Secular Morality?

[shunyadragon]

Exactly, you brought it up, but it's completely irrelevant to the side-issue that JimL brought up, namely the raven experiment, which is the only facet in this discussion which I have commented upon. Whether or not higher primates exhibit logical and/or abstract thinking is a completely different question from whether the raven experiment shows that ravens exhibit the same thing. I'm not evading the evidence, given that it was never my intention to weigh in on the general question of whether animals exhibit abstract thinking in the first place.

I brought it up as a significant issue concerning the main issue of the dialogue topic. Side issues should not dominate the topic. I do believe your avoiding the main topic by objecting to evidence of a side issue.

[JimL]

You don't need anything more than flat rejections when your opponent himself has nothing but pure assertion. JimL has without justification or argument asserted that the raven experiment shows that ravens are capable of abstract thought, and until he explains why he thinks that the experiment shows what he thinks it shows, flat rejections are all he deserves.

I'm quibbling over definitions because what words mean are actually important when debating. I'm not going to let JimL succeed in playing fast and loose with them.



There's no need, or even possibility for me to present a counter-argument, because JimL hasn't actually made his case yet. Presenting some random experiment and asserting that it shows something or the other without even giving an argument to why the two are connected isn't making a case.



The one who needs to hear that his argument is bad, or (indeed) nonexistent is JimL, not me.



It might be, but given your post I'm not sure if you're actually capable of judging whether that is the case or not.

Heres another example for you to ignore Chrawnus:

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/141219_crows.htm

[Tassman]

What I described as dung was not "the matter of non-human primates", the dung I was referring to was your insinuation that I was incapable of acknowledging that justice, fairness and abstract thought occur among non-human primates because of my belief in the Bible. One wonders why you even brought up that tangent given that I have never once in this thread mentioned any of that.

Nonsense! In #643 you specifically said: There's no mention of your Christian outrage at being misrepresented regarding your bible beliefs.

So, am I wrong? Do you NOTDOso much evidence to the contrary and none supporting the biblical assertions.

[Jaecp]

Right and until you do you have no argument. Heck, you can't even know the inner life of a fellow human being.

http://organizations.utep.edu/Portal.../nagel_bat.pdf

Except that I googled the name of the paper and while its certainly a great paper from 1974, its still just a philosophy thought experiment. That and that a good number of more contemporary people have weighed in on the topic. It's nice that you can say "no, your wrong, heres a link to an article for 41 years ago", but, wait, no, its sloppy and thats boring.

You don't need anything more than flat rejections when your opponent himself has nothing but pure assertion. JimL has without justification or argument asserted that the raven experiment shows that ravens are capable of abstract thought, and until he explains why he thinks that the experiment shows what he thinks it shows, flat rejections are all he deserves.

I'm quibbling over definitions because what words mean are actually important when debating. I'm not going to let JimL succeed in playing fast and loose with them.



There's no need, or even possibility for me to present a counter-argument, because JimL hasn't actually made his case yet. Presenting some random experiment and asserting that it shows something or the other without even giving an argument to why the two are connected isn't making a case.



The one who needs to hear that his argument is bad, or (indeed) nonexistent is JimL, not me.



It might be, but given your post I'm not sure if you're actually capable of judging whether that is the case or not.

He drew a distinction between instinctive behavior and higher order behaviors. It was brief, but present. Meanwhile, your own response held the same flaw you were accusing him of. It was vapid. Even if someones post is pale simply saying the stuff you did isn't good enough because its an unsupported assertions. Throwing an unsupported assertion back at an alleged unsupported assertion is pale. Its also, as I demonstrated in my reply to you, easy to make them not suck.

How much do you actually follow the field in which this discussion is nominally about? From my own university background, these "Raven Experiments" are pretty well known to anyone with a few undergraduate psychology classes under their belt. The distinction between instinctual behavior and novel problem solving is significant and it shows that there is more going on in the Raven's brain than simple instinct which is all thats needed for the purpose of this discussion.

[Tassman]

Then how do you explain it? If not by instinct? Come to think of it, don't you believe that we are all hard wired anyway?

But the point is, even bees do things that we would call compassionate. Dogs can look guilty, ashamed.

The argument doesn't concern the more instinctive behaviour of lower order creatures despite your best efforts to introduce this straw-man.

But we have no idea how they really feel or think. We personify their behavior.

This is just an argument from ignorance. In fact we have a very good idea how higher order creatures "feel or think", especially the other primates. The evidence indicates that they reason and think similarly to us.



http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/arti...rality_animals

Really Tass? Tell me how can you tell what a monkey is really thinking or feeling? You can't, you can only see behavior. Heck Tass, you can't not even know what I'm thinking or feeling.

You do know that Herzog has studied animal behavior extensively and as it relates to human interaction? Look him up (From Animal Behavior and Cognition

http://abc.sciknow.org/archive_files...rzog_FINAL.pdf )

But his points are self-evident. We Tass do not know that what we see in other species is any more than instinctual. We CAN NOT know otherwise.

[JonathanL]

Nonsense! In #643 you specifically said: “I haven't mentioned "non-human primates" even once in this thread, so one wonders why you felt the need to drop this piece of irrelevant dung into the thread”. There's no mention of your Christian outrage at being misrepresented regarding your bible beliefs.

There's no need to directly mention that I'm being misrepresented, any reasonable person would have been able to infer it from what I wrote. But then again, you're not known for being the most reasonable person on TWeb, are you?

So, am I wrong? Do you NOT believe that “‘Man’ is unique, created in God’s image and granted dominion over all creatures, as per the bible? Yes or no! Because if you DO believe that this is the case then you’re obviously going to resist the evidence to the contrary…which is what you seem to be doing? Pity for you that there is so much evidence to the contrary and none supporting the biblical assertions.

I believe Man is unique, created in God's image and granted dominion over all creatures, but I fail to see how animals being capable of abstract thought would challenge my belief that this is so in any way. I think you've got me confused with someone who's insecure in his beliefs.

[JonathanL]

He drew a distinction between instinctive behavior and higher order behaviors. It was brief, but present. Meanwhile, your own response held the same flaw you were accusing him of. It was vapid. Even if someones post is pale simply saying the stuff you did isn't good enough because its an unsupported assertions. Throwing an unsupported assertion back at an alleged unsupported assertion is pale. Its also, as I demonstrated in my reply to you, easy to make them not suck.

Except I did address his distinction between instinctive and higher order behaviour, in a prior post:

The raven's (why on earth do you keep capitalizing the inital "r"?) behaviour in the experiment is not enough to establish abstraction. People abstract by deriving general categories from the particular, concrete examples that they have available and the fact that the raven realizes that if it pulls the string with it's beak it will eventually get the food is not abstraction in the slightest. The raven still hasn't made a single generalization in doing so, nor is there any need for it to do so.

I should have written the last sentence as "We don't know if the raven has made a single generalization in doing so. . ." instead of what I wrote above, but I still stand by this. Behaviour by itself, when not accompanied by communication, will never tell us if the individual exhibiting the behaviour does so because of instinct, abstract thinking, or something else inbetween.

How much do you actually follow the field in which this discussion is nominally about? From my own university background, these "Raven Experiments" are pretty well known to anyone with a few undergraduate psychology classes under their belt. The distinction between instinctual behavior and novel problem solving is significant and it shows that there is more going on in the Raven's brain than simple instinct which is all thats needed for the purpose of this discussion.

I don't follow the field much at all. But I disagree that showing that there is more going on in the raven's (what's the deal about capitalizing the R by the way? ) brain than simple instinct is enough. JimL specifically claimed that the experiment showed that the crow was capable of abstract thought, which is a far more grandiose claim than "there is more going on in the Raven's brain than simple instinct". If I were to conclude that instinct is not enough to explain the behaviour of the crow in the experiment I would still not be obligated to conclude that the crow must therefore be capable of abstract thinking. But then again, I don't remember making that claim (i.e instinct being enough) in the first place, so I'm not sure why you and JimL seem to be trying to force me to defend a position I never (atleast I don't think I did) claimed to hold to in the beginning.

[Jaecp]

How would you classify the above instinct, but below abstract thinking then?

I'm on my phone so I'm not going to 've digging this up, but I have this inkling that the precise definition of the ravens intelligence or whatever is not super relevant. What's going to matter, I suspect, is that the comments you chimed in upon were about animals with reasoning capacity or the overall thing about seers focus on whether intelligence is helpful.

[seer]

Certainly, but that's not the end of the story…there’s a distinction between instinctive behaviour and the higher order behaviours of intelligent creatures.

Well if it is all hard wired then what exactly is the difference in the end? Mere complexity?

The argument doesn't concern the more instinctive behaviour of lower order creatures despite your best efforts to introduce this straw-man.

Of course it is relevant. You are the one claiming that certain kinds of behavior in primates can tell us about the thinking process of the animal. Well we know that ants learn and make rational choices, bees show what looks like compassion, dogs show what looks like shame or regret and compassion. Yet we don't believe dogs, bees or ants experiences of these states relate to ours in anyway. And the fact is Tass, we can not get into the monkeys mind via observed behavior any more than we can get into the dogs mind. Any more than you can know that my compassionate behavior towards my ailing mother was really based in compassion as opposed to an ulterior motive.

[Tassman]

There's no need to directly mention that I'm being misrepresented, any reasonable person would have been able to infer it from what I wrote. But then again, you're not known for being the most reasonable person on TWeb, are you?

No, any never said as opposed to what you actually said.

I believe Man is unique, created in God's image and granted dominion over all creatures, but I fail to see how animals being capable of abstract thought would challenge my belief that this is so in any way.

I think you've got me confused with someone who's insecure in his beliefs.

[Tassman]

Well if it is all hard wired then what exactly is the difference in the end? Mere complexity?

Much higher intelligence is the difference!

Of course it is relevant. You are the one claiming that certain kinds of behavior in primates can tell us about the thinking process of the animal. Well we know that ants learn and make rational choices, bees show what looks like compassion, dogs show what looks like shame or regret and compassion. Yet we don't believe dogs, bees or ants experiences of these states relate to ours in anyway. And the fact is Tass, we can not get into the monkeys mind via observed behavior any more than we can get into the dogs mind.

It is a category error to equate with highly intelligent creatures such as the primates. It is also an error to categorize the humans as substantially different from other highly intelligent animals such as bonobos and chimpanzees...the evidence indicates that the only difference is one of degree not one of kind.

Any more than you can know that my compassionate behavior towards my ailing mother was really based in compassion as opposed to an ulterior motive.

knowing nothing and knowing everything. when it comes to the behaviour of primates, both human and non-human.

[seer]

It is a category error to equate with highly intelligent creatures such as the primates. It is also an error to categorize the humans as substantially different from other highly intelligent animals such as bonobos and chimpanzees...the evidence indicates that the only difference is one of degree not one of kind.

No Tass, what you are doing is pointing to certain behavior and assuming that they reason like us. If you see what looks like compassion in primates you leap to the conclusion that it is more than instinctual. But when we see what looks like compassion in bees and dogs you have no problem seeing instinct there.

knowing nothing and knowing everything. when it comes to the behaviour of primates, both human and non-human.

No Tass, it is your leap I'm discussing. When my dog shows "compassion" or "problem solves" do we assume more than instinct? No, but you do with primates.

[shunyadragon]

There's no need to directly mention that I'm being misrepresented, any reasonable person would have been able to infer it from what I wrote. But then again, you're not known for being the most reasonable person on TWeb, are you?

Debate should not be a popularity contest. It sure is not in m case.

I believe Man is unique, created in God's image and granted dominion over all creatures, but I fail to see how animals being capable of abstract thought would challenge my belief that this is so in any way. I think you've got me confused with someone who's insecure in his beliefs.

First, this is not the issue of the thread.

Second, I agree, humans are unique, but spiritually unique, not necessarily physically unique.

Third, my long term problem with this type of debate is the negative combative approach many have with science. Do not expect me to be remotely on the side of the theists when they take this stance.

Forth, I do not agree with the conclusions of the atheists when they frequently use scientific evidence to try and justify their belief that God does not exist.

Fifth, Methodological Naturalism is neutral, and does not apply to any matter involving the spiritual nature of our existence, such as the existence of nor the nature of God and the soul.

[JimL]

No Tass, what you are doing is pointing to certain behavior and assuming that they reason like us. If you see what looks like compassion in primates you leap to the conclusion that it is more than instinctual.

We are arguing that they reason similar to us because their behavior is indicative of reasoning like us, of being aware. The difference between instinct and reason is awareness, and certain behavior is indicative of hieghtened degrees of awareness. The raven that I mentioned earlier is not just unconsciously going through the motions, he is showing an awareness of the situation and applying logic to solve the problem. I've already posted two separate experiments where the raven and the crow exhibit this awareness, and if you believe that to be instinctual behavior then from your perspective there is no difference between instinctual and reasoned behavior.

But when we see what looks like compassion in bees and dogs you have no problem seeing instinct there.

No, actually the problem is that when we see what looks like reasoned behavior, you have no problem seeing instinct there.

No Tass, it is your leap I'm discussing. When my dog shows "compassion" or "problem solves" do we assume more than instinct? No, but you do with primates.

As above seer. You and Chrawness are of the opinion that behavior itself is indicative of nothing and yet we acknowledge the rational behavior of infants long before they are able to communicate it to us verbally.

[JonathanL]

You and Chrawness are of the opinion that behavior itself is indicative of nothing

I've said nothing of the sort. Stop misrepresenting me.