We’ve been discussing souls and such as if humans are exceptional — not part of a continuum.
11 thoughts on “Invention”
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The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Were Plantinga twelve, trying out new words like “modal” on the playground, his claims would just be dismissed as childish nonsense. That one can get a Ph.D, have a position at Notre Dame, and get away with such rubbish hardly speaks well of academia.
I can imagine one of my kidneys being transplanted into another person, even having a short independent existence, hence it isn’t merely a material part of my body. It could travel around the world without me, so that’s a terrific argument for my kidney being a separate self.
Glen Davidson
Another thing that strikes me–Plantinga says that beetles have eight legs or whatever. Trivia? In a way, only the point is that the most trivial facts of nature, such as that insects have six legs, apparently are unknown to him.
He’s a scholastic, not knowing what causes what, but talking about things that belong to the antiquities, to a time when, through no (or at least not much) fault of their own, people didn’t know much about science and its results. Of course a lot of philosophers are basically scholastics, such as Heidegger and Derrida, even though others have learned about the real world.
Sure, if you don’t know the first thing about the brain, well, imagine your mind dancing on the head of a pin with (how many?) angels, and it could happen. If you know biology and neuroscience, not so much.
Glen Davidson
The leafcutter ant video was fascinating. This paper talks about the advantages of having an “external gut”.
Since I first encountered the concept of intelligent design I have wondered why ID advocates never talk about the process of inventing.
What does it take to invent?
Does it take a mind, and if so, do any other species have minds?
I have seen or heard about animals using sticks as tools, but the honey badger video shows something I have never seen before. It shows a non-human inventing something completely original.Not just using a found object as a tool, but manufacturing a series of objects to solve a problem.
These were wonderful videos. i loved the badger one. its the best ever for animals. On nova they talked recently about smart animals but surely missed this one.
the ant thing is good too. However remember the ants have no idea why their antibiotics work anymore why a dog knows that eating meat keeps it alive.
These creatures are just using memory function. The badger doesn’t figure anything out but simply reuses memorized data already memorized.
All it does is move something to get ahead. lock or stones or wood .
nothing more then like a bird making a nest.
People do not have such things memorized and so they must think it out.
The animals are not inventing anything. They are too dumb.
Thats why they do what they always did and they don’t talk using computers.
Well, exactly. From an evolutionary point of view, all these processes are passive. Species stumble across new niches. The fungus, it’s “predator” mould and the preventative bacterium have all stumbled into these niches that, through millions of years of being selected for, they, like the ants, are no longer capable of escaping from back to independent existence.
ETA Wheat!
Maybe they could get some instruction from a honey badger!
It’s not much different for this honey badger. Brilliant opportunist that he is, it’s still opportunism.
In case any of you haven’t been keeping up with your Internet memes, here is Randall’s famous honey badger video.
ETA: 67 million views!
It was about intelligence. I’m saying humans are exceptional and the animals are dumb as ants. its all just memorized things not different then them knowing how to move their legs.
Millions of years would not save any fungis threatened colony that week.
Its has to be quick to save the home.
Its impossible millions of years would affect anything. All that time up and down would change so much as to make everything strange.
in fact its all very logical from basic structures of biology and memory.
Selection only works with mutations. Otherwise its working with very little.
It never happened. Its just a line of reasoning without evidence.
How do you beat a line of reasoning? Well in these cases just stress it ain’t science. Just guessing.
Thats terrible and scary. I don’t mean just the person talking.
nothing like the smart badger video.
nOt actually smart but using simple memory concepts of push and pull to proceed.