What is life?

[duordi]

Actually they'd probably sing it.

How would you define "sing"?

Are you thinking harmonics or rhyme or repeating patters?

Duane

 

[I_Love_Cheese]

The fact is are brains are qualitatively different from any animal

How are they qualitatively different.

 

[Beastt]

The fact is are brains are qualitatively different from any animal

Since this is absolutely and demonstrably incorrect, I'm interested in how, and if, you're planning to defend the statement.

The fact is, our brains contain more neurons. Not different neurons, but just more of them. If you take the neuron from a human brain, one from a cat, a dog, a chimp or even a sea slug, you have a group of cells which function in exactly the same manner. The only quality which separates our brains from the brains of other animals is the number of neurons.

 

[Beastt]

I have a general question for all.

If a chimp was found that was aware and could be communicated with on our mental level in his/her language or ours, the animal would be placed on a pedestal.

If the same intelligent being happened to be human there seems to be a great reluctance on the part of this group to acknowledge an intelligence beyond a dolphins.

Apparently we have prejudices against mankind in favor of animals and not just between ourselves.

Do you agree or disagree that we have this prejudice and why or why not?

Duane

I don't think anyone here is attempting to say that other animals are as intelligent as humans. What I'm attempting to point out is the prejudice you seem to hold and how you apply it through self-serving standards.

Humans are more intelligent but who decided that intelligence should be the overall rating for superiority? If a human were placed with a troup of chimps in the wild, how long would that human be able to survive? How many of the social standards of the chimpanzee troup would the human understand? The human certainly couldn't compete on a level of strength or agility so understanding the social regulations would be paramount. And as for obtaining food, we're significantly less capable in their world. The same kinds of prejudices apply when putting a chimpanzee in our world and presenting tests for intelligence which seem appropriate to us.

Humans are smarter than other animals. We're also slower, have significantly poorer hearing, far worse eye-sight than many, have no ability fo fly, can't even start to climb as well as many, have no ability to echo-locate, swim very slowly and have few finely honed abilities for finding and gathering food in a natural setting.

It's easy to win a superiority contest when you're the one who gets to decide what standards of superiority will be used for the rating system. It's nearly impossible when another species is the one to set the standards because each is likely to choose those standards where they excel.

 

[Abongil]

wait, do you want sentience or sapience? most creatures have sentience, we are the only ones to have sapience.

 

[jamesrwright3]

Since this is absolutely and demonstrably incorrect, I'm interested in how, and if, you're planning to defend the statement.

The fact is, our brains contain more neurons. Not different neurons, but just more of them. If you take the neuron from a human brain, one from a cat, a dog, a chimp or even a sea slug, you have a group of cells which function in exactly the same manner. The only quality which separates our brains from the brains of other animals is the number of neurons.

No it is not incorrect and once again you are wrong.

Let me define qualitatively. I will get you a dictionary defintion so it will be easy for you to understand

qual‧i‧ta‧tive  /ˈkwɒlɪˌteɪtɪv/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kwol-i-tey-tiv] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective
pertaining to or concerned with quality or qualities.

Regardless of WHY it's different in terms of functionality, it is apparent it's much more functional in terms of computational horsepower, abstract thinking, and nearly every other type of thinking that is possible than the brain of any other animal

If you are saying that our brains are not qualitivatively superior to any other animal, then you are saying we have the same mental capacity as a dog

 

[jamesrwright3]

I don't think anyone here is attempting to say that other animals are as intelligent as humans. What I'm attempting to point out is the prejudice you seem to hold and how you apply it through self-serving standards.

No one is applying self serving standards
Just stating the obvious
We are comparing brainpower

Humans are more intelligent but who decided that intelligence should be the overall rating for superiority? If a human were placed with a troup of chimps in the wild, how long would that human be able to survive? How many of the social standards of the chimpanzee troup would the human understand? The human certainly couldn't compete on a level of strength or agility so understanding the social regulations would be paramount. And as for obtaining food, we're significantly less capable in their world. The same kinds of prejudices apply when putting a chimpanzee in our world and presenting tests for intelligence which seem appropriate to us.

Our world is their world. We aren't meant to live together. We don't need strength and agility to gather food We have intelligence that makes us far more efficient in gathering good than they could ever hope . We can farm, raise cattle, etc, and obtain far more food than they could ever hope running through the savannah or the jungles

Humans are smarter than other animals. We're also slower, have significantly poorer hearing, far worse eye-sight than many, have no ability fo fly, can't even start to climb as well as many, have no ability to echo-locate, swim very slowly and have few finely honed abilities for finding and gathering food in a natural setting.

Once again, our intelligence enables us to do anything better than those creatures via engineering. We don't need to have those abilities to be superior in every domain

 

[duordi]

I
It's easy to win a superiority contest when you're the one who gets to decide what standards of superiority will be used for the rating system. It's nearly impossible when another species is the one to set the standards because each is likely to choose those standards where they excel.

They are not likely to choose anything. That is the point.

They only win when you decide for them because you can think.

In the wild a preditor would eat you just as fast as they would eat me because they have no clue that your are on "their side".

Emotionaly you may not want to accept this but mentally you know it is true.

Duane

 

[duordi]

wait, do you want sentience or sapience? most creatures have sentience, we are the only ones to have sapience.

Good point, I would say sapience because the question has to do with a being making moral decisions.

If a computer program begged you not to turn it off would it be morally wrong to do so?

Duane

 

[[serious]]

They are not likely to choose anything. That is the point.

They only win when you decide for them because you can think.

In the wild a preditor would eat you just as fast as they would eat me because they have no clue that your are on "their side".

Emotionaly you may not want to accept this but mentally you know it is true.

Duane

However, since the predator would eat both of you, wouldn't it be superior? Sorry, it had to be said

 

[duordi]

The most surprising aspect of this topic is the reluctance by some of the humans who are participating in the discussion to accept that they are superior to animals.

Is this humility?

Some form of guilt?

Love for an animal?

Perhaps it is because movies depict everything from plastic army men to real animals as sentient beings

Scientifically speaking we are the only know sentient beings in the universe unless one accepts that there is a God.

Duane

 

[duordi]

However, since the predator would eat both of you, wouldn't it be superior? Sorry, it had to be said

Hunting season just started, I will let you know how it goes.

Just to make it fair I will leave a gun outside for the animals to use.

Duane

 

[Nooj]

The most surprising aspect of this topic is the reluctance by some of the humans who are participating in the discussion to accept that they are superior to animals.

How are we superior to animals?

 

[RavenPoe]

Mankind once upon a time gathered food from the wild.

Then mankind used it's intellegence to fashion and use tools to make it easier so we didn't starve.

Eventually man learned to just make farms and keep the food ready to be slaughtered.

And finally man made grocery stores so he could just pop around the corner and buy a T-bone.

This more than compensates for not being faster/have bigger teeth/stronger/claws/etc... You could argue this makes man superior. However that does not give us any more right to life than they. We are all alive, we are just aware enough to define alive and qualify what that means.

I think the reluctance to say we are superior also lies in that the intellegence that we have been using also has a destructive side. We made tools to make life easier, but they in turn complicate things. We damage the environment, making it difficult for all living things to survive. We as a species are more hurtful and harmful to each other, and kill just for sport instead of for food and protection. These things it could be argued make us less than our animal brethren who live off the land and do no more harm than needed.

 

[Beastt]

No it is not incorrect and once again you are wrong.

Let me define qualitatively. I will get you a dictionary defintion so it will be easy for you to understand

Regardless of WHY it's different in terms of functionality, it is apparent it's much more functional in terms of computational horsepower, abstract thinking, and nearly every other type of thinking that is possible than the brain of any other animal

While it's true that the greater number of neurons in the human brain does expand its reasoning power, the idea that animals aren't capable of abstract thought is pure fallacy and as far as the "nearly every other type of thinking", you mention, that seems like a way to attempt to suggest other differences without defining what they are. If you'd care to define them, then you'll have to defend your claim.

Abstract thought is clearly illustrated in animals such as when Koko the gorilla came up with the term "bean balls" to represent peas. She'd never been taught "peas" so she used her cognitive powers to connect two words she did know into a phrase so that she could ask for what she wanted. The same was demonstrated by Alex the African Gray parrot when he developed the term "rock corn" so that he could distinguish between soft canned or frozen corn and dried corn.

So while you can continue to wish that the differences are greater than they are, the evidence clearly shows that the other animals do not lag as far behind the human animal as you may wish to believe.

If you are saying that our brains are not qualitivatively superior to any other animal, then you are saying we have the same mental capacity as a dog

Why a dog? Why not a cat, or a whale or a snake? What I would be, and was saying, is that while you wish to believe that we are vastly superior to animals in our mental prowess, and therefore vastly superior to other animals, most of the ideas behind such a concept revolve around tests which are geared specifically to make sense to humans. The deck is clearly stacked in our favor. As I mentioned before, if you place a human in the animal's natural environment and within their social structure, we come off not looking so vastly superior as you would like us to be.

We're smarter because we have more neurons in our brains. But we should be capable of utlizing those neurons to fairly quantify the differences. And when we do that, we find the differences to be far less exaggerated than those who attempt to separate humans from the animal kindom, would like us to believe.

 

[BVZ]

Lets say you have a clock, but we are unable to see the gears and mechanisms behind the clock face, we are only able to see the clock face.

Now, if someone instantly replaced the mechanisms behind the clock face with another mechanism, but it makes no diffrence to the movements of the hands on the clock face, we would never know.

Intelligence works the same.

Lets say you have two humans having a conversation in a chat room. Now remove the first human and replace it with a computer running an advanced AI. The remaining human who is now speaking with an AI might not know of the switch, for the same reason we will not know about the mechanism behind the clock face being replaced.

The human brain consists of millions of brain cells. Now imagine the folowing scenario. You examine each and every brain cell one by one. For each brain cell, you examine how it responds to input. Now, you fashion a microscopical chip that responds to inputs in exatly the same way the brain cell you exmained does, and then replace the brain cell with this chip.

The brain should keep on funcitoning normally. (If it doesn't, you simply didn't design the chip correctly!)

Now, do this for all brain cells in the brain.

When all the brain cells have been replaced, the brain should continue functioning like it used to. If it doesn't, you didn't copy the functionality of the brain cells perfectly.

What have have now is nothing less than a computer. The original brain has been conpletely dismantled. All that remiains is an AI system.

The human that owns this new brain should continue functioning like he used to.

This is of course, (in my view) not ethical, its a purely hypothetical situation.

Now, to answer the OP, if this human does not want its brain to be shut down, it should not be shut down, because it is basically just as alive as it used to be.

 

[Beastt]

They are not likely to choose anything. That is the point.

They only win when you decide for them because you can think.

In the wild a preditor would eat you just as fast as they would eat me because they have no clue that your are on "their side".

Emotionaly you may not want to accept this but mentally you know it is true.

Duane

A predator might eat a human but it has nothing to do with being or not being on "their side". It has to do with being a predator and acting as a predator. Human hunters have been known to blast an animal which may only be trying to satisfy its curiosity and remains too close.

The overall content of your posts seems to imply that animals are unable to think. This was once a very popular idea but that was decades ago. Science has since shown conclusively that humans do not hold exclusive rights to thought or reasoning. Non-human animals most certainly do show problem solving skills and problem solving is a demonstration of reasoning.

 

[Beastt]

Hunting season just started, I will let you know how it goes.

Just to make it fair I will leave a gun outside for the animals to use.

Duane

Better yet, why don't you leave your gun, boots, knife, scents, calls, blinds and all of your other hunting gear behind. See how you do against the animals using just the intelligence you have instead of using the tools created by the intelligence of others. Each time you go hunting you rely upon tools you'd be unable to design and build on your own. You rely on the intelligence and skills of others for the success which you claim for yourself.

How many of us could make a serviceable knife? How many of us could build a working vehicle or the tools we'd need to make any of the things we commonly use? For the most part, the human race stands atop the shoulders of a few very intelligent individuals and proclaim for ourselves their genius and creativity. Left to ourselves, we're far from impressive.

One of the greatest differences between humans and non-humans is that we tend to pass information and the products of that information to the whole of our societies. Non-human animals do this on a lesser scale as is demonstrated by gorillas teaching modified ASL to their offspring, once they have learned it and recognize it as a means of obtaining food.

 

[duordi]

Better yet, why don't you leave your gun, boots, knife, scents, calls, blinds and all of your other hunting gear behind.

Why do that, I didn’t require the animal to leave their teeth, claws and nose behind.

See how you do against the animals using just the intelligence you have instead of using the tools created by the intelligence of others.

Wolves travel in packs so using others of the species should qualify.

Each time you go hunting you rely upon tools you'd be unable to design and build on your own. You rely on the intelligence and skills of others for the success which you claim for yourself.

That is because I can talk and think. To deny me the use of my one exceptional ability is like asking a cheetah not to run or a bat not to listen.

How many of us could make a serviceable knife? How many of us could build a working vehicle or the tools we'd need to make any of the things we commonly use? For the most part, the human race stands atop the shoulders of a few very intelligent individuals and proclaim for ourselves their genius and creativity. Left to ourselves, we're far from impressive.

I do not claim to have invented hunting gear. I just claim to have the intelligence to use it.

One of the greatest differences between humans and non-humans is that we tend to pass information and the products of that information to the whole of our societies. Non-human animals do this on a lesser scale as is demonstrated by gorillas teaching modified ASL to their offspring, once they have learned it and recognize it as a means of obtaining food.

I heard a bird once which was trained to say a complete sentence.
The bird had know idea what it was saying.
The same thing can be done easily with a computer, but it is still a dead chunk of metal.
To be able to mimic humans is not the same as thinking.
[/quote]

I did not turn the conversation in this direction just to annoy those of you which have a problem with hunting.

No, I am not going hunting but I would not see anything immoral about it personally.

It was necessary to bring this up because there is a similarity between hunting....
and turning off a computer which is close to being sentient.

Do we have a moral obligation of keeping a thinking computer operating forever if we make one and turn it on?

Duane

 

[duordi]

How are we superior to animals?

We can think about the fact we are thinking.

An animal can not reach this level of consciousness.

Thinking is the ultimate ability because it can allow the thinker to move faster then a chaeta,
use sonar better then a fish,
fly faster then the fastest bird,
and acquire abilities which no animal possesses like space travel.

All this and even more as we are aware of what we are doing and can even (contemplate / imagine) what we do not have the ability to preform.

The imagination of humans is the only ability of living organisms which is not constrained by the physical laws of the universe.

By contemplation we can imagine ourselves inside another living thing and experience its condition with an awareness that it cannot itself.

I believe this is why some humans who have posted on this thread are resistant to the idea that they are superior to animals.

They are imagining themselves as a pet and attributing the animal their human sentient abilities and determinting the results of the experiment.
This action is not physically possible,
but it is emotionally and mentally possible.

The above statement is intended as a complement.
Being willing to feel anothers pain is an admirable trait.

Duane

PS If you are the cat with the human pet mentioned above,
no offence intended.