ah, fundamentals. let's have a pow-wow =)

i still don't see why you think i'm expressing a subjective view of humans. could you give me an example?

i believe that humans aren't merely executing their program because i want it to be true. i want humanity to be autonomous, able to act separately from the environment (but also still able to experience the environment), and able to do things which are purely original. i want it to be true, so i'm going to work for it.

thanks for the articles, i hope i can get around to them soon.
 
StvShoop said:
yes, animals can make things that affect their surroundings, but i don't think they consciously realize that they're changing the world. they're just executing their program (instinct).
humans can see the the affects of the change they make, and they can use these observations to propose other changes.
and yeah, humans are affected by their instincts too, but there's more than that to the human mind.

This is just one example but your entire argument shows divergent thinking.
You come to a conclusion based upon your observations of animal behaviour. But when you observe the same behaviour in humans you come to a different conclusion:
Animals doing things to change their environment = instinct.
Humans doing things to change their environment = intelligence.
This is not a logical conclusion to draw if you are being totally objective.
You have to use the same rules for everyone - you cannot play favourites.
A great deal of what we are and what we do comes out of our instincts - instincts that we share with all other animals. Therefore if we have something called creativity my argument has been all along that this cannot be unique to us but must appear, in varying degrees, in the other animals. If we can find creativity in other species then we can use it to compare to ours in an attempt to understand it and work out where it has come from and why we have it. And this, I believe, was the question you started with.
Accepting that we have a lot more in common with other animals does not reduce us as a species in any way. Nor does it reduce our achievements - it merely puts life into perspective.
Read those articles!
And if you want to carry this discussion further let's do it via the PM's. The other primates in this tree will get cross if we hog all the bananas. :wink:
 
Hertz van Rental said:
Animals doing things to change their environment = instinct.
Humans doing things to change their environment = intelligence.
to clarify, i said this, but with the modifying clause that people conceive of the changes they make, and animals don't.

Hertz van Rental said:
Therefore if we have something called creativity my argument has been all along that this cannot be unique to us but must appear, in varying degrees, in the other animals. If we can find creativity in other species then we can use it to compare to ours in an attempt to understand it and work out where it has come from and why we have it. And this, I believe, was the question you started with.
i think this is a main difference we have in our arguments. i don't care so much about the history of creative development over generations of evolution. i'm concerned with what i (and others) have right now. so i'm not so interested in tracking the evolutionary development of humans in comparison to other species. it's true though that it would be valuable to find out the true creativity/intelligence of other species at the current moment and compare it to humans' (and how to do this? that's another fascinating journey.), objectively if possible.
And if you want to carry this discussion further let's do it via the PM's. The other primates in this tree will get cross if we hog all the bananas. :wink:
lol, ok. this has been pretty much a 2 person thread. consider it closed
 

Most reactions

Back
Top