[quote]Spartiates wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]Spartiates wrote:
They don’t have mind. One of the things mind has allowed us to do is build, generation to generation, upon the knowledge our parents gained. It’s a good litmus test of mind. Really smart apes can’t do that. You can have a really smart ape father, and a really smart ape child. The father will be unable to teach the child anything that’s not instinctually based.
For example, some apes use ‘tools’ to capture bugs; they use reeds or sticks, stick them in a hive, and eat the bugs that stick to them. This is instinct. An adult can “teach” this to its kid. Sometimes an individual will stumble upon (or you could argue figures out) a way to improve the tool. However, since they have no mind, no abstract concept of what they’ve done to improve the tool, the why or how, they can’t teach it to another, and preserve the knowledge. Every generation starts from square one all over again.
When we developed mind in our course through evolution, all of the sudden, when we made a tool (even if it was accidental, the way apes do) we had the cognitive faculty to understand what we did, so we could teach it someone else, and if it was improved upon, and knowledge was created, that knowledge could be passed down from individual to individual, generation to generation. Really smart apes can’t do that, because they have no mind, and don’t form abstract concepts to attach to the things they make and do.
This seems way off topic.[/quote]
Ape learning is not instinct based any more than a child learning. The main difference is that apes lack the designated role of teacher and student. I could go into more detail, but in some respects it makes apes more of independent thinkers than children. A child will follow a teacher regardless of whether the actions and knowledge are useful in any way. An ape will not.
Even octopi can learn by observation much the same way a child does.
You don’t seem to know much about animal understanding. Even animals like dogs are capable of reasonable complex creative problem solving.
So your qualification for being a human is being able to build as a society? Does that mean when societies regress in learning, the individuals become un-human?
And this once again leads us to the loop hole of mentally handicapped homosapiens.
Besides, children generally don’t even pass the mirror test until 18 months post birth. They learn exactly the same way apes do until later in life.[/quote]
What’s your point about animals?
The point you seem to be making is that we’re just like other animals. And I’m fine with that, we don’t have some special immortal soul, special place, which means we require special consideration. I don’t see how making homo-sapiens into just another animal helps the argument that every potential homo-sapien is worthy of protection under to law.
You also seem to be missing what I was saying about animals. It’s not that they can’t problem solve, it’s that they can’t form abstract concepts, an ability not just necessary for language, but necessary for any form of transmission of ideas, or learning beyond on-site demonstration, and improvement of techniques. You can play with the semantics, or pick on my word choices all you like. It doesn’t change the fact that there’s clearly something human about 99.999% of people, and not in 99.999% of other life-forms we encounter.[/quote]
Point being, if there is nothing different about a human, why do they deserve any more protection than animals.
And you’re so ignorant about animals it’s ridiculous. Animals can learn and use language.
Even parrots can learn some basics of language. Orangutans can do math that is entirely abstract.
