"Is Man Just Another Animal?" Professor Steve Jones says...

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't know what you make of Engels links I put earlier (I'm not a big fan), but he does give plenty of real examples. I think Phil & gorski owe more to Engels (plus mysticism) than they do to Hegel anyway. Diamat plus magic.

I didn't look, tbh. I'll have a look at some point. I'm prepared to be persuaded that I'm wrong, but my fundamental problem with it is that I can see no way to reduce it to mathematics. If it is supposed to be a means of reasoning, it should have an underlying mathematical structure. If it does not, then it is just bollocks.

And given that this is supposed to be the science forum, I'll drag it back to science. I find it ironic that gorski should bring up quantum mechanics. It's a very hard subject, one based on an enormous body of evidence that demands explanation. But it is well worth studying, and I don't see how anyone who has studied it would ever then go back to bothering with the likes of Hegel and his unmathematical dialectic. Why on earth would you?

 

[xenon]

How do I know if I have a soul when it can't be described I certainly have shoes. You can argue about the type of shoes. Saying just go and read Hegel is rather weak. I have no thoughts until I've read Descartes.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

eg: chimps don't teach. So what? Killer whales do, so humans aren't the only animals that teach.

Haven't watched the talk or read the thread yet, but if this claim is made then it's wrong. First, Chimps in the wild have been documented teaching their offspring how to use tools: Camera Traps Catch Chimpanzee Moms Teaching Their Children and second, Chimps that have learnt sign language have also being recorded teaching this on to their children:

 

[Knotted]

I didn't look, tbh. I'll have a look at some point. I'm prepared to be persuaded that I'm wrong, but my fundamental problem with it is that I can see no way to reduce it to mathematics. If it is supposed to be a means of reasoning, it should have an underlying mathematical structure. If it does not, then it is just bollocks.

It has been mathematised (at least Engels' version) using category theory (not an easy branch of mathematics, but one which is extremely general). I might be able to dig it out for you if you want.

And given that this is supposed to be the science forum, I'll drag it back to science. I find it ironic that gorski should bring up quantum mechanics. It's a very hard subject, one based on an enormous body of evidence that demands explanation. But it is well worth studying, and I don't see how anyone who has studied it would ever then go back to bothering with the likes of Hegel and his unmathematical dialectic. Why on earth would you?

I think David Bohm is an example of someone who did just this (I'm going by memory of something second hand so I might be wrong).

I'm with you really, I dislike attempts at finding "dialectics of nature". It's too general and makes things which are different appear to be the same. I half think that it makes for good heuristics in that it might push you in the right direction - helpful if you don't treat it dogmatically. But the biologist John Maynard Smith said it pushed him in the wrong direction and more seriously Soviet biologists under Lysenko. Dialecticians prefer Lamarkism to genetics.

 

[NoXion]

Souls? Whatever next? Trials for people accused of witchcraft?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It has been mathematised (at least Engels' version) using category theory (not an easy branch of mathematics, but one which is extremely general). I might be able to dig it out for you if you want.



I think David Bohm is an example of someone who did just this (I'm going by memory of something second hand so I might be wrong).

I'm with you really, I dislike attempts at finding "dialectics of nature". It's too general and makes things which are different appear to be the same. I half think that it makes for good heuristics in that it might push you in the right direction - helpful if you don't treat it dogmatically. But the biologist John Maynard Smith said it pushed him in the wrong direction and more seriously Soviet biologists under Lysenko. Dialecticians prefer Lamarkism to genetics.

I'd be interested to see how it's been mathematised, but I probably need to look at Engels' examples first - they may show me how it might be done. I'm not that interested if I'm brutally honest, as I don't think it would make me suddenly consider it to be a good idea.

You're right about Bohm. I vaguely remember him mentioning Hegel in his Wholeness and the Implicit Order. So it does happen.

 

[Knotted]

The fellow I'm thinking of is Herman Grassman for category theoretic dialectics.

Category theory is a very general way of expressing all sorts of things but tends to be used for modelling various weird and wonderful forms of logic. It's quite different from any mathematics you would have seen.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

In each insula information becomes feelings. Self-awareness emerges, Dr. Craig said. Other animals have basic emotions, but the consensus is that most lack self-awareness and complex emotions because they lack brain structures like the VMpo and have insulae that are much less complex.

Humanity? Maybe It's in the Wiring

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Humanity? Maybe It's in the Wiring

That's from 2003, so needs a fair bit of updating. Since then, spindle cells have been found in whales, dolphins, elephants and raccoons. wiki link (it's wiki, but it's well-referenced - New Scientist reported the finding of spindle cells in whales in 2006).

Interesting as an example of convergent evolution - the same good trick arising independently several times.

tbh that article is a very good example of someone starting with the conclusion they wish to demonstrate and using that conclusion as part of their argument in a wholly unjustified manner. It's just a bit of bad journalism, really, but it's a common attitude, and has been displayed in this thread:

Neuroscientists have given up looking for the seat of the soul, but they are still seeking what may be special about human brains, what it is that provides the basis for a level of self-awareness and complex emotions unlike those of other animals.

It is taken as self-evident that humans have 'a level of self-awareness and complex emotions unlike those of other animals'. Um, no, you need to demonstrate that, and it comes as no surprise whatever to me that these cells were subsequently found in cetaceans and elephants. The author needs to revisit her assumptions, because they led her into error in this article, and will do again if she doesn't change them.

 

[mojo pixy]

they are still seeking what may be special about human brains

Still looking for the right pretext to behave like assholes to every other species on the planet. I don't know, maybe if we spent as much time learning to communicate with other lifeforms as we do admiring our fucking selves, this planet would be a safer and cleaner place.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The other unjustified assumption is that, if you find some mechanism for cleverness in humans, and don't find that same mechanism in another animal's brain, you can assume that the other animal does not have the particular ability that mechanism facilitates. Not so long ago, birds were all assumed to be thick due to this kind of reasoning. There is more than one way to arrange a clever brain.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Back in 2003, the thing stressed was number of spindle cells - humans clearly winning against all other animals known to have them. Now, it's been found that some cetaceans have a concentration that is three times greater than humans (and given that many whales have bigger brains than humans, the absolute count will be more than three times as many). Strangely, the conclusion is not now being reached that cetaceans must be cleverer than humans.

Find the measure by which humans win, and that's the measure to use!

 

[mojo pixy]

Find the measure by which humans win, and that's the measure to use!

Exactly so. Also, invent gods whose existence you retro-fit onto your own, to make you even more special.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Exactly so. Also, invent gods whose existence you retro-fit onto your own, to make you even more special.

Strikes me that this kind of thing - the search for the seat human specialness through science - is a secular replacement for such a sentiment. Without the god in whose image we are made, some new basis is needed to show how special we are.

Also, to bring this back to my original criticism of Jones's talk, it's another illustration of how this is not all about primates and apes. We're the cleverest apes, sure thing. But that's not the end of the discussion - there's a big world of non-simian intelligence out there. The article of 2003 makes the same mistake Jones makes - comparing humans to our closest relatives, and acting as if that's all you need to do to prove human specialness.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds

It's arguable that theories such as these tend to put parameters on human specialness - to the extent that we believe our specialness is revealed, at least in part, via our capacity for logical reasoning.