Comments by MPhil

Comment #193211 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 12:19 am

Guys - Robertson is back. And he deserves a thorough thrashing once again. I've already made the first step, but have to leave now...

http://richarddawkins.net/articleComments,2686,Holiday-in-Hellmouth,The-New-Yorker,page3#193161

302. Holiday in Hellmouth

Comment #193198 by MPhil on June 15, 2008 at 12:06 am

As far as I can tell, the only reason you don't think he is irrational is because you agree with him.

I seriously doubt David has the capability to understand and evaluate Haldane's position. You would need quite some knowledge of philosophical ethics for that.

303. Holiday in Hellmouth

Comment #193183 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 11:52 pm

Sorry - but the notion of God using ,natural' causes is perfectly logical.

No, it is not - it is vacuous unless you have a coherent and applicable concept of
1.) What entities in a non-spatiotemporal realm would be
2.) How such entities can be at all in causal relation to something
3.) How causality from a non-spatiotemporal realm into a spatiotemporal realm should be possible
4.) What such causality would be
5.) How a causally closed chain of events in the spatiotemporal realm should allow for influence from outside (that is actually a contradiction, as are 2 and 3 - so no wonder there are no coherent concepts thereof)

No one has ever managed to provide a coherent and applicable concept of even one of those.

But the arrogance is in assuming that because you have argued it, therefore it is arrogant for anyone to reject what you have said.

Nah, the arrogance is in failing to provide conclusive counter-arguments and then still make the old ones that have already been dismantled.

Are you seriously claiming that the debate is over and that all philosophers are now of your opinion.

No, I am not. But I will have you know that in philosophical ethics, hardly anyone recognized in the community of philosophical ethics hold your position. It's a tiny minority, really. But that, in itself is of no consequence. I have provided the arguments, you have failed to refute them and still go on making bold claims.

Haldane subscribes to "analytical thomism"... nice, but resting on fictional foundations. Also, thomism doesn't avoid the consequence that while moral values would be necessary, they would still not be intrinsic and would be arbitrary. Also, it rests on the concept of aseity, which is logically contradictory (as is that of the trinity and many more).

Do you really want to make the argument from authority, though? Because I can name you many more philosophers who have provided coherent non-theistic theories of morality than you can for your side. Cherry Picking people who agree with you is unimpressive. Cogent arguments are - you fail to provide those.

The points of my last comment stand irrefuted.

304. Holiday in Hellmouth

Comment #193162 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 11:11 pm

David,

Steve - by whose definition? The trouble is that you are confusing things. Who says that answered prayer always has to be miraculous? If I pray that the Lord will provide me with food and he does so by enabling me to buy food out of a shop (thereby using 'natural' agencies), rather than causing food to miraculously appear on my plate - then why should that be considered strange. The vast majority of answered prayers are done through ,natural' agencies. It is just that we believe that God (as well as human beings) is well able to use them.

My goodness - that really made me laugh. Someone doesn't get the principle of exclusion: If an event e at time t has determinable cause, that's it. It eliminates the need - and thus any justification for assuming another cause. Even if - counterfactually - the concepts of the supernatural and of god were meaningful and even if - counterfactually - it had any explanatory value... if there is a naturalistic explanation, that's it. There is no room left for any supernatural causal origin, no dials to set, nothing to tweak.

my personal empirical evidence

Either there is real evidence - then it holds up to critical examination by the standards of rationality, or it isn't evidence.

Either you have a problem with reading or you have a completely different definition of logic and reasoning.

Holy cow - that is certainly a contender for the most hubristical comment you ever made.

Remember when I laid out some of the logical inconsistencies in the concept of God?
Try reading Sobel's "Logic and Theism", or Martin's "The Impossibility of God"... and then make that claim with a straight face again.

But what's more - you have proved yourself to be arrogant beyond description by yet again having come up with the arrogant claim of "No morality without absolute morality, no absolute morality God"... I took that apart ages ago, time and again. I have shown both how theism cannot escape the conclusion that the foundation of its morailty is either contingent and subjective, or necessarily arbitrary. I have further pointed out to you that there are dozens of philosophically coherent metaethical and ethical theories that do not necessitate a deity, or even universals. And I was neither the first nor the last to do so.

Normally, I would say you are simply ignorant of the tradition of philosophical ethics over the last two and a half thousand years. But your errors have been pointed out to you - and yet you come back and make that same, stupid claim. That, David, is not just ignorance, it's irrationality and hubris.

305. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193107 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 3:49 pm

Many of those things are important to political theorists. But I don't think that most of the points above relate to implementation...

Anyway, you're not coming across that way. Not at all :)

Now I have to go do some work. Specifically, prepare a talk on John Bickle's account of intertheoretic reduction. That, btw (teapot)- is also something you cannot explain without Jargon, because it rest on formal logic and set theory. Without knowledge of these disciplines - the account cannot be understood.

306. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193105 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 3:31 pm

PBUM,

However, the idea of organising society by setting rules or ascribing actions as good or bad in a way that tries to achieve maximum benefit to society doesn't seem that complicated to me.

I think it is complicated: First, you have to determine what the range of applicability ought to be: Why construct a first-order moral theory to maximize the benefit of one society? What about inter-social relations? What about the nature of that society as it is already - how should that figure in?

Then you have to ask yourself - should society be of more value than the individual? Wouldn't that end in collectivism?

Then you might ask: What is the proper balance between protecting individuals and protecting society as a whole?

Furthermore, what moral code would work best, how do we judge this, how do implement it?

A lot of questions :)

307. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193104 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 3:27 pm

Jargon is the last refuge of the bullshitter

Maybe, but the converse doesn't hold. Do you think it is possible to explain for example string theory in "plain English", without losing precision?

308. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193096 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 3:01 pm

teapot,

if you tell "the philosopher" what terms were too technical for a non-philosopher, that person might be happy to explain/translate...

309. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193094 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:57 pm

PBUM,
I'm specializing on philosophy of mind.

But I would say that philosophy of religion is also something I can do very well :)

Moral Philosophy is deeply interesting to me.

But then, most branches of philosophy are related. When you have a certain position on metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind etc - that will determine to a great deal your position on metaethics.

I assume you mean to ask what I think of first order ethics (trying to answer the first order questions of what we ought to do)? In that case, I think it is a very important discipline, but has to rest on solid metaethical foundations.

Concerning this, I subscribe to contractualism. Basically, roughly in the way Rawls arrives at political values from the deliberation of the hypothetical original position, with agents beyond a veil of ignorance, I think we can rationally derive a moral code from that.

The best attempt to make this thought into a working first order moral theory so far has been T.M. Scanlon's "What we Owe to Each Other".

Explaining empathetic urges - that's, I think, something for biologists and neuroscientists to work out :)

310. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193088 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:47 pm

Do french people have morals.
I ask because I can not speak french.

French can be translated to your native language though. Furthermore you can inform yourself in many ways about the explicit societal norms in France throughout history, about the work of French moral philosophers - and you can see a complexity of social interaction that requires the grasping of normative concepts even aside from the above.

311. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193086 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:44 pm

Yes - I thought so... just wanted to make that clear :)

312. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193084 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:40 pm

What I meant that if a person were to act instincitvely, without weighing the consequences, then that action could still be seen as moral even if there are no ethical or societal formalities on what is and isn't moral.

In the sense that others can ascribe moral value to that action - yes. But not in the sense of the action itself actually being moral outside of intersubjective evaluation. Actions don't have intrinsic values. That would require metaphysically object moral values - it would, in short, it would require the supernatural.

313. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193079 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:33 pm

An instinctive action can still be moral.

That's kinda question-begging I think.

Let me explain my argument:

Morality is always the ascrption of moral values to actions, intentions, dispositions, traits of character etc. But morality is not metaphysically objective - there are no metaphysical entities, actions don't have intrinsic values. Morality is thus an intersubjective construct - the actions get ascribed value through the application of the concept of right or wrong of an aggregate of individuals in relation to each other. Animals do not have conscious concepts of this kind. They do not ascribe value to actions, intentions, dispositions etc. Morality necessitates such ascription - therefore animals do not have morality. They have social behaviour that has certain effects on other members of society or themselves - they have egotism, deception, they care for each other and have altruism. But we have no justification for assuming that they ascribe moral values to things.

In saying that animals have morality, we simply make the mistake of thinking certain actions/dispositions/intentions etc to have intrinsic moral value - so that when we find them in animals, we ascribe morality to them.

This also answers the following:

what I meant is that acting morally is still possible without an ethical framework and linguistic concepts sufficient to "formalise" what is and isn't moral informing the person's actions.

.

In my analysis, which I think is at least approximately correct, this would be wrong insofar as it rests on your ascription of intrinsic value to actions.

314. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193056 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 2:04 pm

Guys - I think you need to make a distinction between unreflected action that corresponds to what we would call moral actions and morality as in being consciously aware of moral demands etc.

If we want to reserve the term "morality" for the latter, then it probably appeared very recently, with language complex enough to communicate and operate on these concepts, to have them explicitly.

We might call the rest "proto-moral behaviour".

315. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #193051 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 1:59 pm

Well, I am a philosopher - and have studied ethics in quite some depth.

This:

A good example of an arbitrary preference is meat-eating. We, at least in the industrialized world, live in a time and place where everyone can and should be a vegetarian.

...Is question-begging. There are many consistent and applicable ethical theories that do not require vegetarianism.

Also, there is absolutely no reason to suggest that moral values are anything but intersubjective social constructs.

And no, a moral philosopher would not necessarily say that it isn't altruism when it's directed at one's kin. For the moral philosopher, the base entities are individuals, not kins. The interpersonal relationships are important, but they are not the base entities to which moral behaviour is ascribed.

316. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #192980 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 11:30 am

Speciesism, for example, just refers to a type of collective, pathological self-love whereby we show an arbitrary preference for own species at the expense of every other.

Every species has that - it's not pathological.
What would be pathological in this respect would be to regard every thing on this planet has having equal moral status. That would be pathological in rendering us incapable of any action - and thus in its ultimate consequence would be the demise of ours species.

The moral question is far too difficult to be dismissed by an a priori assumption of equal moral status of everything.

317. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #192968 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 10:58 am

I assume trying to convert family members is a misfiring of the otherwise useful instinct for looking out for our own kin.

I don't think it's a misfiring - it fires correctly, but the information (the beliefs which evoke this) is wrong.

318. Kerry O'Brien's exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama

Comment #192967 by MPhil on June 14, 2008 at 10:57 am

I'm with Steve here.

I have met and talked to so many religious people. And most of them do want others to know the "truth" about god - or at least how to find the true way so that they will be able to please God and enter the kingdom of heaven.

When it was still the official doctrine of the catholic church that unbaptized children who die are going to spend eternity in Limbo - that was a major incentive for christians to have their children baptized as early as possible. They didn'wanted their children to know the grace of god, to get into the kingdom of heaven.

There are many religious people who are genuinely altruistic and are genuinely altruistic and empathetic. That's part of the motivation for indoctrinationa/mission and has been all along.

That's the real pervasiveness of the doctrine. You are a human being capable of empathy and altruism. You believe firmly that in order not to suffer the worst fate possible in the hereafter, the others have to believe the right things and do the right things. So you have an altruistic motive for missionary work.

Actually I think the class of altruistic actions/beliefs are a subclass of egoistic beliefs/actions - because in the end, every action is motivated. Anyone's altruistic actions are always also done out of the desire to live up to one's own standards - to fulfill the own desire/moral imperative to behave altriustically.

I'm also not saying that religion isn't narcissistic - but it would be wrong to say that it isn't true that religious people act on their beliefs also out of empathy and altruism (misconcieved though it is).

319. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #192639 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 6:52 pm

Okay - here's a defence of my position:

This seems to me to be the problem of metaphor. Evidently - we don't posit a real "virus" in a computer. There are no cells there injecting (part of their) genome into a cell.

We know about computers because we constructed them. Computer viruses can be seen from the functional perspective as pieces of information that influence an appropriate information-processing system in a way that furthers their own distribution.

Didn't you note how every proponent of memetics is also a physicalist? This means that memes have to reduce - which is to say that they are nothing over and above certain information-patterns processed in certain systems.

Unless we have such a reduction - "meme" will remain a metaphor - and as such necessarily ontologically opaque. If the metaphor is taken literally, this will mean it's ontologically untenable. If it is not - it means we don't have a sufficiently detailed and "integratable" concept to make ontological commitments.

Now, I must express my gratitude to Al-Rawandi here. He has advocated a distinction which - I think - we absolutely have to make: Interpersonal relationships OCCUR, they are not entities.

The distinction between occurring and existing is an important one. Existence posits entities - things that occur are processes/structures etc., not entities.

Thus, "Memes" as pieces of information are abstract constructions from observations of concrete entities having certain effect on the systems that are in relation to them - playing a certain functional role. It is the "rôle" that is important here - and as such, "Memes" can be said to "occur" in a metaphorical sense.

In short: A meme is certainly not a concrete entity! What else could it be? An abstract entity? If one does not want to advocate ontological dualism/pluralism - this means that they reduce to mental concepts, which in turn reduce to structures and processes in information-processing systems of certain complexity.

The role these "memes" play in the interaction between organisms has to reduce (for the naturalist/materialist/physicalist at least) to information-processing systems exchanging patterns of information via activation-states of their various sub-systems (linguistic behaviour, "body-language" etc) - and as such are occurances, not entities.

A materialist/naturalist/physicalist ought to reserve the quantification of "existence" to entities - everything that is not a concrete entity "occurs" or "obtains".

Thus, "memes" are a metaphor for structures/processes - and are as such not entities. They are not elements of our ontology - but occur as interactions or structures between/of the elements of our ontology.

320. Reverse Engineering The Brain To Model Mind-body Interactions

Comment #192628 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 5:15 pm

Yes - I know.

Ah, you use the Frege-terminology. Reference as extension of a term and sense as that quality over which we pick out the entities to which the term is supposed to refer.

Oh my - don't get me started on the problem of universals. I think that either the problem is a pseudo-problem arising form the limits of our thinking and language - or, if that is not the case, I think either anti-realist conceptualism or trope nominalism would be the best answers we have.

I personally haven't made up my mind on the question of "meaning" - or, if you will - of sense and reference, although I do tend towards a Strawson-type behaviourism.

321. Reverse Engineering The Brain To Model Mind-body Interactions

Comment #192620 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 4:29 pm

fizhburn,

... I thought as much - I read through your comments, thought about the book you recommended and thought "Philosopher with a special interest in Philosophy of Language sounds about right" :)

Say, - if I may ask - what is your position towards philosophy of language (specifically concerning meaning)?

322. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #192592 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 1:47 pm

Didn't see that coming, eh? :)

If we had a neuroscientific theory about content of consciousness, tacit belief and communication... then we might make out structures and processes to which the meme might reduce - but until then, it still makes for a good visualization tool.

Good to see that I can still surprise people.....*chirp*......*chirpchirp*.....*cough*

323. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #192588 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 1:25 pm

Nothing against that Article by Blackmore - but I'm always a bit skeptical about her... the "meme" idea is a nice and helpful tool for visualization, but ontologically untenable I feel. Also, it seems a little conspicuous how she went from all-out endorsement and belief in esoteric bullshit to "hardcore scientific realism" so quickly.... ah well.

324. New British Petition: Stop the Nightmares

Comment #192585 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 1:16 pm

Interesting,

I recently wrote a paper on how religious indoctrination in childhood violates basic rights, such as inviolacy of the person, liberty of conscience and freedom of thought - because it is not freely chosen, it denies the children the opportunity to develop an understanding of their freedom of religion and the faculty to make use of it - and because it is mental cruelty.

I'm not saying we should remove the children from the care of the parents. But perhaps child services could impose requirements on the parents, and an impartial expert might have to check if they are fulfilled now and then.

325. Reverse Engineering The Brain To Model Mind-body Interactions

Comment #192576 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 12:47 pm

fizhburn,

Thanks - sounds very interesting. I don't mind difficult. I'm a philosopher specializing in philosophy of mind/neurophilosophy. I have some knowledge of neural network theory, neuroanatomy, automata theory, have good training in formal logic etc... I love difficult :)

Anyway - if you're interested in the body/mind problem and neuroscience... Paul Churchland is someone whose work you might find really interesting.

Sadly, I have so many books to read that I would need more than one life to earn the money to buy them all - and then I would probably need another life to read them all :)

Oh, btw - I have a blog where I post about philosophy, (neuro)science, religion and stuff... if you're interested, you're welcome to take a look and contribute to the comments if you like:

http://mphil.livejournal.com

You'd be in good company - Steve Zara, Brian English and others are frequent visitors as well :)

326. Reverse Engineering The Brain To Model Mind-body Interactions

Comment #192566 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 12:01 pm

But we're not in completely uncharted territory in terms of brains and computation. Our brains are neural networks - and while we are far from having a working model with the complexity of the brain, computational neuroscience does know how (in principle) the brain computes things - we know this by modelling dynamic neural networks.

Neural Network theory has perhaps provided more insight into the body-mind problem in terms of information-processing than anything else. You won't get anywhere with van Neumann architecture linear processing. Neural networks are the way to go... for example we can show that even incredibly simple artificial neural networks are extremely effective at novelty detection and learning.

Paul and Patricia Churchland have been doing work in this area for quite some time.

"Neurocomputational Perspective" by Paul Churchland is well worth a read.

327. Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

Comment #192556 by MPhil on June 13, 2008 at 11:30 am

Even the capability for improving one's logical problem-solving faculty is highly dependent on the degree of neural plasticity (much higher in children and adolescents than in adults), and even more so on previous "conditioning" to rationality - ie the training of the neural network - which establishes and strengthens certain synaptic connections.

328. Louisiana's latest creationism bill moves to House floor

Comment #192324 by MPhil on June 12, 2008 at 7:08 pm

Podaar,

well, yes :)
________________
On a side note - just for those who don't know - I don't subscribe to Nietzsche's ethics - I just cannot STAND it when theists think they're smart and bring up Nietzsche in that way, or when they bring up the old "no justification for morality without god" crap.

329. Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

Comment #192264 by MPhil on June 12, 2008 at 3:43 pm

Brian,

as soon as I get to it, I will... really busy preparing two talks I have to give next week :)

330. Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

Comment #192257 by MPhil on June 12, 2008 at 3:35 pm

I won't give you an apology for my being pedantic - you should be used to that by now :)

331. Intelligent people 'less likely to believe in God'

Comment #192254 by MPhil on June 12, 2008 at 3:30 pm

Brian,

IQ measures 'academic' intelligence, the ability to do science and math.

That's not entirely true... it measure problem-solving capacity (which is one definition of intelligence) via grasp of language, geometry, algebra, "pure" logic, complexity of spatial representation and ability to perform operations in that domain etc... not just math and science.

332. Louisiana's latest creationism bill moves to House floor

Comment #192250 by MPhil on June 12, 2008 at 3:27 pm

Just two things:

1. Steve - excellent job!

2. When, oh when will theists stop make bold claims about things they know nothing about (okay, I understand, that would make theism pointless)?

I am a philosopher, and have studied (among other things) ethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science in great detail. I have also read all of Nietzsche's works several times and have studied a portion of them under one of the foremost experts on Nietzsche.

Nietzsche was not a Nihilist!!!

Nietzsche thought that one had to view the world from a perspective beyond good and evil in order to re-evaluate even the value of various moral codes. The death of god in Nietzsche's philosophy meant the dawning of the insight that the old moral systems, old values are baseless, without justification - mere products of society and struggle between groups (for example the "slave morality" of Christianity arose from being in the position of the weak and underprivileged before the Roman Empire became Christian).

Nietzsche thought that you have to abandon all previously held morality in order to establish new, adequate moral values. He never thought that morality itself has no meaning without god.

Theists like to bring up Nietzsche in the context you did... and to anyone knowledgeable about Nietzsche's work, they display yet another instance of ignorance, of baseless and blatantly wrong claims.

We have experts from so many fields on this site - you better think twice before posting any bullshit. But since thinking about whether one's position might be complete bullshit is not really a strength of theism, it's hardly surprising this keeps happening.

But it gets really embarrassing when - after having the flaws in the argument pointed out... theists figuratively stick their fingers in their ears and continue as if nothing happened...

... okay, I don't want to make unwarranted generalizations: MOST do - two or three have shown capability for real rationality here. You are not one of them (so far).

You make claims about philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, biology, philosophy of biology, ethics, metaethics, Nietzsche etc.

Everyone does that - but there are people who are experts in these fields. Who have put real work into this. Who have studied it rigorously - read the important works, contributed to the research.

Don't get me wrong - I have had wonderful, enlightened discussions with theists who have studied these things at least to an intermediate degree.

But all of the theists I have seen visiting this site show a blatant lack of knowledge in the areas they make bold claims about.

You are one of them. And you accuse the atheist of arrogance? You should be ashamed of yourself.

I will have you know that philosophical ethics and metaethics is doing an extremely good job without theism, and that numerous first- and second-order theories exist that are entirely compatible with materialism/physicalism/naturalsim (however you want to call it).

I will also have you know that theistic moral theory is philosophically vastly more problematic than any other theory - in fact untenable, because the Aquinas'-account of morality from god's necessary nature rests both on a logically inconsistent concept of god (especially in the inconsistent concept of aseity) and cannot evade the criticism of claiming to provide objective, absolute, intrinsic morality while actually only being able to provide a concept (inconsistent at base) of necessarily arbitrary and non-intrinsic morality.

Honestly - take about two years of intense study of ethics and metaethics. Maybe then you can begin to appraise the issues here - and contribute something meaningful.

You really should be ashamed of your arrogance and hypocrisy in claiming to be living according to a standard that demands humility.

...the nerve!

333. Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound

Comment #190790 by MPhil on June 9, 2008 at 2:55 pm

Far be it for me to question your authority here, but do you have to do all that to dissent with plantinga's ontological proof?

No - but I think you should be able know why it doesn't work. There are various reasons, of course - so take your pick :)

But Styrer is right, the punishment I laid out is not enough... I still think he should have to do that, but hey - how about you think of some more things he should have to do?

334. Logical Proof of the Existence of a Divine Creator, Why Atheism is Not Logically Sound

Comment #190754 by MPhil on June 9, 2008 at 1:56 pm

It really is wooter, only in English.

My goodness - evidently, this guy has no idea what a "logical proof" even is.

How is anyone supposed to take this seriously when the author makes the blatant mistake of labeling an inductive argument a "logical proof"... not to mention the incredible weakness of the arguments.

As a punishment - this guy has to read up on Plantinga's modal ontological proof and Mackie's refutation - and give a half hour talk on why the modal ontological argument doesn't work - including a formalization of all the arguments.

335. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #190305 by MPhil on June 8, 2008 at 7:13 pm

Of course it does. Purpose and intent don't just imply or suggest the need for an organizing agent. They demand it.

You have no idea, have you? You're making very bold claims about conceptual necessity... no, intentionality does not explain causation. Causation explains intentionality - you don't need to invoke purpose. All that is needed in this case is molecual chemical attraction. And in general, intentionality reduces to representation and information processing.... and we know positively that purely physical systems can do that.

Sorry, you are in way over your head here - philosophers (like me) have thought about this for millenia. Religion just rides piggy-back on whatever philosophical acheivement fits them best. In short - it's parasitic.

Read some John Bickle ("The new wave of psychoneural reduction"), Daniel Dennett ("Consciousness Explained"), Jaegwon Kim ("Physicalism, Or something near enough")... or dozens of other real philosophers.

It won't do just to make bold claims. This is my speciality - and I happen to know you're absolutely wrong.

336. Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests

Comment #185259 by MPhil on May 27, 2008 at 9:35 am

I think infidel_michael is correct. The theory can however be made much more elaborate and substantiated:

Our psychological pattern-detection is tuned by evolution to look for intentionality. In this case, more false-positives than false-negatives is evolutionary stable: It is evolutionary more stable to have a brain that mistakes a stick for a snake than to have a brain that mistakes a snake for a stick.

This being so, the sentence "And where is a person, there is a purpose." is getting it backwards I think. People observed these things (lightning, sun and moon moving around - and plants growing for example) and ascribed intentionality, for how could something that has such clear and present effects on their lives, the sun being hotter or there being too much rain caused their crops to die... there must be intentionality. And where there's intentionality, there's a person.

It is, of course, nothin more than a "virtus dormitiva"-explanation. (See Molière)
"Why does opiom make sleepy?"
"-Because it has a 'sleepy-making spirit/force/power'".

We are hard-wired for pattern-detection, and this pattern detection is linked to intentionality-ascription, because from the evolutionary perspective, only if you can predict the action of your predators/prey will you survive - and that requires intentionality-ascription, cognitive or non-cognitive, conscious or unconscious. But with humans it was at some stage cognitive and conscious - so they saw change/movement (sun, lightning, growing of crops etc) and were led to ascribe intentionality - and subsequently personality.

This also explains very neatly why (for all we know) there were polytheistic religions before there were monotheistic religions. Multiple individual events that had to have intentionality behind them - multiple agents for the various kinds of events.

337. Six 'uniquely' human traits now found in animals

Comment #185111 by MPhil on May 27, 2008 at 2:04 am

I should add that in general, researchers investigating animal cognition are extremely cautious. Even with the most sucessful and insightful studies, they are modest about their conclusions. For example Uller's study investigating "theory of mind" in animals maximally would show that certain animals have an understanding of intentionality on the level of human infants. But 1. the human infant level of cognitive understaning is not that of an educated adult, and 2. Uller herself said that more evidence is required before claiming that chimpanzees understand intentions (on the level investigated).

Humphrey was one of the first to suggest that social interaction requires theoretical understanding. This is a basic assumption of many researchers, but i) assuming this is true, the theoretical understanding we have evidence for ascribing is only ever at the level we test for (usually not surpassing human infants) and ii) this basic assumption is questionable, and has been criticized by many academics who study the mind and/or cognition in one way or another (see for example Carruthers).

In the "theory of mind" studies of animal cognition (most notably the "Sarah" study of Premack and Woodruff in 1987), they infer from certain behaviour that animals succesfully performing the tast have an "ability to predict and explain behaviour by attributing mental states". I could very well live with that, provided that one's interpretation of that does not exceed the evidence. This does not show understanding(explanation) as cognitive operations on the level adult humans use, but maximally on the level of pre-educated human infants. But anyway, this interpretation is now out of favor - it is not parsimoneous enough. The most scientifically warranted interpretation is that Sarah attended to the goal of the actors in the experiment, not their mental states. This is by the way also the interpretation Premack, the original researcher, now endorses (Premack 2003)

It should interest you that one of the people involved in the evalution of all the important research on animal cognition was/is Daniel Dennett, who is just as cautious about ascription of animal cognition as I am (as every sceintist should). He does not deny what I do not deny, but does deny what you assert above what I assert.

He was even involved in constructing better tests for animal cognition, for example together with Bennett in 1987, when they proposed that a (to be specified) coordination problem requiring the adaptation of one's own behaviour in expectation of what another subject will do is a far better test than that of the Sarah-study. A good coordination problem might require that the subject evaluates a false belief of another subject. But Dennett also recognizes that any ascription of cognitive faculties by such a test hinges on our ability to determine the content of predictions the test-subject (chimps) might make. And this is very problematic indeed.

It is generally recognized in the studies of animal cognition that it is extremely hard to develop a good nonverbal test for a theory of mind. This lowers the justification for attributing the faculties in question - meaning that nonverbal tests are always open to warranted interpretations not requiring the ascription of cognitive faculties. But I'm not that skeptic - I think nonverbal tests can be sufficient. But I still agree with Dennett (and others) that for an ascription of certain cognitive capacities of arrays of nonverbal tests to be warranted, is has to be the most parsimoneous interpretation and must not ascribe capacities beyond what it actually tests for, meaning that interpretations have to be minimal. This is of course basic scientific pracitice, guided by the rule of parsimony, because otherwise the probability of the interpretation will sink very low for reasons of arbitrariness when not observing parsimony.

Dennett's suggestions were taken up by researches studying the theory of mind in children (see e.g. Wimmer & Perner 1983) (this was the famous "Maxi"-test, which has gained popularity even among laypeople). Such false-belief tests usually show that human subjects under the age of 4 are incapable of such a theory of mind. Similar tests have not succeeded for animals - because we don't know how to get animals to tell us under which box they think Maxi will look.

Also, the entire array of studies relies on the acceptance of folk psychology as a theory or as a simulation. Here I agree with the Churchlands (and others) that given the evidence provided by modern neurosciences (and artificial neural network research) tells us that the ontological commitments of folk-psychology are unwarranted.

Anyway, such distinguished researchers as Heyes (1998), Tomasello (et al, 2003), Hare (et al 2000) and Uller (2004) have reevaluated investigation into animal "theory of mind" from nonverbal paradigms. This lead to the abandoning of investigating whether or not we can ascribe a general theory of mind - rather, researchers now test for simpler, more isolated cognitive tasks and whether animals can perform them, such as understanding perceptual states, goals and intentionality.

Studies by e.g. Plooij in 1978, Whiten & Byrne in 1988, Goodall in 1986, Povinelli and Eddy in 1996, and Hare et al in 2000-20001 suggest (such studies of course never prove, only suggest, but that's enough for me) that chimpanzees can integrate into their behaviour-guiding mechanisms a basic understanding of perception and intentionality.

Studies by Emery and Clayton in 2004 suggest that certain scrubjays who have been put through certain learning-experiences engage in experience projection.

Andrews and Hare recognize that there are severe epistemological problems in drawing inferences about the mental capacity of animals from such experiments. But even taken at face value, they provide no evidence whatsoever that the cognitive faculties of the best test-subjects approaches that of an average adult human. An ascription of cognitive complexity approaching our own is simply not warranted, and all these researches know that.

The experience-projection, understanding of perception and intentionality these animals show is still far below what an average human adult can do.

One other difference in cognitive faculties between humans and other animals is that all the tests have shown are certain animals being able to functionally integrate a certain projection in situations of natural need (acquiring sustenance or averting danger for example). Humans are the only species of which we know that they can engage in cognition unrelated to their underlying drives - the acquisition of food, mating behaviour, establishing and maintaining social order, caring for infants etc. We see no evidence whatsover for cognitive behaviour unrelated to such things in animals - high-level complexity cognitive tasks such as philosophy, theoretical physics, set-theory, empirical investigations into the structure of spacetime, the fundamental particles etc are i) several orders of magnitude more complex than anything we observe in other species and ii) fundamentally beyond what is required for "mere" social survival (including establishment and maintenance of social structure) (and this is aside from the fact that these require language with meta-level capacity).

In a very recent study (2006) performed by Warneken & Tomasello, it was shown that for certain nonverbal requests (such as picking up a dropped sponge or opening a box), chimpanzees and 18 month-old infants did equally well - but that the human infants were able to perform far more complex tasks. Also, studies by Call et al demonstrated that chimpanzees are unable to distinguish between a person being unable to perform a tast and being unwilling to perform a task. - A capacity exhibited by human infants.

Even more than chimpanzees, dogs show social acuity in being responsive to intentional human actions - because we bread for their responsiveness to our needs.

Still, none of these studies warrant ascription of human-like complexity in cognition - in fact, many studies show positively, not only negatively, that the cognitive capacity of animals is far beyond that of adult humans or even human infants.

Some species (dolphins, rhesus monkeys, great apes) even show behaviour that warrants attribution of basic awareness of limited epistemic state - (Hampton 2001, Smithe et al 1995, Call & Carpenter 2001). This is fascinating, but again does not show near-human complexity. This is also shown by the fact that the test-stimuli that are ambiguous in the way that the subject is unable to categorize them (no above-chance correct categorization) to animals are not neraly as ambiguous in adult humans of average intelligence, showing that the cognitive faculties for categorization are far more developed in adult humans.

Furthermore, the inferences drawn from these (arguable most intersting) tests have been criticized by Carruthers, who argues that second-order reasoning is not necessitates by the experiment. Operating over beliefs and desires of different strengths on a first-order level is sufficient. This rival interpretation lowers the justification for ascribing the faculties in question. In fact, for ascription to be warranted, experiments would have to be devised that do not allow for more parsimoneous interpretation that does not ascribe second-order reasoning.

But I am not as skeptic as Carruthers, although I recognize that I am far less educated in this field than he is. I would be willing to ascribe this faculty. Still, the warranted ascription is again by several orders of magnitude less complex than than certain human behaviour we observe.

Now, having not only layed out the conceptual and meta-scientific requirements in my last post, but also having examined here what the actual experiments have shown, my position stands as strong as ever - while yours is clearly shown to be "bad science", unwarranted ascription of faculties beyond the evidence.

338. Six 'uniquely' human traits now found in animals

Comment #185101 by MPhil on May 27, 2008 at 12:02 am

gr8hands,

Your disregard for parsimony and evidence are astounding.

Your entire post is one big non sequitur.

I have a very good idea what propositional knowledge is, and how complex logical structure in communication is required to express complex relations. You are seemingly unaware of these connections, yet you make bold claims about it.

You claimed that animals do not "think about thinking" when there is no possible way you can know that -- without actually being able to communicate with them about the concept.

If you have evidence to support that extraordinary claim (that only humans think about thinking), I know a few hundred researchers who would be glad to know of it.

You are willingly abandoning the most basic principles of science here: Parsimony and the demand for conclusive evidence. The ascription of such cognitive faculties is not the most parsimoneous and the evidence is not conclusive.

I'm sorry, I don't ususally do this - but I have no other choice here: Your comments are quite arrogant, and you show a deep lack of understanding concerning the connection between propositional knowledge, high-level cognition and language.

All your errors are shown in this statement:

Your statement "All that I'm claiming is that we cannot infer anything from the available evidence" does not match your statements that animals do not have certain capabilities -- a clear inference and conclusion.

I said we cannot infer from the evidence available that they have cognition that approaches our own in complexity. We have no evidence means we have no justification for assuming it.

We have no evidence to suggest animals can do meta-level cognition of the complexity required for, say, empirical science, mathematics or philosophy. We do however have evidence that humans can do it. Logical conclusion: From the current state of evidence, we are justified in believing that only humans have meta-level cognition of the specified complexity, or approaching the specified complexity.

Since you are evidentally unable to apply the principle of Ockam's razor and evidence being required for an assertion (like I have provided, you however haven't), I wonder how you can keep a straight face while accusing me of "bad science" - honestly.

Add to that things like sattelites and particle-accelerators, and we have evidence that complex investigation into the world is something we can do and animals can't.

we can't tell if [elephants are] having philosophical discussions, religious discussions, or any other kind of discussions.

Statements like these shouldn't be criticiszed, only underlined.

One of the most ridiculous things I've ever read.

Philosophical discussions, or discussions about mathematics etc require extremely complex thinking, require complex language, grammatically structured, capable of expressing complex relations. It requires concepts of abstract entities, a concept of "evidence", "justification" , "argument", it requires a very high complexity of the areas of the brain responsible for cognition and communication. Unless we have evidence for that, we have no justification whatsoever for ascribing it.
And we certainly have no evidence that any animal has understanding of such concepts, much less can implement them.

My position is scientific - it allows for the construction of tests to evaluate animal cognition.

Just one example - it is quite universally agreed that tool-use is reflective of cognition. If we saw the construction and use of tools approaching in complexity our own - that would be sufficient evidence for cognition approaching our own.

If we saw animals inventing something with the function of an abacus, that would be pretty conclusive evidence for intelligence in the vicinity of humans at the time they used abaci.
If we saw developing technology - that would be further evidence.

Of course other behavioural tests can be done - but they can only prove a capacity for the complexity of cognition they test for - and that is, compared to the complexity of human cognition we can observe, very rudimentary.

The studies done with crows and great apes do not warrant the ascription of near-human cognitive capacity. They warrant ascription only of the cognitive capacity they test for, obviously. And that still is far below the complexity we observe in humans discussing philosophy, doing scientific investigation etc. This should be really obvious

You accuse me of bad science? Give me a break. We have no evidence for propositional thinking in animals, much less for complex meta-level thinking.
We have evidence for basic self-awareness, basic problem-solving (abstract planning) etc, but not for propositional thinking and complex meta-level cognition.

You are basically saying (see the elephant-philosophy example) that we can ascribe it without sufficient evidence, because we cannot prove it isn't so? I cannot prove that deep inside Jupiter there isn't a hidden civilisation with amazing technology. Do I have justification for asserting that it is so? Evidentally not.

You are confused about cognitively incapable and physically incapable -- a dolphin may not have the hands to write literature, but you cannot prove that they do not have the cognitive capability to learn a written language -- in fact, there is tons of evidence that they do understand written symbols. The problem is that we don't have a way to translate from their language to ours and vice versa.

If there's tons of evidence, that's fine by me then - as long as it raises the epistemic probability of "dolphins can understand [specific symbol-string x]" above 50%. But you are claiming that we can infer far more - namely that it warrants ascription of cognition approaching in complexity of informational operation our own.
That is unwarranted.

But in most cases, there is no such evidence - and you again neglect that there is a huge difference between being able to understand basic, low-complexity symbolic expressions (a card with a picture for food for example), and being able to form, analyze and understand complex, high-level symbolic language expressing descriptive propositions.

I have to say this again: We know that humans can do it... we have no evodence that animals can do it, therefore the only justified position is "From the available evidence we have no reason to believe that animals can do that"

Another thing you don't understand is that grammatical language with logical operators is essential for propositional thinking. And that is what I was talking about all along.

If you were to take a cognitive test given in a language you do not understand, where the instructions were complex and completely foreign to you, you would fail. You would be labeled as having only rudimentary intelligence. You would be labeled as not having meta-linguistic capabilities, or demonstrating grammar, etc. I hope you can see how that would be erroneous.

Let's assume that aliens who know nothing about human cognitive capacities had to judge the level of cognition humans are capable of. Without sufficient evidence to show propositional thinking, they would have no reason to assume that we have it. But there is sufficient evidence, especially in our communication. Completly foreign languages can be understood - it is possible for someone not understanding a language to investigate its logical structure. By investigating linguistic response to stimuli, including such tools as ostension, you can begin to translate - still, there is of course always underdetermination. We can find out about representating "entities"(names, descriptions) in entirely foreign languages, and also about the logical structure.

Of course the language might be too complex or too alien for us to understand at a given time,(although I see no reason to suggest that we can never possible recognize the structure and representations of any language) but this means that unless there is other behavioural evidence for high-level complex thinking, we have not enough evidence.
Also, you are again neglecting the evidence from the cognitive neurosciences. We know about the function of various brain-areals acroos species.
Elephants may communicate with subvocal oscillations - but their brains don't have the complexity in the structures required for language and propositional thinking. If you claim they have it nevertheless, it's your task to show this, in the course of which you have to refute the well-established neuroscientific evidence.

Anyway, unless the aliens I talked about have sufficient evidence, such as of the logical structure of our languages (our arificial formal languages like set theory, mathematics and logic would be perfect evidence), of highly complex technology - particle-accelerators for example, they have no justification for ascribing high-level cognition.

Surely you can see how a stick as an extension warrants little ascription of cognition while a particle-accelerator warrants the ascription of much more complex cognition.

Again, denying this would be ludicrous.

What it comes down to: There are means to test for propositional knowledge and high-level cognition. The logical and representative structure of language is of tantamount importance

If you were to observe the proverbial wise man sitting on the mountaintop, you would not see tool use, or technology, or science, or theatre, or art, or music -- but none of this would tell you the truth about that person's capabilities. Surely this is instructive and germane.

Since we are talking about a human being, and from our experience we make the judgement that prima facie, any human we encounter is capable of certain cognition. You're forgetting the principles of science again: If it wasn't for this prima facie judgement, I would have at first no reason to ascribe high-level cognition.

We need evidence to ascribe that. We don't have it when it comes to animals. We have evidence for some cognition (including planning - the studies with ravens are fascinating) - but the evidence is entirely insufficient to ascribe propositional knowledge and meta-level cognition. This is what you just don't seem to get - where you are ascribing faculties far beyond what the evidence shows.

As for "the cognitive tasks humans are capable of is far beyond what animals can do" there are cognitive tasks animals are capable of that humans are not -- as one example, try navigating thousands of miles to a place you've only been once without any technology or understanding of astronomy.

That is evidence for know how, not propositional cognition... ascribing the latter is not warranted by the evidence. All this shows is that certain animals have faculties we don't - big deal. We also know that the most prominent role in this capacity is played by their senses - a far superior echolocation in bats, smell dogs and cats - magnetic orientation and the like.
You might as well say that a bat echolocating a fast moving, small animal and catching it is evidence for complex cognition.

Surely you can see that this does not warrant ascription of propositional knowledge or meta-level propositional thinking.

In science, we always look for the most parsimoneous explanation - and with the evidence from cognitive neuroscience and behavioural biology, we are justified in ascribing to animals certain cognitive faculties - the studies on crows for example warrant ascription of planning (and the cognition required for that) on the level observed but not beyond - this is certainly evident to you. But we have no evidence to suggest meta-level thinking or propositional thinking at all in animals.

Get over it. To everyone reading this (and I think I am going to show this to the neuroscientists I am working with) it is evident that you are ascribing faculties beyond what the evidence shows.

(on a side note, though this is of course not meant as an argument of any kind, if you watch the
interview with Richard Dawkins by Paula Kirby, in the Q&A session, you will see Richard agreeing that the level of human consciousness is unique - Dennett (another expert on the mind) agrees as well)

I think there is little question that scientific thinking and philosophical thought are among the most complex cognitive tasks (perhaps the most complex) we have ever observed.
Meta-leve language is absolutely essential for that. You need a means of communication by which you can talk about the descriptions, the models and methods.

There is no evidence for that in animals - no evidence, no justification in asserting that they are able to do it.

Let me quote wikipedia:

The following properties of human language have been argued to separate it from animal communication:

* Arbitrariness: There is no rational relationship between a sound or sign and its meaning. (There is nothing "housy" about the word "house".)
* Cultural transmission: Language is passed from one language user to the next, consciously or unconsciously.
* Discreteness: Language is composed of discrete units that are used in combination to create meaning.
* Displacement: Languages can be used to communicate ideas about things that are not in the immediate vicinity either spatially or temporally.
* Duality: Language works on two levels at once, a surface level and a semantic (meaningful) level.
* Metalinguistics: Ability to discuss language itself.
* Productivity: A finite number of units can be used to create a very large number of utterances.

Research with apes, like that of Francine Patterson with Koko, suggested that apes are capable of using language that meets some of these requirements.

In the wild chimpanzees have been seen "talking" to each other, when warning about approaching danger. For example, if one chimpanzee sees a snake, he makes a low, rumbling noise, signalling for all the other chimps to climb into nearby trees.

Arbitrariness has been noted in meerkat calls; bee dances show elements of spatial displacement; and cultural transmission has occurred with the offspring of many of the great apes who have been taught sign languages, the celebrated bonobos Kanzi and Panbanisha being examples.

However, these single features alone do not qualify such instances of communication as being true language.

Meta-level communication has never been observerd. The fact that we are able to understand animal communication to the degree that we can know that a certain sound is used to elicit the proper response to an approaching danger (snake) and another sound to another danger is telling. We can investigate animal language.

Perhaps we will observe meta-level communication ( I doubt it, for neuroscientific reasons, and because no behaviour we see in animals requires this), but until we do, we have no justification for ascribing the faculty of meta-level thinking.

To make myself clear, I will again restate the exact content of my proposition:

(i. We have no justification for ascribing a faculty, assuming the existence of an entity or occurrance of a process/event without sufficient evidence)

(ii. The methodological rule of parsimony applies)
(these two should go without saying)

1. I do not deny that we have sufficient evidence to assume that animals have minds.

2. I do not deny that we have sufficient evidence to assume that some animals (mostly great apes) have basic self-awareness. (mirror-test)

3. I do not deny that we have sufficient evidence to assume that animals have communication

4. I do not deny that we have sufficient evidence to assume that some animals (mostly great apes, but also crows, cretacians etc) have a (varying and basic compared to an educated adult human) ability for abstract planning.

5. I do not deny that we have sufficient evidence to assume that animals have empathy (according to recent studies, empathy is based on mirror-neural activity - where there are mirror-neurons integrated into a neural network that is also engaged in social activity, there most likely is empathy)

6. I do not deny that we have sufficient evidence to assume that animals have social norms (moral behaviour)

7. We do not have sufficient evidence to assume that any species except ours has language that fulfills the complete definition given in the wikipedia entry

8. We have no evidence at all to suggest that the most complex cognitive tasks we know of (science, philosophy for example) are possible without a lanaguage as described above.

9. We have no other behavioural evidence to suggest that any species except ours engages in cognitive activity of the complexity required by (for example) empirical science, philosophy, mathematics, set-theory etc.

10. Our knowledge of the functions of brain-areas, especially the Broca's area and the neocortex leads to the conclusion that the complexity (size of area together with density of neurons and neuronal-layers and number of synapses) are essential for the cognitive power of the neural system.

11. The respective areas (Broca's area, neocortex) are not present or rudimentary in other species. The overall size of the area, the density of neurons and neural layers plottet against the total number of synpases in the respective areas are far higher in humans than in animals (where these areas are at all present).

12. In conclusion: The functional complexity of the neural network determines the cognitive capactiy of the oraganism.

13. Thus we can conclude that the operational
capacity of the neural networks of other species are below those of humans in general. The functional complexity of the neuronal strucutres responsible for orientation for example, for processing of smell, echolocation etc are at times far greater in certain species. But the overall capacity of the neural network is still greatest in human. The human brain is the most complex structure we know of in the entire universe.
Also, in the areas we know are responsible for propositional thinking, for meta-level cognition and complex communication - human neural networks far surpass those of any other species.

The evidence for my position is so far insurmountable, especially the neuroscientific evidence.

A "puffed up sense of humanities importance" is nowhere to be found. Only hard evidence and adherence to the standards of science, specifically parsimony.

If you claim that I am wrong - you have to disprove each strand of evidence - which will be extremely hard when it comes the neuroscientific evidence, and extremely hard when it comes to the conceptual evidence about language and cognition.

Of course you are making assertions that we can ascribe faculties without sufficient evidence (the ridiculous elephants and philosophy example - man that really made my day. I needed that laugh), so you proven beyond doubt that it is you who is doing extremely bad science.

Good day.

339. Six 'uniquely' human traits now found in animals

Comment #184617 by MPhil on May 25, 2008 at 9:01 pm

1. My statements are not "pre-theoretical" but are in fact what the articles referenced by the New Scientist are about. Perhaps you might consider reading them prior to commenting on them.

What I said was that the "arguments" you brought up were unscientific, pretheoretical (the examples you mentioned show nothing of consequence to my position) and (in response to 2) very much emotionally charged.

3. You are clearly ignorant of the research demonstrating that a number of animals have language and grammar (elephants, dolphins, just to name two) -- this is old news.

Indeed, I am unaware of research demonstrating grammatical language in animals - because as far as anyone source I am aware of knows, grammatical, logical language has never been observed naturally occurring in animals. You claim it - you prove it. Grammatical means having discernible syntactic functions, linking individual, atomic expressions, in logical ways - thus being able to describe logical relations. There is no evidence that any form of animal communication can do that. We have to be able to discern logical, grammatical structure (and everything that is necessary for it - logical connectives, reference, order of strings, behavioural link to certain environmental situations etc) in order to ascribe it to a certain language. Nothing like this was ever observed in animals - an ascription thereof is thus unwarranted.

You're also misrepresenting me. I never said grammar was innate - I said that the cognitive capacieties requried for learning and making use of grammatical language are a) only observed in humans, and b) for all science tells us dependent on the functional (informational) complexity of the brain, specificially the areas I meantioned. So you did construct strawmen. I never even addressed the question where grammar comes from - merely what cognitive operational complexity is required for it.

5. Your information on the prefrontal cortex is (to be kind) not entirely correct. I suggest you study it further.

I suggest you don't just make these assertions, but go into detail and provide arguments. I got the information from very recent textbooks from cognitive neurosciences and neurophilosophy.

6. You are clearly confusing all communication with human speech/language/writing -- again demonstrating a puffed up sense of human capability.

Your ad hominem attacks are quite unnecessary, and certainly not impressive. Furthermore, that's another straw-men. I never said anything to that effect. I didn't say all communication was verbal. You evidently did not get the point about propositions and logical structure - which can only be expressed in language with grammatical structure, including logical connectives and functional elements playing the role of logical connectives and expressing relations.That's what I said: Constructions, evaluations and communications of propositions requires logical, grammatical language. Nothing like this has ever been observed in animals (except for the sign-language we taught a handful of them).

Ad 7. : Again you failed to get my point. From the experiment, nothing can be rationally inferred about the ability of scope and complexity of operations their mind can process beyond their being able to implement a tacit concept of progression and symbolic expression. Whatever else can be inferred, it is logically true that without further initial premises (with individual arguments - meaning other research - which haven't been given) in order to infer anything concerning the operational/functional complexity of their mind - ie the scope and complexity of operations it can do.

8. You're confused about the capability of doing math at the level of some humans (not all humans can do more than simple arithmetic), and the capability of doing any kind of calculation at all -- which a number of animal species have demonstrated time and time again.

I didn't say animals couldn't potentially employ know how of addition - thought the reasearch shows that the capability is rudimentary. I said that a) we have no evidence, no justification for believing that animals have any expressive formal systems with axioms and inference rules, with proof and proof theory. No capability of doing formal proofs or constructing logical arguments - and that b) this is a capacity far beyond anything we have ever observed animals to be capable of. The fact that not all humans can perform the highest-level thinking we observe in humans is irrelevant. Humans have been observed to have the capability for formal language, rational argument, science, deduction, discussion, explicit formal systems etc. Animals have never been observed as having anything like that.

9. Your biggest mistake is the use of "but compared to the above" and then conclude that animals don't have it. My statements, and those of the New Scientist article, are that animals do have these capabilities, albeit in most cases quite rudimentary.

No, my arguments demonstrate this quite clearly, because you did infact (contrary to what you state in number 9) shoot down strawmen (some even unsuccessfully). Neither your statements nor any research I am aware of (and I am reasonably up to date) shows that animals have such things as artificial formal languages - with axioms and inference rules - in which they can formulate theorems and do formal deduction. They have no language with discernible logical particles at all (unless we teach them sign-language). You are very simply wrong in stating that. Of course you can convince me of the opposite by directing me towards research where from the observation it can be logically inferred that animals have such language - logical, grammatical language. That requires having distinct and discernible functional elements for fulfilling the "name" function, logical particles, ascriptions of properties, expressing logical relations etc.

You completely betray that your attack against my position is unwarranted by this:

11. You are very confused when you claim that animals don't "think about thinking" -- how can you possibly know that? That's like thinking blind deafmutes must not either, since they don't communicate, can't read, etc. (I think Hellen Keller had a thing or two to communicate about that.)

You're doing what theists do - attempting to shift the burdon of proof to the one saying there is no evidence that warrants this assumption. You claim that an entity does meta-level modelling ("thinking about thinking"
is a very coarse description), you have to provide evidence for that. The only thing that can be evidence for that (if there can be evidence for something like this at all) is either by direct communication in some form of logical language, where the individual in question can describe meta-level models - or indirect evidence (which has to be evaluated extra-critically because it is indirect) - for example the individual performing an action that can ONLY be explained by assuming that it can think about thinking. Of course any such argument has to make a separate, forceful argument that no other explanation is possible and probable - and here Ockam's Razor again applies, meaning the explanation that posits the least complexity which can stilla account fully for the phenomena is the rationally most tenable.

With deafmutes, the above is possible.

And this is the main fault with your position - it's unparsimoneous.
Unless we have conlusive evidence that an ascription of what I deny animals have (and in various cases, you seem to have a false idea of what I am denying or asserting) is necessary for the most parsimoneous explanation. As long as this is not demonstrated, the belief that asserts what I deny is irrational.

Again - I do not deny that animal minds are in substance/essence different from ours. Of course they aren't - it's the function of the neural network. My position is that the human neural network is for all we know capable of far more complex operations than any other neural network we know of. Both the evidence from the cognitive neurosciences (the complexity and functional contribution of the Broca's and Wernicke's areals, the neocortex and the ventromedial prefrontal coretex) and the evidence from behavioural observation absolutely supports my thesis. I do not deny that there is graduality there - the neural networks of dolphins and chimps are certainly capable of far more complex operations than the neural networks of fish or insects.

Our cultural complexity and mainly the complexity of logical language and especially science (which requires logical language and explicit methodology) and philosophy -shows that these are operations more complex by several orders of magniture than anything we observe in other animals. To deny this would be ludicrous. No one I have ever heard of actually denies this. It is logically true.

Comparing the highest and most complex cognition we observe in humans (science, deductive proofs, devising a particle-accelerator for example) and the most complex cognition we observe in animals (such as the research we refered to shows), we see that the former is actually incredibly more complex than the latter - and it follows that evidence only warrants my position: That the complexity/(operational power) of human cognition is far beyond the complexity of cognition observed in any other animal.

Ad 12. As shown above, the evidence does support my position. I'm not just throwing around buzzwords - I am providing a logical analysis of the sitation.

Imagine that instead of animals, you use the the example of feral children, or blind deafmutes. Would that alter your statements? Or would they apply equally, because the subjects wouldn't be able to communicate to you in a way you understood as communication, cognition, etc.?

That's what I meant with emotionally charged. All I'm saying is that the ascription of certain faculties - certain complexity of cognition for example, needs evidence. You claim it, you provide it.
So, are you claiming that there is no evidence and that none is required?

It is you who has to provide evidence. I'll help you - it has to have the following form:
1. Show that certain behaviour has been observed and that the occurance is statistically significant. (By reference to peer-reviewed publications for example, or by direct evidence) - The empirical, inductive side of the argument
2. Show that the observation(s) warrant ascription of the cognitive faculties (level of cognitive complexity in question). - The deductive side of the argument
This has to be done by a) Stating your premises (those can be individually criticised if necessary)
b) Stating the inference rules
c) Integrating the empirical data
d) Construct a deductive, consistent, non-question begging argument showing that the best (or perhaps only) explanation for the observation requires the ascription of the cognitive complexity
in question

My conclusions follow from my premises - I think you are either mistaken about what exactly my position is (which specific things I deny we have justification for believing animals have) or you are in fact simply dogmatic and unable to recognize what I lay out.

You honestly don't manage to show what you are trying to show - that my position is wrong. The ad-hominems won't help, the misrepresentations won't help - the non-sequiturs wont help.

Either you provide an argument as I have laid out above - or you will have to accept (if you don't want to be entirely irrational) that the most parsimoneous, scientific explanation for the phenomena does not warrant the ascription of mental operational complexity on the level I have laid out IN DETAIL above.

There is no doubt that the cognitive tasks I have described are operationally incredibly more complex than anything we observe in animals. So that means you either provide an argument showing exactly that animals have such complex cognition (formal language, meta-level thinking, deduction, inference - in fact even just grammatical language able to express propositions of at least first order predicate logic, which is after all what is required for any logical cognition we oberve in humans.) - or you accept that it is unwarranted to ascribe this to animals.
Of course you also completely neglected to address the argument from complexity of neural network - unless you want to claim that mentality is something different than the working of the brain (for which you would have to argue seperately), you have to show how the brain of the animal - where the functional areas responsible for the functions in question (which I am denying) are mostly either extremely rudimentary or not there at all - can perform such operations.

Again, I am asking you - politely - to stop making ad hominems, and I still think an apology for the insulting comments you made would be appropriate, as a matter of decency.

This:

I am sorry if hearing that truth has insulted you. (It's clear you are unaware of some of what I've pointed out, so that means the "ignorance" comment was accurate. Your confusion about grammar, etc. supports my comment about "poor science". Just because you're working with scientists, doesn't automatically mean you're on the right track. Failing to accept that, is another symptom of "poor science".)

Perhaps you are in the wrong line of work if you have learned so little, and arrive at such wrong conclusions -- I do not write that maliciously. Not everyone is suited to their chosen profession.

Perhaps you might show our interchange to the researchers you work with, without comment, and see what they say about it. That would also be instructive.

Is so full of patronizing, derisive language and infantile ad-hominems that I really had to chuckle. Even just the first statement - honestly, that reads just like theistic drivel.

If that indeed wasn't malicious, it was incredibly arrogant.

Provide sufficient evidence and logically sound arguments and I will immediately agree. But I will not relax the standards of epistemology, of warranted logical inference and limits thereof when it comes to scientific explanations. It seems you are doing this - or, as I said above, you might be severely mistaken about my position.

Since I myself am not malicious, I simply assume you got my position wrong - what specificially I assert and what I deny. I do not deny that animals have mentality, I do not deny that they have social behaviour, or can use tools, or do cognitive tasks. I am merely saying that the cognitive tasks (leading to complexity of intersubjective phenomena like science, literature, philosophy etc) humans are capable of is far beyond what animals can do - in the specific ways explained above.
All that I'm claiming is that we cannot infer anything from the available evidence, and that thus the above is all we have justification for believing. Perhaps we can even agree on this?

There is nothing in current science that contradicts this, in fact in light of the above explanations anyone can see that my position is absolutely justified.

Also it's a bit cheap criticizing someone for being "long-winded" when that person merely lays out arguments in detail to respond to a criticism which that person thinks is invalid. You bring up several points - then you cannot criticize your opponent for actually responding to them.

Your conduct in this exchange however has been less than admirable.

I think we can do this on a more civilized level...

340. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #184393 by MPhil on May 25, 2008 at 1:29 am

Epeeist,

that link you gave, nah, that doesn't represend clearmind. It produces random text. The stupidity of clearming is so amazing that it is highly unlikely it is the product of chance - it must have an explanation, must have taken some real effort.

341. A Tribute to Douglas Adams: Towel Day May 25th

Comment #184376 by MPhil on May 24, 2008 at 10:21 pm

Yep - anywhere I go today, I'll carry a towel. Long live Doulgas Adams, who made such a wonderful contribution to my life through his wonderful works.

Douglas Adams: You certainly were a frood who knew where his towel was! You are sorely missed, but held in highest regard and present as ever.

Let's raise our pan-galactic Gargleblaster to Douglas Adams!

342. Six 'uniquely' human traits now found in animals

Comment #184355 by MPhil on May 24, 2008 at 6:44 pm

gr8hands,

I think your pre-theoretical, emotionally charged postitions on this cloud your scientific judgement. I did not use a dismissive word (at least it wasn't meant dismissive in any way.)

The examples you give are about the strength of certain relations (bounds) between individuals - I was talking about intellectual capacity and mental complexity. And our empathy certainly receives a broader in our mental framework with conceptual cognition, even sometimes expressively formal (constructing arguments, analysing them) cognition, with broad knowledge not only of the know how, but of the "knowing that", the propositional kind.

Propositional knowledge requires propositions, which in turn have both a logical structure of information, the relational rules if you will, and semantic content through intersubjective agreement (tacit and induced through learning of the rules both of construction/analysis and refering) about the conventions of reference. No propositional beliefs without propositions - no propositions without any form of conscious representation of the content of the "it is the case that" statement. ie logical/grammatical language (the logical requirement is the requirement of being able to communicate/describe/express relations and properties) with uniform rules for refering. The being conscious of, the analysis and modelling of descriptions itself (such as what science does)requires a means of representation/expression/description that has a meta-level structure. (This is also what talking about talking, analysis of language is)

We have no scientific or indeed broadly epistemic justification for the assumption that any animal other than humans have any genuinely grammatical language, much less with meta-level structure.

Other animals show great possession of know-how (though still by many orders of magnitude not approaching the complexity of know-how and social interaction in development and realization required to devise and build a particle-accelerator for example), but propositional knowledge? Planning yes - meaning future prediction. Even intensional, self-refering communication (but we know this only of our nearest encephalically-related entities, some small part of the great apes, and only then through the teaching of rudimentary sign-language).
The complexity in and thus the mental complexity required for the rudimentary sign-language not even a handful of study-subject apes could master is light-years away from any complexity (from logical structure alone - for example explicit self-refering in the context of communication) of any communication we observe naturally in animals. But the expressive force and actually realized content of human language-use, including mathematics, physics, philosophy, political language, discussions, rational debates etc - is again light-years away from what these handful of apes who mastered sign-language are able to communicate, express, think. Their language is not expressive enough to even model such things.

Then we have the case of apes being able to press numers displayed on a touch-screen in a grid-matrix in correct numerical progression faster than human subjects. The only thing that can be reasonably extrapolated from this is that these subjects grasp the concept of symbolic representation (which is a huge thing in itself, distinguishing the complexity of the minds of these animal by several orders of magnitude from those of, say, turtles or fish.) and progression.

That is a lot, but it's -again- still light-years away from modern mathematics, or even the maths an normal person learns in school, or even the expressive capacity of the idiolect of the average person, light-years away from the complexity of phsyics or philosophy, of math or drama-plays, of construction (through society) and descriptions of economy, economic processes and states-of-affairs, from the development of and theorizing about politics. The complexity of a human society, with such complex relations as between individuals, certain functional roles they fulfill, certain personal relationships, their relations even to artificial social constructs such as governments and instiutions, conscioulsy constructed and structurally/institutionally regulated artifacts as laws, political parties, companies - their respective connections, the role of the artifact of many in its myriad possible relations to myriads of things - this is a complexity completely unseen in nature - nothing we see outside of human sociality comes close.
Other animals do have such things as roles, as interaction, hierarchical structure (determined by social roles of individuals) and even such things as social reward and punishment - but compared to the above - (political parties, companies, economy, science etc) it is absolutely rudimentary.

Honestly, you're making a fool of yourself by attacking me with such weak arguments. You are furthermore attacking strawmen and failing to bring up any argument against the position I was actually taking.

I actually am informed in the cognitive neurosciences, work with some cognitive neurosceintists and the nature and structure of the mind, its composition, implementation, structure and working is my field of research - I think I can claim to know what I am talking about.

And by this statement:

or a puffed up sense of humanity's importance.

you're displaying exactly the kind of false thinking I was attacking. Yes, we are not different from animals in principle, yes their minds work on the same basis as ours - but what I wrote in my last post about intellectual capacity and mental complexity still remains true. Scientific judgement involves not hypothesizing beyond what the evidence tells us, and using minimal explanations (parsimony). From all the data we have, the conclusions of my last post are absolutely substantiated.

Yes, dogs have strong relations to other individuals (we also bread for that during domestication of wolf to dog), but that does not contradict anything I say.

Want a more direct scientific explanation? You can have it. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the entire cerebral cortex (most decisively the neocortex), and the Broca's and Wernicke's areals are the brain-areals whose structural complexity make complex mentality/intellectual capacities like ours even possible. Among that is the faculty for explicit multi-level conceptual thinking, which is in essence systematic, logically structured representation and manipulation of information (ie grammatical language). Some of these areas are not existent in other animals, and the others are substantially rudimentary compared to ours.

People with a position like yours generally ignore (or don't know) both this and the fact that I mentioned in the above comment - that outer criteria for the complexity of mentality is also the complexity of social artifacts and interaction. And animals just don't have anything as complex as theater plays, computers, programming, particle-accelerators, science in general, philosophy etc, or even just grammatical language capable of expressing and thus communicating meta-level thinking.

To downplay or just (as you seem to do) ignore that there is an amazing, incredible difference of level of complexity between this and anything and everything we see in animals is a) downright wrong and b) quite disrespectful toward the accomplishments of rational thought, of science and philosophy.

It's of course a good thing to show where and how we are similar to animals in behaviour, what we have in common, because for too long (especially due to the three great monotheistic religions) we have thought of ourselves as different in ESSENCE from animals (as having a soul and a "free will") and of animals as enitrely incapable of mentality. But not acknowlidging what I have laid out - that is how far the similarity goes, and where the differences lie, is - overdoing it (in addition to being dismissive of the achievements of science for example)

In light of the above elaboration, I think you ought to retract your last statement (the last two lines specificially), neither is true and both are insulting towards me, among other things because my field of study is actually the mind.

____________________________________________
*EDIT: Substantial Additions for clarification and provision of further examples and arguements.

343. Six 'uniquely' human traits now found in animals

Comment #184300 by MPhil on May 24, 2008 at 12:16 pm

Consciousness may be primarily a phenomenon of sociality: While generally we wouldn't say that other people can know what we are thinking without us telling them, we can all agree on what belongs to "consciousness": beliefs, thoughts, perceptions, decisions, remebering etc. Is there anything I can have of which the others cannot agree that such a category of what belongs to consciousness does even exist? I don't think so, deception in animals is cunning - proving representative and intentional information-processing, but does by far not reach the structured plans, hypotheses, predictions - and the logical structure of this. Our capacity for rationality is evidenced for example by our ability to construct formal systems - like set theory, number theory, predicate logic etc. We have metalinguistic capability, we can think about thinking, conceptualize speech, analyse it's logical structure, make rational investigations into the world. I think the level of complexity of mind is certainly mirrored in comlpexity of sociocultural interactions - we have various sciences, philosophy, art of various kinds with exhibitions, planned social events, complex economy and structured politics etc. That this is possible and actual is definitely reflective of the general capabilities of the human mind - morality as in social behaviour following having certain restrictions - with some actions being rewarded and "taught" and others shunned and resulting in negative response from the social group, thus eliciting certain behavioural and emotional reactions in the individual who did the action of the "forbidden" kind - in that sense any group of agents has morality. But morality as something that is conceptually constructed, revised, an explicit belief-system checked against criteria of logic (consistency), rationality and applicability in a group, where even hypothetical models and theories are constructed (the investigations of the ethics branch of philosophy - also political philosophy) and compared - even the explicit morality that is a subject of intellectual discourse - ascribing this to animals would be going beyond the evidence - it would be unparsimoneous as explanations of the data, the evidence we have.

Yes, animals have mentality, some more complex than others, but compared to humanity, all fairly rudimentary - as evidenced by rudimentary (compared to us) culture, tool use, evidence for planning. But people tend to make the wildest comparisons because of this - that the mentality of animals is comparable in level of complexity to ours. If you mean comparable like a 1940s computer is to a modern supercomputer then yes, of course they are comparable - but comparable in the sense of "fairly close/very similar", then no. Through our high-level cognition, our ability to analyze our situations, make predictions about the future consciously and integrate memory, situation analysis and predictions all contribute to the complexity and overall nature of our emotions (emotional situation), our personality, our morality, our society and culture. And the evidence clearly points to the level of complexity being much higher, thus allowing genuinely new phenomena - like science and philosophy, or discussions, debates - social interactions that require and are based upon certain explicit standards of rationality, or methodology in general.

344. Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'

Comment #182625 by MPhil on May 20, 2008 at 4:49 pm

decius,

I may be mistaken in the assumption that the law actually granted the interpretation given by the ruling judge. Perhaps you know more about this?

It got on the news - and an outcry went through the population. Everyone condemned the actions of the judge and the case was taken from her.

I seriously don't know what happened - the good intentions of multiculturalism gone crazy if you ask me. Anyway - Once it happened, everything went right. Case taken away from her, public outcry, condemnation by politicians etc.

Also, the federalism is not as strict, it's much more unified than the US for example - but still there are many topics where the "Länder" can decide on their own (within the framework of federal law of course) and manage their own finances and policies. But still, very unified.

-Michael

345. Teenager faces prosecution for calling Scientology 'cult'

Comment #182592 by MPhil on May 20, 2008 at 3:20 pm

In Germany, Scientology is rightly under observation by the "Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz" (Federal Bureau for the protection of the constitution) because of anti-constitutional activities.

Well, seeing as freedom of thought, liberty of conscience, freedom of expression, human dignity etc are the highest values in the constitution - The Christian dogma is certainly anti-constitutional, and the religious indoctrination, the official status of Christianity - all of these are anti-constitutional.

But Scientology is rightly considered even worse.

Anyway - the summons is a farce

346. Richard Dawkins Responds to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #182316 by MPhil on May 19, 2008 at 4:43 pm

Wow, love means obedience? What a sick view.
I mean I enjoy the occasional SM-roleplaying, but this is going too far. If you love someone you obey?

That's just pathological.

Nietzsche recognized this correctly:

You cannot have love and reverence for the same person at the same time - love is a force that tears down every barrier between the subjects, it strives for equality, for unity. It allows for no difference in status.

Reverence builds up barriers - acknowledges, values and strengthens inegality.

Love unites, reverence separates.

So, theists obey out of love - that is neither a basis for morality (simply following commands, rather like one obeys and 'loves' a mafia godfather) nor is it love. 24/7 submission - not healthy.

347. A bit of Fry & Laurie - Sex talk in class

Comment #181921 by MPhil on May 18, 2008 at 7:28 pm

I'm a huge Monty Python Fan - but I find Fry and Laurie even better... Stephen Fry ist just awesome - hugely intelligent, wonderful person - creative, amazingly witty and funny etc.
Love QI, love house, love Fry & Laurie, Cambridge Footlights etc.

The Barman sketch for example, - most brilliant double entendre sketch ever done.

Then of course there's the many meta-levels. I just love it.

348. Is Science Killing the Soul?

Comment #180360 by MPhil on May 14, 2008 at 4:46 pm

As a philosopher specializing in philosophy of mind - I love to see this issue getting some publicity. And of course Pinker and Dawkins are great thinkers... but Dan Dennett should have been there...

349. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #179314 by MPhil on May 13, 2008 at 5:33 am

Now you're just being childish... think what you want, I couldn't care less... have a nice day.

350. Evolution: What is 'Natural'?

Comment #179310 by MPhil on May 13, 2008 at 5:27 am

Bonzai,

I won't get into that again - you are hellbent on misreading and misrepresenting my position, and are yourself, I have to say, quite dogmatic. I have no desire whatsover to point out the mistakes and rectify the misrepresentations and the dogmatic implications.

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