It’s obvious to me the evolution/natural selection makes total sense. The only thing I was having trouble understanding is why animals other then primates have not gained cognitive reasoning?
My Anthropology teacher told me, it’s simply because we were exposed to a wider variety of environments. That makes total sense, but haven’t other animals done this? It’s a good explanation that it’s because we were exposed to more environments, but why haven’t other animals done this?
I don’t see primates trying to figure this one out. Monkeys can count bananas but do you think monkeys believe in evolution? 
Huh? We are primates. I think I missed your point.
[I’ve split this topic - new thread for discussing whether evolution is an objective truth or just a belief is [url=http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=146546]here[/url].]
I think perhaps one of the reasons evolution of intelligence is so rare (it may have happened before but an extinction level event could have wiped it out) is that it require quite a lot of pre-requisites, large brain, lots of blood being wasted on said brain, large social groups, particular environment, etc. You’ve got to be a fairly dominant animal for that to happen I imagine, so it’s probably only predators that could. And there’s not that many of them and they have quite a slow evolutionary turnover compared to other species, so in evolution terms ntelligence probably takes a bloody long time.
I’ve also read that intelligence seems to stem from an ability to watch another and then copy them, of which there’s only one species of monkey that’s capable of doing that in the entire animal kingdom. Perhaps it’s just that intelligence needs quite a few different factors to already be in place before it becomes an evolutionary advantage.
I do like the idea that a variety of environments gave us intelligence, intelligence arising out of the need to be adaptable, but I’m not sure that it’s necessarily true. There are animals that migrate all over the world, coming across wildly different environments, but they haven’t developed intelligence!
Who says other animals can’t reason? Have you ever hunted grizzly bear? I have…let me tell you, if you aren’t careful, they hunt you. They stay downwind, under cover. They try to flank you. They go one way, then circle back the other way. They are smart.
As smart as us? Of course not, we define intelligence according to a human paradigm; IE we measure intelligence by our own standard of ‘humaness’
We define what is intelligent according to the things humans do well and excell at; using tools, verbal comunication, abstract thought, etc, and we seem to measure up to our own standard. (some of us anyway)
No animal can be ‘more human’ than human, so of course we see ourselves as the top of the scale, but it is a scale.
Gorrillas doing sign language. Seeing ee dogs navigating traffic. Reward/punishment based rat mazes used in labs also demonstrate limited cognitive and reasoning abbility in rats.
All predators need to develop at least basic reasoning to be able to stalk prey. Anyone own a cat? You could say the ‘cat stalk’ is a reaction and theres no thought involved, but thats bull because they have to make corrections for their environment as they go…they think.
I dpn’t see ‘prey’ animals ever developing intelligence as they dont really need it. ‘eat’ and ‘run’ is all a herbivore needs. Stalk is where reason comes in.
So in a way, carnivores originated reason. Take that vegans.
Dr.Satanical, it’s already been proven that we originated as scavengers, and not hunters. Sorry to burst your bubble.
Animals can reason, sure, but it’s based on instinct. What I’m wondering is why other animals haven’t developed conciousness of their concsiousness.
Proven?
Proven by whom?
I call bullshit.
Anyway, one spiecies had to arive at what we define as’conciousness’ first, and regardless of which speicies that was they would probably wonder why they were the only one.
Hello.
I think our inteligants arises from the fact that we can bend any enviroment around us. we don’t have to wait for natural slection to kick in, we just pave over what we can’t live in. we build walls to divert water and wind. We farm land. We rase cattle. Why we are the only spieses of intelangence, that the standards of this intelangence we made up? We, through natural slection, drove out any other compition. about 3 million years back neanderthals(sp?) completly disappered from the face of the earth. We still are looking for why they became extint, my thorey is that the lost the battle of natural slection with our ansestors.
*Natural slection is not the same as evolution.
And dolphins are still wondering how a smart looking species like humans can’t learn a higher level language.
I bet they’re really wondering why we are ashamed to rub each other’s genitalia, especially since its so fun!
Btw, its not been proven that intelligence has any long term benefit yet. I mean, aside from obvious mutually assured destruction, there seems to be a lot of things we simply cant defend ourselves against but a more ‘primitive’ species probably could do.
EG: our piss poor immune system means we can no longer drink most natural water and we are pretty vulnerable to disease.
If there was a planetary catastrophe, then only some of us will be able to dig for cover and even fewer of us would be able to sustain ourselves. We can barely climb trees even.
I think I missed that part. I meen the shame.
Otherwise: Hadn’t seen a natural born spacetraveler yet.
If there is a pupose to human by life, it would be to spread life in the universe. THAT IS OUR DESTINY!
Our intelligence as you are defining it, is a result of language. The ability to communicate. Its the main prerequisite. Although language almost certainly predated “the great leap forward”, it was most likely an advance in language( a more precise use of language, a ability to communicate about something that wasn’t present) that facilitated this.
So yeah language is the kicker, and other animals simply haven’t devolped language… why haven’t other animals devoloped this? their foxP2 gene doesn’t code for as many amino acids, is an answer from the perspective of genes. Why doesn’t their Foxp2 gene code for as many amino acids… I dunno… we hit the lottery, and it was a fluke mutation in Foxp2 in our species??
It was a hot summer day.
In the zoo, near the cage of gorilla the gapers gathered.
They laughed and threw bits of fruits and bread into the cage.
And gorilla was twirling round in the narrow cage, not finding enough room for itself.
Our eyes met and I saw agonizing pain in the eyes of gorilla.
Its eyes were human ones.
I gazed at it in astonishment.
Then I transferred my glance on the people.
They laughed and their eyes were brutal, soulless.
Silently I observed this picture.
Ones, having learned to walk on two feet and speak using human voice,
preserved the ferocious hatred.
The others, in the skin of an animal, already possess the human origin.
Links of one chain, of one evolutional civilization.
socratus.com
One could say the same about the whole theory of natural selection, and thereby relativise it in the same way. If one so desired.
Just a note, please feel free to ignore this or not bother to respond…