Sophistry
A couple of whitecoated goons at the University of Adelaide have declared that humans are not actually more intelligent than lower animals. Yeah. Let's dig into this pile of fallacious analogies and strawman arguments, shall we?
Leaving aside the obvious trollbaiting with the reference to religion, any species which domesticates and systematically exploits another is by definition superior to it. You can quibble about the semantics of the word "intelligence" until the cows come home (see what I did there?), but the reality that one species is obviously and definably superior to the other does not change.
Horsefeathers.
If you put a gibbon in Finland or northern Russia or Canada, I guarantee you it'll need a house come about November or it'll be dead. Because we humans wanted to expand our range -- either voluntarily or due to population pressures -- into those cold regions, we invented houses and tamed fire. Gibbons notably did not.
Likewise with bears. We invented fishing nets because you can use them to catch far, far more fish in a given amount of time than even the most talented of bears can with only his paws for tools. That's because we need to smoke the fish to put it up for the winter, (see above), which means we need more than we can gorge ourselves on at that particular moment. The bear simply fattens up and hibernates, producing nothing and advancing nothing while he sleeps away the winter. Is hibernation a successful adaption? Obviously. Is it as successful as the manner in which humans handle the same problem? The evidence clearly says that it is not.
I love my dogs. My wife and I spoil them rotten. I'll even talk to them, and like most dogs they have a limited "vocabulary": sounds and motions to which they will respond in a predictable manner. Sometimes they can even fool you into thinking they're self-aware... then they go out in the yard and eat their own poop and shortly thereafter the resulting vomit. Because they're dogs, not people.
This "research" (I use the term sneeringly) is a prime example of what happens when academics become navel-gazers. They can quibble about the definitions of intelligence and superiority until they're blue in their pasty-white faces, but the reality is that the combination of large brains and opposable thumbs have put humans at the top of the food chain, which position we have used to create art, music, mathematics, and explore the universe. I'm still waiting for a gibbon to compose a symphony or even cook a meal. I suspect I'll be waiting for a very, very long time -- until and unless we choose to uplift them genetically. Until such an occurrence, I'm quite confident they'll remain house-less and naked, no matter how many books you might put in front of them.
But all this is irrelevant, because in my view the ultimate divide between humans and animals is sentience, and that means one simple thing: I will die. Or more to the point, I KNOW that I will die. My existence is defined by a finite time span which can be measured and the event anticipated with some reasonable degree of accuracy. I am fully aware of that fact -- like most of us, ever more so as I age. Awareness of our own mortality is both the blessing and the curse of sentience, and there has never been any evidence that lower animals possess this trait. Why is that important? I would argue that everything within the sphere of human accomplishment is due to that awareness of our limited existence. It drives us to excel and strive for more than we are, to leave something of ourselves behind when we die, to somehow make a difference and be noticed. The evidence of that is all around us: civilization. The elements no longer control our destiny, rather we control the elements. Without that spark of sentience, whatever its source, we are simply ignorant, self-replicating nutrient processors like every other animal on the planet, (and certain inhabitants of Detroit). But there's never been one building erected by a gibbon, never a single fishing net woven by a bear, not one painting produced by a dolphin.
Reality says We Win. Relative intelligence is irrelevant. Which is good for these "researchers," as I harbor some serious doubts concerning their relative intelligence.
The researchers said the belief in the superiority of that human intelligence can be traced back around 10,000 years to the Agricultural Revolution, when humans began domesticating animals. The idea was reinforced with the advent of organized religion, which emphasized human beings' superiority over other creatures.
Leaving aside the obvious trollbaiting with the reference to religion, any species which domesticates and systematically exploits another is by definition superior to it. You can quibble about the semantics of the word "intelligence" until the cows come home (see what I did there?), but the reality that one species is obviously and definably superior to the other does not change.
"Generally the claim is made that with language and now permanent record keeping we have a cumulative culture that allows us to accomplish many things that other animals could not," Burghardt said. "But that does not mean that individual humans are superior in all abilities to all other species. Just as a gibbon does not need a house, we have evolved in environments where we do not have to capture fish underwater with our bare hands, but brown bears do, and can do so better than us."
Horsefeathers.
If you put a gibbon in Finland or northern Russia or Canada, I guarantee you it'll need a house come about November or it'll be dead. Because we humans wanted to expand our range -- either voluntarily or due to population pressures -- into those cold regions, we invented houses and tamed fire. Gibbons notably did not.
Likewise with bears. We invented fishing nets because you can use them to catch far, far more fish in a given amount of time than even the most talented of bears can with only his paws for tools. That's because we need to smoke the fish to put it up for the winter, (see above), which means we need more than we can gorge ourselves on at that particular moment. The bear simply fattens up and hibernates, producing nothing and advancing nothing while he sleeps away the winter. Is hibernation a successful adaption? Obviously. Is it as successful as the manner in which humans handle the same problem? The evidence clearly says that it is not.
I love my dogs. My wife and I spoil them rotten. I'll even talk to them, and like most dogs they have a limited "vocabulary": sounds and motions to which they will respond in a predictable manner. Sometimes they can even fool you into thinking they're self-aware... then they go out in the yard and eat their own poop and shortly thereafter the resulting vomit. Because they're dogs, not people.
This "research" (I use the term sneeringly) is a prime example of what happens when academics become navel-gazers. They can quibble about the definitions of intelligence and superiority until they're blue in their pasty-white faces, but the reality is that the combination of large brains and opposable thumbs have put humans at the top of the food chain, which position we have used to create art, music, mathematics, and explore the universe. I'm still waiting for a gibbon to compose a symphony or even cook a meal. I suspect I'll be waiting for a very, very long time -- until and unless we choose to uplift them genetically. Until such an occurrence, I'm quite confident they'll remain house-less and naked, no matter how many books you might put in front of them.
But all this is irrelevant, because in my view the ultimate divide between humans and animals is sentience, and that means one simple thing: I will die. Or more to the point, I KNOW that I will die. My existence is defined by a finite time span which can be measured and the event anticipated with some reasonable degree of accuracy. I am fully aware of that fact -- like most of us, ever more so as I age. Awareness of our own mortality is both the blessing and the curse of sentience, and there has never been any evidence that lower animals possess this trait. Why is that important? I would argue that everything within the sphere of human accomplishment is due to that awareness of our limited existence. It drives us to excel and strive for more than we are, to leave something of ourselves behind when we die, to somehow make a difference and be noticed. The evidence of that is all around us: civilization. The elements no longer control our destiny, rather we control the elements. Without that spark of sentience, whatever its source, we are simply ignorant, self-replicating nutrient processors like every other animal on the planet, (and certain inhabitants of Detroit). But there's never been one building erected by a gibbon, never a single fishing net woven by a bear, not one painting produced by a dolphin.
Reality says We Win. Relative intelligence is irrelevant. Which is good for these "researchers," as I harbor some serious doubts concerning their relative intelligence.
posted by Jar(egg)head at 17:32
1 Comments:
“Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, wars and so on...while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man...for precisely the same reason.”
-Douglas Adams
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