompasses.
This, I understand not at all. — Vera Mont
Once this exemplar is visualized (or heard, smelled, touched, etc.) either via the imagination or otherwise, it will exclude all other possible exemplars of animal which the concept of “animal” by its very definition encompasses. — javra
the grasp of (a) thing's intelligibility involves understanding its species and genus (scholastic sense of the terms), its telos (at least for living things; the healthy adult versions of living beings are phenomenologicaly "present" to us even when observing the immature or diseases for ), and the universals involved with it. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The human awareness of other animals did not begin with an idea; it began with individual real entities. The human realized that every example of a certain kind of prey was like every other in some ways in which it was unlike another kind of prey — Vera Mont
For Empiricism there is no essential difference between the intellect and the senses. The fact which obliges a correct theory of knowledge to recognize this essential difference is simply disregarded. What fact? The fact that the human intellect grasps, first in a most indeterminate manner, then more and more distinctly, certain sets of intelligible features -- that is, natures, say, the human nature -- which exist in reality as identical with individuals, with Peter or John for instance, but which are universal in the mind and presented to it as universal objects, positively one (within the mind) and common to an infinity of singular things (in the real).
Thanks to the association of particular images and recollections, a dog reacts in a similar manner to the similar particular impressions his eyes or his nose receive from this thing we call a piece of sugar or this thing we call an intruder; he does not know what is sugar or what is intruder. He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. He has not the idea or the concept of the thing he knows, that is, from which he receives sensory impressions; his knowledge remains immersed in the subjectivity of his own feelings -- only in man, with the universal idea, does knowledge achieve objectivity. And the dog's field of knowledge is strictly limited: only the universal idea sets free -- in man -- the potential infinity of knowledge.
Such are the basic facts which Empiricism ignores, and in the disregard of which it undertakes to philosophize. — Jacques Maritain, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism
And he has intuited all this about a mind of which he has not clue#1. Clever man!He plays, he lives in his affective and motor functions, or rather he is put into motion by the similarities which exist between things of the same kind; he does not see the similarity, the common features as such. What is lacking is the flash of intelligibility; he has no ear for the intelligible meaning. — Jacques Maritain, The Cultural Impact of Empiricism
when I previously mentioned that we think and understand perceptions via concepts, but that concepts are in themselves extra-empirical (else non-observable).... — javra
What does "presymbolic language" mean? Isn't all language by the meaning of "language", symbolic in some way? Adding "symbolic" to language, to say that human language is "symbolic language" is just redundancey. — Metaphysician Undercover
We have good reason to believe in intelligibilities because it does not seem like they should spring up uncaused or be the sui generis results of a magical human power. We should believe in them particularly from a naturalist frame. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Why not? I see no problem with a man choosing ones wants. That's what we learn how to do in moral training, mastering our habits. — Metaphysician Undercover
Where is that "first place" supposed to reside? In the embryo? On the ovum? Surely not in the genes of apes that oh so recently could not philosophize at all? What is the origin of this mind that preconceives?According to Kant, these categories are not derived from experience but rather are the preconditions that make experience intelligible in the first place. — Wayfarer
We fist interpret it as a story. It is not until the same kind of event is followed by the same kind of event repeatedly that we begin to understand cause and effect. (For some people, it can happen with monotonous predictability and they still go on television to say "Nobody could have foreseen this!") Moreover, the intelligent among us observe, experiment and discover whether we ourselves can cause the same thing to happen. That's how we learned to control fire and ride logs down a river and build airplanes.For example, when we perceive one event following another, our understanding interprets this as causation, — Wayfarer
They're both dead enough not to trouble me overmuch, and they were both smart guys, yet disagreed, so it's possible that they were both wrong about some things that have since become easier to study, like neuroscience.Generally speaking, your posts seem to exhibit a straightforwardly empiricist approach, hence are susceptible to this kind of critique. — Wayfarer
Where is that "first place" supposed to reside? In the embryo? On the ovum? Surely not in the genes of apes that oh so recently could not philosophize at all? What is the origin of this mind that preconceives? — Vera Mont
We first interpret it as a story. It is not until the same kind of event is followed by the same kind of event repeatedly that we begin to understand cause and effect — Vera Mont
I don't agree with them, but that is just a personal preference of mine. — Lionino
Kant agreed that all our knowledge begins with experience, but he disagreed with Hume's conclusion that it therefore arises solely from experience. Kant introduced a critical distinction between the forms of intuition (space and time) and the categories of understanding (including but not limited to causation), which are necessary for us to interpret sensory information.
According to Kant, these categories are not derived from experience but rather are the preconditions that make experience intelligible in the first place. They are the innate structures of the mind that organize sensory data into coherent perceptions ('percepts'). For example, when we perceive one event following another, our understanding interprets this as causation, allowing us to see one event as causing the other, rather than just as two events occurring sequentially. Thus, Kant argued that Hume's reduction of knowledge to mere sensations and perceptions overlooks the active role of the mind's inherent structures, which underpin experience. — Wayfarer
The first point is that what is significant to you, what is important to you, conditions your desires. We all have first order desires for pleasure, satisfaction, gratification, stimulation and so on. But in case those desires lead to habits that are unhealthy, they may be countermanded by stronger concerns like personal health, social harmony, or even simply by introjected moral prescriptions and proscriptions. — Janus
The second point is that what you desire in the first order sense; food, warmth, shelter, sex, and so on simply is what it is. — Janus
The third point is that each person's capacities just are that person's capacities—some are more capable than others at overcoming their compulsions or addictions. Some people simply don't and cannot, feel empathy, for example—they cannot force themselves to care for others, although is they are smart, they may at least be able to bring themselves to act as though they do. — Janus
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