Philosophical Question - Amiguing

[commodorejohn]

There's a lot of nice documentaries about it that you could watch like I did.  Or I am sure that there are lots of articles or books written about it.

If you've watched them, you could just tell me the answer and save me the time...

I am also certain that dolphins, porpoises, killer whales can converse in both abstract and concrete concepts based upon watching their behavior.

I am also certain that lots of animals can think in abstract concepts but they lack the ability to communicate very well so most of their thoughts are trapped inside their brain.

I'm curious as to how you're so certain about this. Certainly you can conjecture about the possibility, and I can't say with any degree of certainty that you're wrong, but I'd like to hear your reasons.

Many animals can look at a problem and decide what tool they need and then they can go make that tool or find the tool and bring it to the problem and solve the problem with the tool.   Thus proving that humans are not the only "intelligent" species.

Humans are not the only species that communicates with sound waves.
Humans are not the only species that uses tools.
Humans are not the only species that farms.
Humans are not the only species that engages in organized warfare.
Humans are not the only species that can navigate from point A to point B using measurements of distance and angles of travel.
Humans are not the only species with Emotions.

I'm not disputing that. However, all of those are very concrete concepts, and not evidence of abstract thought.

The main thing that gives humans their advantages is their hands.  If Dolphins had hands then they would rule the world.

The thing is that you don't need hands and you don't need to accomplish world domination to demonstrate a human level of intelligence. Human amputees can do that. Do dolphins demonstrate abstract thought?

We also have an interesting mutation in our voicebox that gives us superior communication skills than any of the other animals with hands.  Our hands give us superior writing skills too, which helps us to pass knowledge from one point to another which allows a civilization to develop.

So you're claiming that certain animals can converse in abstract concepts, yet their communications are too limited to allow them to demonstrate human levels of intelligence? And you don't need writing to pass on a culture; civilization predates the invention of writing by at least 2,000 years, and various pre-literate civilizations have survived pretty much to the present day, or at least to within the last couple centuries. If dolphins were really that advanced, why could they not have developed a civilization using oral tradition? Humans can.

[commodorejohn]

The chimp experiment (which I've heard before, though like you I don't know exactly how true it is) would only prove that they have the capacity to impart learned behavior to each other - which I don't think anybody was disputing. Plenty of critters can do that.

As for toolmaking...as you say, it depends on where you draw the line, but to my way of thinking that's still a practical, concrete notion. It certainly is impressive that the crow can recognize something's potential as a tool, but I don't think it proves anything about whether they are capable of considering more abstract issues. "Can I use this to get food?" is a lot more of a concrete question than "is what I'm doing right?" or "where do we go when we die?" or what-have-you.

[commodorejohn]

There's another reason I remember reading somewhere, that dolphins don't have advanced civilisation: it's impossible to do chemistry underwater.

I'm not asking to be shown dolphin monorails or something, here. There are plenty of ways that human intelligence can demonstrate itself in a visible, external fashion that don't require chemistry, hands, or anything else that dolphins don't have.

[commodorejohn]

But I don't believe that man was placed on earth as our evolution was based on sexual partner selection of other species and god doesn't control what we do.

God creating man does not go inextricably hand-in-hand with God controlling our actions. Just sayin'.

(Unless you're a Calvinist.)

[commodorejohn]

And it's blatantly obvious he's correct.

That's quite an assertion, to be saying that every single religion is not just altogether wrong, but obviously altogether wrong. It's certainly not easy (or probably even possible) to prove them right, so skepticism is understandable, but that's a far cry from any of them being as self-evidently groundless as you're saying...

[commodorejohn]

Most religions (if not all) say that. They are right, and everyone else is wrong.

The fact that they can't all be right on account of mutual exclusiveness doesn't at all mean that each one cannot be right...

You are now closer to what I feel.
Humans are chronic screw-ups.
So how could we divine to nature of the universe within our limitations?

This is a pretty good point - but not really applicable to the religions that claim direct divine revelation.

Though sometimes I feel a little sorry for the  old Saxon/Nordic/Greek/Roman/etc deities that almost no one believes in  them any more! :-(

Oh, I guarantee you there's revivalist movements out there.

[commodorejohn]

I don't believe I'll get to heaven or hell one way or the other, but the Bible's life-rules make pretty good sense to me.  

So that was my resolution of my "conflict". I still regard myself as a "small c" Christian.

Right on, Jesus was totally the Tony Robbins of the first century :/ Just a shame he had to go to all that bother with the whole "substitutionary atonement" thing - if only he'd thought to become a self-help guru!

But what does trouble me is the idea of a soul  or thy humans are in some way special... I feel that puts other  organisms in a very unfair position. But worse, much worse than that, it  implies that a machine could never be "intelligent" or "creative" or  even be considered as sentient. This to me seems absurd, I think it's  perfectly reasonable to have sentient machines and for that I will argue  

Well, just for kicks, let's take the position that humans have souls and that's what makes us more than simply complex animals. Even if that's true, the human body is still just a very complex biological machine - so who's to say that a non-biological machine couldn't possess one?

I certainly wouldn't take the position that God : humans :: humans : robots, though - I don't know a single human being who isn't wildly unqualified for godhood.

[commodorejohn]

Oh, don't get me started on transhumanism/Singularitarians; we'll be here all week.

[commodorejohn]

I would suggest looking at what happens when the body, or more specifically the information stored in the brain is damaged... If the person is more than just the information stored in the brain, the I would suggest that the damage or loss of information would have no effect upon the person.

I know from experience that if there is degradation in the information stored in the brain, then we have a stark and often upsetting change in the "person" I once knew. This has a profound effect upon how I view what makes a person, a person!

That doesn't follow. Damage to the brain would only have no effect on personality if the brain played absolutely no part in things beyond mechanical coordination, which I don't think most people who believe in a soul are claiming.

Science isn't as bold as religion in an answer to that question. A  scientific answer would be, does there need to be anything more for the  system to work? Is what we consider a soul just the configuration of  neurons in the brain?

Again, though, the problem with that idea is that a "soul" that exists within a biologically-deterministic flesh-and-blood creature doesn't fit the general definition of a soul at all, because it's still (theoretically) bound by biochemical determinism.

[commodorejohn]

The downside is that we may end up not full appreciating *this* existence, the here and now, in the belief that there is an afterlife...which might not be there.

Not that there aren't people who do this, but they don't go hand-in-hand.

(And it's bad theology in a number of different religions, anyway, since what you do in this life usually counts big-time even if the end of this life isn't the end of you.)