Reconciling Humani Generis with the human genetic data showing that there never were just two first parents

[Freddy]

Freddy:

That is NOT the definition of rationality. It is: ‘the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason’.

And reason is not merely settling on a preference, it is a considered evaluation of ideas. A dog choosing where to lie down isn’t evidence of reason, its indication of settling on comfortable end.

A course of action whereby one can determine if reason has been involved in one where there is an explanation for the decision to follow that course of action.

My dog would normally jump at the chance to go out for a walk. And if he sees I have my running gear on he knows it’s not going to be a short stroll. He still wants to go. He’d prefer it to stetching out on the couch (which you say is the ‘comfortable end’). But if I leave the house and turn right which means it will be a long and hilly run as opposed to turning left and going for an easy flat run, then he has another decision to make. And this time he decides against it.

And there is absolutely no doubt that there is a reason behind the decision he makes. It’s because he wouldn’t mind a short run versus the couch, but if it means a long and exhausting run then that’s not something he wants to do.

I’ve actually been in two minds about what sort of run I want and if I have turned right and the dog effectively says ‘No thanks, buddy. I’d prefer the couch’ then on ocassion I will change my mind and effectively say to the dog (well, actually say to the dog if truth be known) ‘OK, younwin. Let’s do the easy run instead’. And he will then change his mind about staying home and come with me.

 

[Neithan]

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[o_mlly]

All you’ve shown is that your dog sits on the couch, not that he’s weighed the various options and contemplated which of these he, as a moral actor, wishes to pursue.

In two weeks, I will (against physical impulses) fast. In the past, Fido has not joined me in my fast. Not because he will not; rather because he cannot.

 

[Dovekin]

I’m finding this very frustrating, I must say.

Is it not the case that every single aspect of any given creature has evolved slowly over a considerable amount of time?

No, that is not the case. Punctuated equilibrium, cladogenesis, rapid evolution are some of the terms biologists use to discuss alternatives to gradualism.

Flight is a good example. Many believe birds developed from dinosaurs. And that a mass extinction of dinosaurs was precipitated by an asteroid hitting the earth. Do you believe the slow evolution of flight among birds was not affected by the asteroid? Slowed or accelerated, the process was affected by an outside influence.

Which brings me to my frustration. Someone asked about what Aquinas would think of evolutionary development. When I answered, the first response was “of course, everybody thinks that.” Your response is “nobody thinks like that.” Neither addresses the topic of whether Pius XII’s HG is believable, which was the topic here.

My point was that the gradual evolution of rationality and the instantaneous gift of a rational soul can look enough alike that we are unable to tell the difference without clearer definitions of soul and rational. Expressing a preference for one understanding over the other does not really help us imo.

I can understand your frustration. I get frustrated too.

 

[Allyson]

But does the material scientific method explain everything? Forms were never considered matter, or explained how it worked. Of the classic Four Causes, we now have a method for exploring efficient and material causes of things, but the explanation of forms and final causes is beyond the grasp of a material epistemology. Do we just eliminate them? Replace the gaps with “brute facts”? Why?

I am still in the camp of natural science does not explain quite everything, but it also explains a hell of a lot more than it is given credit for explaining. Part of this is just that the amount we now know is more than anyone person can know. What it does explain is reality, and we still have not finished understanding that yet. So maybe we will reach a point where our natural sciences do explain everything, but things like human society and how we chose to organize ourselves looking will likely remain the subject of social science and philosophy.

I do not think that I was suggesting that forms were considered matter per se. What I was referring to was more the debate of how real a separate transcendent realm of the forms was. I think the concept of the forms is always useful, but it is something that we create through coming to understand the world for what it is. That is where I am at right now, but my post-paradigm shift epistemology is still under construction. Continental Divide is on my reading list, and that debate was pretty much about what we are discussing in a lot of ways.

I am not big on using “brute fact” as a term. I prefer “causes for wonder.” The facts that we have about nature are so wild on their own that we can have wonder about them.

Materialism is a philosophy that fails to take account of the philosopher.

Are philosophers losing jobs because of materialism? Materialism is only a problem for a philosopher if they have a prejudice against it. Once you recognize the trope, you can free yourself from it.

What do you mean by that last clause? Some cognitive dissonance? We are not expected to maintain some contradictory limbo between our beliefs from our reasoning and beliefs from our faith. That’s more like Kant, not Pius XII.

Yes, it is the cognitive dissonance that I have had for a long time, and which is what lead to this post. Maybe Pius XII did not intend for that dissonance, but that is where I am at right now if I am going to take Catholic teaching at face value.

Specifically in HG, he basically said you can take genesis as literally or allegorically as you want, but if you are taking it allegorically, you need to take this one detail literally because that was the teaching of the Church for centuries. At the same time, he said there was nothing wrong with studying evolution, but he thought in all seriousness that the evolution of man was not yet proven. Even if it was proven, he thought that it could not mean that there was not an only two-first parents scenario, which was the truth of the faith being rejected by the New Theology of the time.

 

[Ghosty1981]

A course of action whereby one can determine if reason has been involved in one where there is an explanation for the decision to follow that course of action.

I’ll leave aside the implication that you’ve just conceded Aquinas’ Fifth Way and address what I believe to be your actual argument.

Just because a a certain behavior can be reasonably explained by an outside observer does not imply that the original actor reasoned and came to a rational decision. It simply means that the possible causes for the behavior are intelligible. There being a reason for something happening isn’t the same as the act being rational.

There is a reason that a ball falls towards the Earth when I drop it, but the ball isn’t reasoning. There is a reason sunflowers turn towards the sun, but they are not reasoning.

And there is absolutely no doubt that there is a reason behind the decision he makes. It’s because he wouldn’t mind a short run versus the couch, but if it means a long and exhausting run then that’s not something he wants to do.

There is certainly doubt that there is reasoning going on with the dog. Your example provides no evidence of rational abstract thinking on the part of the dog, but rather merely shows preference based on the perceptions of the sensitive appetite. The couch feels better than the long run so the dog settles on the couch. The dog sensed your direction of motion, or perhaps your tone of voice or the vocal signals you made, and took those to indicate an unpleasant experience (or at least an experience less pleasant than the couch at the moment). There is nothing to suggest that the dog considered the virtue of rest versus exercise, thought about the sin of sloth versus the comfort of the couch, ect. Perhaps we can say that the absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, but we are dealing with no evidence in any circumstances across all non-human life.

We are looking for evidence of rational thought, not intelligible reasons for events happening.

Peace and God bless!

 

[niceatheist]

niceatheist:

I think even here you can run into problems. There’s fairly significant evidence that at least some other mammals are capable of some degree of abstract thinking. Some species are even known for cultural transmission, though because they do not possess complex language, it’s very inefficient.

Cultural transmission isn’t necessarily an indication of abstract thought. Cultural transmission can simply be the sharing and imprinting of advantageous behaviors. Unless this cultural transmission is of ideas and not behaviors it is not evidence of abstract thought in the sense we are using.

We have seen behaviors pass on in animals, but we haven’t seen ideal values and concepts passed on in this manner.

Peace and God bless

First of all, can we have a good definition of “ideas” and “behaviors”? They seem to be part and parcel of the same process. What you seem to be describing is operant learning, which is the type of learning that everything from nematodes (with the simplest kind of brain) to vertebrates utilize. That’s the kind of learning that allows us to learn at a very early age that “heat hurts”, and teaches us not to touch the element on the stove.

But cultural transmission actually requires there to be an idea, and an idea about how to communicate that idea to others. That requires some level of abstract thinking. When a monkey shows an offspring how to clean a wound, for instance, the monkey needs to have the cognitive capability of envisioning the behavior and then the ability to act out that behavior so the young monkey in turn observe the behavior.

My view is that most vertebrates, and certainly all mammals, birds and reptiles, are capable of that kind of abstraction. So what makes us human isn’t so much a qualitative difference, but a quantitative one. Our abilities as far as cognition; in particular abstract thinking, are built on features found in other primate brains, and to some extent in other vertebrate brains. Even with language, chimpanzees have a region of the brain homologous with Broca’s Area in humans, so that particular structure was present in the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.

 

[o_mlly]

When a monkey shows an offspring how to clean a wound …

I would like to read about such observations. Do you have any links?

 

[Allyson]

Regarding animals having knowledge and making choices based on that knowledge, see:

Sexual stereotypes are not the preserve of humans. Male dolphins, it seems, are not interested in learning how to use a sponge, but their sisters are.
Dolphins were first seen carrying sponges cupped over their beaks in Shark Bay, Australia, in the 1980s.
Janet Mann of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and colleagues have now reviewed data collected during 20 years spent monitoring this group of dolphins and found that, while mothers show both their male and female calves how to use sponges, female calves are almost exclusively the only ones to apply this knowledge.
“The daughters seem really keen to do it,” says Mann. “They try and try, whereas the sons don’t seem to think it’s a big deal and hang out at the surface waiting for their mothers to come back up.”

Read more: Dolphin males leave sponging to the females | New Scientist

This technique for protecting the nose while foraging is estimated to have happened 6 generations ago in the 19th Century. For some reason the males chose not to protect their noses while foraging.

 

[niceatheist]

https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/10/20/498578961/camera-traps-reveal-chimpanzee-moms-teaching-their-children

 

[Neithan]

When a monkey shows an offspring how to clean a wound, for instance, the monkey needs to have the cognitive capability of envisioning the behavior and then the ability to act out that behavior so the young monkey in turn observe the behavior.

What exactly about this requires abstraction (as beyond concrete sense memory)? I think we have a semantic issue, because you may not be using abstract in the same way: a movement from particular to universal (even if this is only a mental event and not an apprehension of something ontic).

So what makes us human isn’t so much a qualitative difference, but a quantitative one.

This is precisely where the point of disagreement is. It’s the same sort of fallacy as above: because there is gradual change, every change is gradual. This erases qualitative differences entirely. Eventually, when we figure out how organic matter evolved from inorganic, you could say that’s just another quantitative change.

Sapience, the intellectual ability to reason, to abstract, to create novel imagination, to ratiocinate from ground to consequent. There is a qualitative difference here from non-sapience. Sentience is also a qualitative difference from non-sentience. Organic is a qualitative difference from inorganic.

We need to clearly define the terms: a quantitative change in ability is more of the same ability; a qualitative change is a new ability. On your view, humans have no abilities that other mammals do not have, or vice versa. Arms are quantitatively different from wings. I would say wings are qualitatively different from arms.

 

[Ghosty1981]

But cultural transmission actually requires there to be an idea, and an idea about how to communicate that idea to others. That requires some level of abstract thinking. When a monkey shows an offspring how to clean a wound, for instance, the monkey needs to have the cognitive capability of envisioning the behavior and then the ability to act out that behavior so the young monkey in turn observe the behavior.

I am referring to abstract thinking, utilizing universal concepts rather than working merely on the level of concrete reality. A monkey washing a wound and showing others how to wash a wound is not demonstrating abstract thought; there is no need for a concept of “wound” or “infection” in the mind of the monkey to explain this behavior. It is enough that the monkey recognizes the purely sensitive experiences of wounds and water and demonstrates this behavior of cleaning to others.

There is a qualitative leap from knowing “wound” as a painful break in flesh, and abstracting the concept of “wound” and applying it to, say, the social fabric. Humans routinely demonstrate this kind of abstraction in thought and communication, and if I were to tell you that my relationship with my wife was wounded by infidelity you would know what I meant even if you’ve only personally experienced material wounds in the flesh. This casual abstraction of conceptual meaning from concrete experiences and applying these meanings to entirely different experiences both physical and non-physical is what sets humans apart from all other life that we know of. Furthermore, this ability is not explained by purely material brain functions, though as I have said our minds certainly require physical tools to experience the world and process these experiences and this is why brain damage or poor development can interfere with this power.

In short, it is one thing to see a lion and teach one’s children to be wary of lions. It is another thing to see a lion and abstract “strength” or “courage” from the animal and utilize its image to communicate these virtues on a family crest. Both might be a kind of cultural transmission, but the former is purely sensitive and material and requires no true abstraction of ideas, while the latter is entirely based on rational abstraction and application of concepts not directly experienced by the senses.

Peace and God bless!

 

[niceatheist]

niceatheist:

When a monkey shows an offspring how to clean a wound, for instance, the monkey needs to have the cognitive capability of envisioning the behavior and then the ability to act out that behavior so the young monkey in turn observe the behavior.

What exactly about this requires abstraction (as beyond concrete sense memory)?

To teach somebody something that you know, you need to be able to envision the task that is to be performed, and carry out its steps. In fact, the entire ability to make a tool requires the same process, but when you teach someone else how to use a hammer, there’s having to externalize that knowledge.

 

[niceatheist]

So what makes us human isn’t so much a qualitative difference, but a quantitative one.

This is precisely where the point of disagreement is. It’s the same sort of fallacy as above: because there is gradual change, every change is gradual. This erases qualitative differences entirely. Eventually, when we figure out how organic matter evolved from inorganic, you could say that’s just another quantitative change.

Sapience, the intellectual ability to reason, to abstract, to create novel imagination, to ratiocinate from ground to consequent. There is a qualitative difference here from non-sapience. Sentience is also a qualitative difference from non-sentience. Organic is a qualitative difference from inorganic.

We need to clearly define the terms: a quantitative change in ability is more of the same ability; a qualitative change is a new ability. On your view, humans have no abilities that other mammals do not have, or vice versa. Arms are quantitatively different from wings. I would say wings are qualitatively different from arms.

I’d view our abilities surrounding language and symbolic thinking to be the chief innovations. But those evolved on top of, or co-opted, existing neural structures. Nothing in evolution ever comes into existence out of whole cloth. Eyes as we would call them evolved from light sensitive patches on much more primitive chordates or pre-chordate ancestors. Innovation is a product of time.

I mentioned above that chimpanzees and other great apes have structures in their brain that are homologous to Broca’s Area in the human brain. That region of the brain, as well as facilitating the formation of speech, also seems to be involved in observational learning and gesture communication. Anyone who has watched great apes knows that they do a considerable amount of communication with their hands. So that area in our ancient ancestors clearly played a significant role in communication; in allowing a recipient of a communication to translate an abstract idea. In other words, while great apes, and their common ancestor with us, didn’t have human language, they did have the processing power to communicate fairly complex data. So human language, however it started (and it involves other areas of the brain as well), evolved by co-opting a more primitive, but still fairly complex, gesture recognition and learning mechanism present in ancestral hominoids.

 

[Neithan]

To teach somebody something that you know, you need to be able to envision the task that is to be performed, and carry out its steps. In fact, the entire ability to make a tool requires the same process, but when you teach someone else how to use a hammer, there’s having to externalize that knowledge.

I don’t think we’re using abstraction in the same way. I could go to a first aid course, watch the demonstrations that are done there, and replicate that behaviour without needing any abstract reasoning. Sense images and memory are sufficient. Earlier in this thread I referenced a study discussing people who have prefrontal synthesis disability (here is an earlier one more to the point); I’d recommend looking into that, because they do not need to abstract the relationships between objects to make something they previously could not make. I think the difference is another kind of quality between them and apes, but that is an analogy of it.

 

[niceatheist]

Of course you’re going to need to use abstract reasoning. At the very least you need to be able to understand the contest. Showing up in a room , and having someone just start doing something, without any ability to even understand the point of the demonstration, or even if it is a demonstration, isn’t exactly going to produce a useful learning experience.

My larger point is that, at least for many large brained animals, learning is a far more involved process than the kind of learning we see in simpler animals. By and large simpler organisms learn by variations of classical conditioning. So do humans, but that kind of learning works by stimuli and response (hot stove burns, foul-smelling food makes me sick). Classical conditioning works by and large in very primitive parts of our brain, and indeed likely arose in the most primitive ganglia.

Operant learning is far different, working around rewards and punishments. Think about how you learned your times tables, by rout, over and over, the reward might be a gold star, the punishment might be having to stay after class. Operant learning is a form of cognition, and while the simplest forms don’t involve abstraction, a chimp showing another chimp how to strip a stick to pull termites out of a nest, is an entirely different kind of cognition than finding out termite bites hurt.

 

[Neithan]

Of course you’re going to need to use abstract reasoning.

I’m not sure how to resolve this disagreement. I would not need abstract reasoning to imitate. What animals do could be interpreted as involving abstract reasoning and free will, but neither of those are necessary conditions for what they are doing. So positing free will and abstract reasoning would fail a rule of parsimony.

 

[po18guy]

Unless you are a cro-magnon. In any event, she chose you…

 

[niceatheist]

To start with, to attend a first aid class, you know it’s a first aid class. You need context. The context is one of the abstract elements. Either you are told it’s a first aid class, or your experience tells you that’s what you’re witnessing.

 

[Neithan]

OK I meant simply replicating the demonstrations, not understanding the context. Sorry for the confusion.