But you wont find intellect in the brain

[Moonstruck888]

Humans have the same behaviour as any other mammal?

You’d expect a mammal to be bilateral. You’d expect a mammal to have hair. You’d expect a mammal to breast feed. You’d expect a mammal to be intelligent.

A human being is an ape, which is a mammal, which is an animal, which is a eukaryote. We fit our place in nature like a glove.

 

[Moonstruck888]

You are confusing ontological hierarchy with moral greatness.

Since human beings, alone among animals, are moral actors, it is no surprise that we are the worst moral actors.

However, in terms of ontological hierarchy, human beings clearly touch the divine inasmuch as they have an intellect, which the rest of the animal kingdom lacks.

It is a very intelligible statement.

-Rob

It’s a stupid statement. It’s like a hawk claiming to be supernatural and at the pinnacle because of it’s eye sight, or a cheetah claiming to be at the pinnacle because it can run at seventy miles an hour.

There are many creatures that are intelligent and it stands to reason that there had to be one creature that was more intelligent than the rest. That one happened to be us. Well, some of us. It’s just a great pity that intelligence tends to be directed towards silly iron age superstition and wallowing in unwarranted vanity that we are divine by many of us.

 

[Moonstruck888]

1. It is the process of elimination. If the result is different than what would be expected from a material source, then it has to be immaterial. If something does not reside in the natural, then it would be called supernatural, i.e., something outside of the natural world.
2. In his nature, the human person unites the material and spiritual worlds. Calling the human race divine is fish without the chips.

Blessings,
granny

Human life is sacred.

Vanity… Sheer unbridled human vanity… Apart from lust and greed, my favourite of the deadly sins.

 

[Hubriss]

Heh, Moonstruck is funny.

The human brain is three dimensional, far more complicated, yet less able at performing specific tasks than any computer we have today, and even less so than what we will have. Many parts interact with each other at the same time to create the illusion of a unified mind.

We learn and recall completely by association. We associate knowledge with symbols, feelings, and (name removed by moderator)ut from our senses, stored in our brain, which is why some may say that we don’t do true math. We do true math, but we can do it wrong, a computer can’t. It is because we need to use references for knowledge that are completely based on the material. A human can not do math without first learning of or developing references for numbers. We use number symbols and/or physical objects to learn and do math. Without them, math is impossible for us.

Savants who recall specific pieces of information often say that bits of knowledge are associated with something sensory or chemical. The recollection of the capital of Switzerland might be associated with a color, shape, sound, taste, or emotion.

Each person can realize this. Whenever you try to recall some obscure piece of trivia or a word for some meaning you are trying to express, you can tell that you are searching through your feelings, images, and whatnot, trying to grasp at a hint to what you are trying to recall.

 

[tonyrey]

Heh, Moonstruck is funny.

The human brain is three dimensional, far more complicated, yet less able at performing specific tasks than any computer we have today, and even less so than what we will have. Many parts interact with each other at the same time to create the illusion of a unified mind.

We learn and recall completely by association. We associate knowledge with symbols, feelings, and (name removed by moderator)ut from our senses, stored in our brain, which is why some may say that we don’t do true math. We do true math, but we can do it wrong, a computer can’t. It is because we need to use references for knowledge that are completely based on the material. A human can not do math without first learning of or developing references for numbers. We use number symbols and/or physical objects to learn and do math. Without them, math is impossible for us.

Savants who recall specific pieces of information often say that bits of knowledge are associated with something sensory or chemical. The recollection of the capital of Switzerland might be associated with a color, shape, sound, taste, or emotion.

Each person can realize this. Whenever you try to recall some obscure piece of trivia or a word for some meaning you are trying to express, you can tell that you are searching through your feelings, images, and whatnot, trying to grasp at a hint to what you are trying to recall.

Do you believe there is no “unified mind”? That the human intellect is inferior to a computer?

 

[inocente]

P.S. Can you please refer me to the article, if possible? I’d like to read it and share it with some others. God bless!

I’d like to reread it too, but it’s lost in time. It was the cover article on a New Scientist circa mid-90s. That was before the era of websites, so it would probably entail finding and leafing through a stash of back issues.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. No worries - I posted it in the belief that an efficient path to truth is by finding falsehoods in extreme positions and so eliminating them. Plus, well, it was entertaining.

We seem to have done to death the idea that we are anything like computers. Every age proposes metaphors for mind in the latest technology (computers, telegraphs, even railways) and they have always been found wanting.

It’s probable that all mammals process information in the same way as us and have similar emotional states, but so what, we have a terrific bonus (grannymh #35). But is it intellect alone? Belief in God requires no rational proof for His existence, and in a sense would be harmed because by providing a definition, a proof may put Him in a box for us.

So, an entertaining (?) question – Could an intelligent adult who for some reason had never learned a language find faith simply through the paintings, architecture, music and atmosphere in a cathedral? Never mind whether that faith would be sufficiently well defined, my question is whether abstraction (OP) and faith in God are essentially dependent or independent of words.

 

[grannymh]

It’s a stupid statement. It’s like a hawk claiming to be supernatural and at the pinnacle because of it’s eye sight, or a cheetah claiming to be at the pinnacle because it can run at seventy miles an hour.

There are many creatures that are intelligent and it stands to reason that there had to be one creature that was more intelligent than the rest. That one happened to be us. Well, some of us. It’s just a great pity that intelligence tends to be directed towards silly iron age superstition and wallowing in unwarranted vanity that we are divine by many of us.

So glad to see that you like my word pinnacle. So let’s have some fun with it.

Eyesight is natural – it can be examined by natural processes. There is material evidence that eyesight exists. So that dear hawk is mistaken. Eyesight doesn’t make it or you or me supernatural. Eyesight can make the hawk the pinnacle of birds but that is not the same as the pinnacle of creation which includes all living organisms. The same thing applies to the cheetah’s anatomy. It can be dissected.

Next, we should look at the human being in the mirror. He or she has a material anatomy which includes eyesight. Can you think of one part of our anatomy which is greater than any animal? Oops. You already mentioned intelligence which I am sure you would say is part of the neural system.

So let’s compare neural systems. Hawks and eagles have great eyesight and can retain a type of sensory map of their feeding grounds and migration routes used at change of seasons. So they really don’t need maps like humans do. Score one for the birds.

Humans, because they are the pinnacle of creation, use maps rationally. In other words, they see a bigger picture than getting from point a. to point b. within a specific area of our great earth. Have hawks and eagles figured out how to fly to the moon? Oops. They don’t have the anatomy to fly that far. But neither do humans. So they used their intelligence to design space ships. They were able to conceptualize or in plain language they had imagination.

Both concepts and imagination are not material objects. Concepts and imagination, as exhibited by humans, are not found in the brute animal kingdom.

Therefore, the “something not material” about human beings makes them the pinnacle of creation.

Blessings,
granny

The human person is the pinnacle of all living organisms.

 

[RobNY]

Heh, Moonstruck is funny.

With all due respect to Moonstruck, he’s simply trying too hard to project atheist ‘cool.’ After a while of debating one gets tired of the mock outrage and just wants interlocutors to argue the points.

Moonstruck888:

It’s a stupid statement. It’s like a hawk claiming to be supernatural and at the pinnacle because of it’s eye sight, or a cheetah claiming to be at the pinnacle because it can run at seventy miles an hour.

There’s a difference between an unintelligible or nonsense statement and a wrong statement. You owe your interlocutors at least the honor of distinguishing between these two things. You think it’s really “stupid”-- by which you mean that it seems obviously wrong to you. But obviously it seems differently to each of us. That’s why we’re having discussions.

granny did a good job of responding, but I can add a little bit more. It’s not at all like what you’ve said because we’re not representing the intellect as a physical excellence.

You’d expect a mammal to be bilateral. You’d expect a mammal to have hair. You’d expect a mammal to breast feed. You’d expect a mammal to be intelligent.

A human being is an ape, which is a mammal, which is an animal, which is a eukaryote. We fit our place in nature like a glove.

The human being is an animal. Is this in dispute? The classic Aristotelian definition makes “animal” the genus of the human being. It doesn’t follow that because the human being is an animal that it is only an animal, though. This is why the Neo-Platonic Aristotelian scheme sees the human being as the ‘bridge’ between two orders of creation. In any order there will be outliers which ‘bridge’ the gap between two orders. Think of how a venus fly-trap is somewhere in between plant life and animal life (its power of moving itself is very close to the locomotion which defines animal life). Likewise, the human being sits right in the middle between two orders. It is fully animal, and thus has animal as its genus, and yet its intellect makes it the lowest in the order of beings with intellects. Thus the common medieval trope that man occupies a ‘middle’ place in creation.

-Rob

 

[ronnie_bonigli]

As in any philosophical theory, what is more evident crowds out what is less evident. If your theory necessitates that we dogmatically rule out that children can ‘do division’ then, quite frankly, it is your theory that is worse for the wear. (And with all due respect… I still do any division beyond the smallest amount ‘long.’ )

I worry that you’re picking the wrong battlefield to die on here, just as earlier we agreed that consciousness was not the right battlefield to die on.

God bless,

-Rob

Rob, you’re misreading me, probably because I don’t always explain myself that well. When you teach a child the “rules of inference” of doing long division; the step by step process of working out the final answer of the dividend and the divisor is just an algorithm, you could actually train a kid to follow those steps and come out with a final answer, only you could teach the kid to follow these rules without ever having taught him what that final answer at the top of the formula “means” or represents. It’s the same as Searles’ guy in the room with the Chinese flash cards, he wouldn’t “understand” what the language he had just decoded “means” or is saying. Anytime you’re merely following a formalistic system of axioms and rules of inference you’re not exercising “intelligence”, as in the case of a digital computer, a kid following the rules of long division, of the guy in Searles’ Chinese Room. Real intelligence comes in when you step beyond following an algorithmic procedure and are “understanding” in a way that steps outside formalism, such as when a mathematician steps outside the rules of a formal system to find it’s Godel Proposition.

btw, you seem on top of this stuff, you might enjoy John Lucas’ Minds, Machines and Gödel if you’ve never read it, it’s the argument Roger Penrose expanded on in The Emperor’s New Mind.

 

[Moonstruck888]

Do you believe there is no “unified mind”? That the human intellect is inferior to a computer?

He’s right, in a way. A simple home computer can perform calculations 10^7th times faster than a human could and with vastly greater reliability. It can do so without ever losing it’s focus and concentration, without ever becoming tired.

However, there are two things that immediately spring to mind that the human brain can do that computers cannot do and may never be able to do.

One of them is to learn things heuristically. I can drive a car without having to make any calculations whatsoever that I’m aware of. This involves matching complex vectors, calculating angles of rotation, fulcrum points and making instantaneous judgements on speed and distance. Through repetition, the human brain can learn to do things on autopilot without having to devote any conscious calculations.

No matter how many times a computer practices a task, it requires the same amount of processing power every single time. This is because computers cannot learn in any meaningful way. Not yet anyway.

The other thing the human brain can do that computers cannot is size up a situation instantaneously by using experience and intuition. How would you write an algorithim for intuition?

 

[Moonstruck888]

Therefore, the “something not material” about human beings makes them the pinnacle of creation.

Something not material does not necessarily mean something supernatural, do you agree?

 

[RobNY]

Rob, you’re misreading me, probably because I don’t always explain myself that well.

I’m enjoying our discussion. I don’t mean to misread you. Think of it more this way. We’re playing tennis and I’m trying to send back your serve extra hard.

When you teach a child the “rules of inference” of doing long division; the step by step process of working out the final answer of the dividend and the divisor is just an algorithm, you could actually train a kid to follow those steps and come out with a final answer, only you could teach the kid to follow these rules without ever having taught him what that final answer at the top of the formula “means” or represents. It’s the same as Searles’ guy in the room with the Chinese flash cards, he wouldn’t “understand” what the language he had just decoded “means” or is saying. Anytime you’re merely following a formalistic system of axioms and rules of inference you’re not exercising “intelligence”, as in the case of a digital computer, a kid following the rules of long division, of the guy in Searles’ Chinese Room. Real intelligence comes in when you step beyond following an algorithmic procedure and are “understanding” in a way that steps outside formalism, such as when a mathematician steps outside the rules of a formal system to find it’s Godel Proposition.

And this is the difference between thinking (agent) and thinking (instrument) which I detailed above. I think we agree.

btw, you seem on top of this stuff, you might enjoy John Lucas’ Minds, Machines and Gödel if you’ve never read it, it’s the argument Roger Penrose expanded on in The Emperor’s New Mind.

I’ll keep a look out for it, make a mental note to myself, so that if I ever see it, I’ll pick it up. God bless.

Rob

 

[Moonstruck888]

With all due respect to Moonstruck, he’s simply trying too hard to project atheist ‘cool.’ After a while of debating one gets tired of the mock outrage and just wants interlocutors to argue the points.

I’m no trying to project anything. I am what I am. I do agree with you on the mock outrage though and I can assure you that it’s polarity is bilateral.

There’s a difference between an unintelligible or nonsense statement and a wrong statement. You owe your interlocutors at least the honor of distinguishing between these two things. You think it’s really “stupid”-- by which you mean that it seems obviously wrong to you. But obviously it seems differently to each of us. That’s why we’re having discussions.

Yes, it seems to me that a lot of what is said here is based on belief rather than knowledge. That is as it should be though. I didn’t come here expecting everyone to think the way I do. I wouldn’t learn much from that.

The human being is an animal. Is this in dispute? The classic Aristotelian definition makes “animal” the genus of the human being. It doesn’t follow that because the human being is an animal that it is only an animal, though. This is why the Neo-Platonic Aristotelian scheme sees the human being as the ‘bridge’ between two orders of creation. In any order there will be outliers which ‘bridge’ the gap between two orders. Think of how a venus fly-trap is somewhere in between plant life and animal life (its power of moving itself is very close to the locomotion which defines animal life). Likewise, the human being sits right in the middle between two orders. It is fully animal, and thus has animal as its genus, and yet its intellect makes it the lowest in the order of beings with intellects. Thus the common medieval trope that man occupies a ‘middle’ place in creation.

-Rob

The genus name for man would be Homo, and the disambiguation would be Sapiens Sapiens. That is not a tautological inexactitude by the way, the Sapiens is repeated to disambiguate us from other Homo Sapiens, for example Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens Idaltu.

Animalia is the biological Kingdom that man belongs to.

The Venus flytrap is a plant and has nothing to do with Kingdom Animalia. The link between the Kingdom Plantae and Kingdom Animalia would be a common ancestor, a Eukaryote.

The human being sits in the middle of two orders? Not really. The human being is a type of ape.

 

[RobNY]

Something not material does not necessarily mean something supernatural, do you agree?

In Miracles C.S. Lewis suggests that there might be such a thing as the sub-natural.

It’s an interesting thought. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t press the ‘natural’ too hard, because it’s a vague term. There is “nature” which has roughly the sense of “essence,” i.e., what is human nature? There is the “nature” which means the environment undisturbed by human artifice, e.g., “oh, I like taking hikes out in nature,” and there is the “nature” in the sense in which you are using it, something equivalent to “everything physical,” which would make anything non-physical non-natural (whether “super” or “sub,” I suppose). On the other hand, the philosophical and theological application of “nature” (which uses the first sense) would not say that the soul is “supernatural,” rather, it simply is natural, because after all, it is a part of human nature. It is both immaterial and natural. On this reading, it is only grace which is truly “supernatural” because it is lavished on human beings on top of what nature gives us. (The Aristotelian sense of ‘nature’ (in phusis) is that which comes from an internal principle.)

So you can see how confusing using the word ‘natural’ is! I’d much prefer to pose it as a question of “material” or “immaterial” or “physical” or “non-physical.” This is much more precise, and avoids all of the various problems of using ‘nature.’

-Rob

 

[Moonstruck888]

In Miracles C.S. Lewis suggests that there might be such a thing as the sub-natural.

It’s an interesting thought. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t press the ‘natural’ too hard, because it’s a vague term. There is “nature” which has roughly the sense of “essence,” i.e., what is human nature? There is the “nature” which means the environment undisturbed by human artifice, e.g., “oh, I like taking hikes out in nature,” and there is the “nature” in the sense in which you are using it, something equivalent to “everything physical,” which would make anything non-physical non-natural (whether “super” or “sub,” I suppose). On the other hand, the philosophical and theological application of “nature” (which uses the first sense) would not say that the soul is “supernatural,” rather, it simply is natural, because after all, it is a part of human nature. It is both immaterial and natural. On this reading, it is only grace which is truly “supernatural” because it is lavished on human beings on top of what nature gives us. (The Aristotelian sense of ‘nature’ (in phusis) is that which comes from an internal principle.)

So you can see how confusing using the word ‘natural’ is! I’d much prefer to pose it as a question of “material” or “immaterial” or “physical” or “non-physical.” This is much more precise, and avoids all of the various problems of using ‘nature.’

-Rob

Since I don’t believe in the existence of a human soul, these subtlties are something I fear I am ill equiped to appreciate.

 

[RobNY]

I’m no trying to project anything. I am what I am. I do agree with you on the mock outrage though and I can assure you that it’s polarity is bilateral.

The mock outrage is intentional. That’s what I’m getting at with the first comment. No offense, of course, is meant.

The genus name for man would be Homo, and the disambiguation would be Sapiens Sapiens. That is not a tautological inexactitude by the way, the Sapiens is repeated to disambiguate us from other Homo Sapiens, for example Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapiens Idaltu.

I am familiar with the cladistic trees and such. I am also familiar with our ancestors and such. But I am not referring to this system of ordering. For what it is worth, it is surely a useful system, and it clarifies the lines of descent admirably. But it is not a classification which divides things according to what they are but merely according to whence they come.

Animalia is the biological Kingdom that man belongs to.

I’m not speaking of ‘animal’ in this sense. Your sense is historical, my sense is definitional (i.e, according to essence).

The Venus flytrap is a plant and has nothing to do with Kingdom Animalia. The link between the Kingdom Plantae and Kingdom Animalia would be a common ancestor, a Eukaryote.

David Oderberg has a chapter in his recent book, Real Essentialism, which deals with the question of real classification versus standard evolutionary classification by means of the Linnean trees of descent. It’s really a fascinating subject. According to what things are, living beings have different sorts or levels of life. The most basic is simply the level of nutrition, what Aristotle calls the nutritive or vegetative soul (and he doesn’t mean it’s an immaterial soul, it’s merely equivalent to the functions which the most basic life-forms have). Above this is the animal soul, which is the sensitive soul, and it implies that animals have the functions of desire, perceiving and movement. You can see how something can be a ‘plant’ in the Linnean tree and yet have animal-like characteristics according to what it is.

The human being sits in the middle of two orders? Not really. The human being is a type of ape.

What you surely mean is that human beings and apes share common ancestors. Be precise. I think that my explanations above preserve what I said. Please review my response and see how you’d like to respond. God bless,

-Rob

 

[Moonstruck888]

I’m not speaking of ‘animal’ in this sense. Your sense is historical, my sense is definitional (i.e, according to essence).

I’m using the word animal in the context of a University education in taxonomy.

What you surely mean is that human beings and apes share common ancestors.

No. Human beings are a species of ape.

Apes, to wit: Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutangs and humans all share a common ancestor. All apes and monkeys are primates, and share a common ancestor. All primates are mammals, and with other mammals share a common ancestor. All mammals are animals, and with other animals we share a common ancestor. All animals are eukaryotes, and with other eukaryotes we share a common ancestor.

Be precise. I think that my explanations above preserve what I said. Please review my response and see how you’d like to respond. God bless, -Rob

Done. Human beings are apes. See above.

 

[Moonstruck888]

TDavid Oderberg has a chapter in his recent book, Real Essentialism, which deals with the question of real classification versus standard evolutionary classification by means of the Linnean trees of descent.

Strangely enough, Oderberg’s website makes no mention of his being a biologist. It says his field of education is philosophy. As such, I should advise you to take his lay person’s opinions on taxonomy with a pinch of salt.

 

[RobNY]

Strangely enough, Oderberg’s website makes no mention of his being a biologist. It says his field of education is philosophy. As such, I should advise you to take his lay person’s opinions on taxonomy with a pinch of salt.

The question of what is a correct taxonomy of things according to common descent is a question for an expert in biology to answer.

The question of what is a correct taxonomy of things according to ontology is a question for a philosopher.

I’ll have none of this scientism on my watch.

Also, the question of whether for any given question it is better to examine a question according to a classification according to common descent in biology or a classification according to ontology is a pre-scientific question, not strictly answerable within the purview of the science itself. It is, in other words, a question most correctly answer by philosophy.

I’m using the word animal in the context of a University education in taxonomy.

Which is not the sense in which I wish to use animal. If we are using the word in two different ways it does no good to insist that I use it your way. After all, I’m using the word to refer to a reality. You are making this an argument over words rather than things. Argue about what I’m arguing about, not over what words I’m using.

No. Human beings are a species of ape.

Apes, to wit: Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutangs and humans all share a common ancestor. All apes and monkeys are primates, and share a common ancestor. All primates are mammals, and with other mammals share a common ancestor. All mammals are animals, and with other animals we share a common ancestor. All animals are eukaryotes, and with other eukaryotes we share a common ancestor.

My apologies for the mix up. I really need to keep a reference to keep all this stuff straight.

My point, which is independent of my (failing) memory regarding biological taxonomy, is that it is a mistake to think that because species X, Y, Z can be grouped according to a category of common descent (say, they can all be called apes), that is that they are most closely related in terms of descent, that X, Y, Z are therefore most closely related in terms of ontology, or what they are.

Human beings are apes according to the biological classification which classifies in a taxonomy according to common descent. I have no problem with this. It is true. But it implies nothing whatsoever about the total status, ontologically, of human beings vis-a-vis other apes.

God bless,
Rob

 

[Moonstruck888]

The question of what is a correct taxonomy of things according to common descent is a question for an expert in biology to answer.

The question of what is a correct taxonomy of things according to ontology is a question for a philosopher.

I’ll have none of this scientism on my watch.

Also, the question of whether for any given question it is better to examine a question according to a classification according to common descent in biology or a classification according to ontology is a pre-scientific question, not strictly answerable within the purview of the science itself. It is, in other words, a question most correctly answer by philosophy.

How about we let the philosophers do the philosophizing and let the biologists get on with the biology? Animals are classified according to a nested heirarchy of forms, not by ontological specifications.

Which is not the sense in which I wish to use animal. If we are using the word in two different ways it does no good to insist that I use it your way. After all, I’m using the word to refer to a reality. You are making this an argument over words rather than things. Argue about what I’m arguing about, not over what words I’m using.

I don’t understand. Surely there only is one correct way to use the word animal, to wit: a member of the Kingdom Animalia.

Human beings are apes according to the biological classification which classifies in a taxonomy according to common descent. I have no problem with this. It is true. But it implies nothing whatsoever about the total status, ontologically, of human beings vis-a-vis other apes.

God bless,
Rob

Genomics has set the status of humans and apes beyond any reasonable doubt. The match in orthologous genes between humans and other apes is around nienty seven to ninety nine percent. This is precisely what one would expect in accordance with taxonomy.

I must warn you though, we are flirting dangerously with a banned topic here.