Why can’t we make apes behave like people?

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 17, 2019

Animal minds, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, language, Mind}

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Pan troglodytes & Pan paniscus.jpg — common chimpanzee and bonobo/Chandres William H. Calvin, CC

If we are 99% chimpanzee, as claimed? Many researchers think that apes are just like us and that
we’re not doing the right things to make them start behaving that way…

According to comparative developmental psychologist Kim Bard, “Environment, not evolution, might underlie some human-ape differences,” charging that “underlying bias and poor experimental designs” account for the poor intellectual showing of apes as opposed to humans:
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“These studies suffer from the same type of prejudice that once existed in studies of human intelligence, which started from a biased position of assuming northern Europeans were innately more intelligent than southern Europeans. We argue the same type of bias is apparent in cross-species studies.”
Professor Bard said: “Historically, many researchers have claimed humans are superior to apes in social intelligence, but the research is based on studies of captive adult apes isolated from European-style social interaction and human (usually children) from rich western cities. These experiment designs are simply not valid for the comparative study of species differences.
University of Portsmouth, “Environment, Not Evolution, Might Underlie Some Human-ape Differences” At Sciencedaily, 15 July 2019″
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Apes are just like us but for some reason, they do not behave that way?
Actually, we have been here before and will doubtless be here again. In 2011, Erin Wayman told us at Smithsonian Magazine, “‘Talking’ apes are not just the stuff of science fiction; scientists have taught many apes to use some semblance of language.”
Have they? If so, why has it all subsided? What happened?
Denyse O’Leary, “Researchers: Apes are just like us!” at Mind Matters News

Further reading: Apes can be generous Are they just like humans then? (Michael Egnor)

Can animals reason? My challenge to Jeffrey Shallit (Michael Egnor)

Does social ability distinguish human intelligence from that of apes? Not altogether, of course, but it plays a bigger role than we sometimes assume. (Denyse O’Leary)

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Comments

Aren't there cases of people trying to raise young chimps as if they were children? For example: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/guy-simultaneously-raised-chimp-and-baby-exactly-same-way-see-what-would-happen-180952171/ And there are studies of feral (wild) children found in remote forests who were then partly civilized, although they had problems learning how to talk. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=rpbk9lo5_cY Surely such studies and histories are key items in the subject matter of this article! Does the author not look at those cases? On a related note, for an analogy that explains why humans and chimps are so different despite having 99% (or is it 98, or 96%?) the same DNA, see: https://thopid.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-junk-dna-functionality-analogy.htmlFasteddious_{July 18, 2019
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Thanks for conceding ‘universals’ to me.
You have issues.
Moreover I, via Egnor, never claimed that animals could not reason about particulars. In fact, in my first post I made it clear that animals can be very clever about particulars. I, via Egnor, only claimed that animals could not reason about universals.
Planning takes care of that.
A definition of reason that dominated western culture for two millennia until the rise of Cartesian and Hobbesian mechanical philosophy and materialism in the 16th and 17th centuries:
I rest my case. Thank you. I would LOVE to see that definition you two are using...ET_{July 18, 2019
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BA77: Self reflection is NOT thinking about universals. ET: OK. But that isn’t all that was covered. And your limited definition of “reason” is sheer desperation.
Thanks for conceding 'universals' to me. Moreover I, via Egnor, never claimed that animals could not reason about particulars. In fact, in my first post I made it clear that animals can be very clever about particulars. I, via Egnor, only claimed that animals could not reason about universals. As to your claim that "your limited definition of “reason” is sheer desperation." LOL, well that so called "limited" definition of reason, i.e. universals vs. particulars, is not something that Egnor just pulled out of thin air but is a foundational definition of reason that he acquired via Aristotle and Aquinas. A definition of reason that dominated western culture for two millennia until the rise of Cartesian and Hobbesian mechanical philosophy and materialism in the 16th and 17th centuries:
Aristotle on the Immateriality of Intellect and Will Michael Egnor - January 26, 2015, Excerpt: First, a note on the provenance of the argument. The argument is not mine. It was originally proposed by Aristotle (De Anima, Book III). For two millennia, it was the common wisdom of educated men, and was widely considered decisive. Thomas Aquinas and the scholastic philosophers developed it further (Sententia Libri De Anima). Through Aquinas and Maimonides and Averroes, this argument of the peripatetic pagan became a cornerstone of the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic understanding of the mental powers of the soul..... Aristotle’s argument has never been refuted.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2015/01/aristotle_on_th/
bornagain77_{July 18, 2019
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I never thought that I would ever say this, but I agree with ET. Now I am going to have to bathe in some disinfectants.Brother Brian_{July 18, 2019
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"Planning is the ability to think through future events taking place at a different location. Ten years ago, Mathias Osvath, a cognitive biologist at Lund University in Sweden, designed a series of tests to measure whether other primates were planners. Great apes—like chimpanzees—passed. Monkeys failed. About the same time, researchers noticed that birds known as corvids—which include jays, crows, and ravens—also showed signs of planning. Studies over the last 20 years have revealed that these birds can use tools and deliberately hide their food caches. Many saw close parallels between human, ape, and bird brains." and “It’s the clearest evidence for future planning in a nonhuman animal,” says Nathan J. Emery, a cognitive biologist at the University of London who was not involved with the work.ET_{July 18, 2019
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Self reflection is NOT thinking about universals.
OK. But that isn't all that was covered. And your limited definition of "reason" is sheer desperation.ET_{July 18, 2019
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AaronS1978:
ET is not attacking human Exceptionalism, he simply stating that animals aren’t stupid.
That anyone would even think that I was attacking human exceptionalism speaks volumes about their biases. I never said, implied nor thought that other animals were on the same level as we are. Some may have better physical skills but we have the ability to artificially mimic them all- or at least most of them. We have the math. We have the technology. And WE were given dominion over the others. None of that is affected by other animals having the ability to reason. They have to survive. And reasoning, even limited, helps them do so.ET_{July 18, 2019
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Self reflection is NOT thinking about universals.bornagain77_{July 18, 2019
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"According to one of the leading scholars in the field, there is an emerging consensus among scientists that animals share functional parallels with humans’ conscious metacognition — that is, our ability to reflect on our own mental processes and guide and optimize them."ET_{July 18, 2019
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Wow. Just wow.
Again, you have no scientific evidence for your claim that we are basically no different than monkeys.
That is because I never made that claim. Clearly you have some problem reading what I post. Everyone can see that I have made my case and you have ignored it. And now this strawman exposes your agenda. Nice own goal...ET_{July 18, 2019
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Whatever. I have patiently, via Egnor, laid out the difference about "universals and particulars". You have not even begun to put any evidence forth that would challenge 'universals' as being unique to humans. Again, you have no scientific evidence for your claim that we are basically no different than monkeys in our ability to think abstractly about universals, i.e. mathematics, justice, grammar..bornagain77_{July 18, 2019
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Ravens—like humans and apes—can plan for the future And also: Do animals have reflective minds able to self-regulate perception, reasoning, memory?
According to one of the leading scholars in the field, there is an emerging consensus among scientists that animals share functional parallels with humans' conscious metacognition -- that is, our ability to reflect on our own mental processes and guide and optimize them.
and Can animals recall the past and plan for the future?ET_{July 18, 2019
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I am honestly going to defend ET on this one. ET is not attacking human Exceptionalism, he simply stating that animals aren’t stupid. Human reasoning isn’t the same as animal reasoning and we did have this discussion when the op about the brilliant wasp was posted If I recall correctly one was arguing about the definition of what reasoning was And that is important But animals have their version of reasoning and they do think there’s no questioning that There is a tremendous difference between humans and animals yes that does exist What animals are not stupid they do you think they can plan they have a lot of different facilities to feel and they also can be squeezed and beaten with love Sorry that last part was me gushing about my animals I have a lot of pets and get stupid around them I’m actually really shocked to see ba 77 and ET arguing It feels like there’s like a disturbance in the force nowAaronS1978_{July 18, 2019
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Oh my. That you have avoided my questions, examples and reality, says it all. So only people who can contemplate mathematics are human? Babies who cannot grasp mathematics nor language are not human? They are just animals until the time when they can contemplate math and understand language? Really? The scientific evidence says that animals plan. And planning requires reasoning. The imagined escape routes is an immaterial concept. The communication required to pull off the plan is akin to human language. Ignoring the facts will not make them go away. And trying to define "reason" as that which only humans can do just exposes your and Egnor's desperationET_{July 18, 2019
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Well actually, again, you are making claims for which you have, via the absence of anything resembling language in animals, and indeed, via the hard problem of consciousness, for which can have no scientific evidence. As far as actual scientific evidence itself is concerned, the claim for 'human exceptionalism', such as abstract reasoning about immaterial concepts such as mathematics, stands unrefuted. The denial is yours alone.
"Nothing in evolution can account for the soul of man. The difference between man and the other animals is unbridgeable. Mathematics is alone sufficient to prove in man the possession of a faculty unexistent in other creatures. Then you have music and the artistic faculty. No, the soul was a separate creation." - Alfred Wallace https://evolutionnews.org/2010/08/alfred_russel_wallace_co-disco/
bornagain77_{July 18, 2019
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Unbelievable. Just because human language is all about thinking abstractly that does NOT mean it is the ONLY way to do so. The scientific evidence says that animals plan. And planning requires reasoning. The imagined escape routes is an immaterial concept. The communication required to pull off the plan is akin to human language. Even the crow and the simple tool required reasoning. It had to imagine how it could get at the food and then carry it out. I have the science. You have denial. And it is very telling that you have avoided my questions and example.ET_{July 18, 2019
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You claim that "Animals don’t have to use human language in order to reason and think in abstract terms." And yet language, in its basic essence, is all about thinking 'abstractly' about physical objects and also about immaterial concepts. Specifically in the construction of language, abstract symbols are devised to represent not only physical objects but also represent immaterial concepts, such as mathematics. Without evidence for such abstract symbolic representation from animals, you simply have no scientific evidence that they are in fact reasoning abstractly. You adamantly claim that animals can think in 'abstract terms'. But without any actual concrete scientific evidence that they are in fact reasoning abstractly about immaterial concepts, (i.e. thinking about universals compared to thinking about particulars to use Dr. Egnor's terms), you are reduced to basically claiming that you have inside knowledge of the animals inner state of mind, i.e. its 'qualia'. Yet, qualia, i.e. the 'hard problem of consciousness', as you well know, is forever beyond scientific investigation. The scientific evidence, regardless of any biases that we may have beforehand, is what it is. You simply cannot prove your claim with scientific evidence.bornagain77_{July 18, 2019
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Again with the human language schtick. And it is very telling that you have avoided my questions and example. Animals don’t have to use human language in order to reason and think in abstract terms.ET_{July 18, 2019
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Well actually, it was leading Darwinists themselves, who certainly cannot be accused of having a bias towards God, who have come to the conclusion that monkeys have no capacity to reason about immaterial information. They spent over 4 decades looking for scientific evidence. Wanted desperately for the scientific evidence to be there. But were honest enough to admit that there is no scientific evidence:
Leading Evolutionary Scientists Admit We Have No Evolutionary Explanation of Human Language – December 19, 2014 Excerpt: Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,, (Marc Hauser, Charles Yang, Robert Berwick, Ian Tattersall, Michael J. Ryan, Jeffrey Watumull, Noam Chomsky and Richard C. Lewontin, “The mystery of language evolution,” Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 5:401 (May 7, 2014).) Casey Luskin added: “It’s difficult to imagine much stronger words from a more prestigious collection of experts.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/12/leading_evoluti092141.html
bornagain77_{July 18, 2019
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How do chimps plan their attacks if they cannot reason and possess abstract thoughts? Why do religious people think that God is incapable of Creating other animals that can reason?ET_{July 18, 2019
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bornagain77:
Much like Darwinists, you adamantly claim that chimps reason abstractly,, but alas, as has been pointed out already in this thread, you simply have no real scientific evidence to support your claim.
Nonsense. No one has pointed out anything beyond their personal incredulity. Good luck explaining that to God. My claim has nothing to do with Darwin and everything to do with a good Intelligent Design. Animals don't have to use human language in order to reason and think in abstract terms. And it is very telling that you ignore what chimps do. Then there are dolphins and other cetaceans who clearly think and reason.ET_{July 18, 2019
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Much like Darwinists, you adamantly claim that chimps reason abstractly,, but alas, as has been pointed out already in this thread, you simply have no real scientific evidence to support your claim.
The Galilean Challenge – Noam Chomsky – April 2017 Excerpt: The capacity for language is species specific, something shared by humans and unique to them. It is the most striking feature of this curious organism, and a foundation for its remarkable achievement,,, There is little evidence of anything like human language, or symbolic behavior altogether, before the emergence of modern humans.,,, Our intricate knowledge of what even the simplest words mean is acquired virtually without experience. At peak periods of language acquisition, children acquire about a word an hour, often on one presentation.26 The rich meaning of even the most elementary words must be substantially innate. The evolutionary origin of such concepts is a complete mystery.,,, — Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at MIT. http://inference-review.com/article/the-galilean-challenge
ET, given your long, admirable, history on UD of exposing the claims of Darwinists as having no real scientific evidence behind them, I would think that you would be much more careful to pay attention to what the scientific evidence itself actually says.bornagain77_{July 18, 2019
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Again- chimps plan to hunt monkeys. When they do so they are reasoning and thinking abstract thoughts. They block imagined escape routes before beginning the attack. It is beyond surprising that openly religious people think that God is incapable of Creating animals that can reason.ET_{July 18, 2019
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"We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses." - Michael Egnor
The Fundamental Difference Between Humans and Nonhuman Animals - Michael Egnor - November 5, 2015 Excerpt: It is important to understand the fundamental difference between humans and nonhuman animals. Nonhuman animals such as apes have material mental powers. By material I mean powers that are instantiated in the brain and wholly depend upon matter for their operation. These powers include sensation, perception, imagination (the ability to form mental images), memory (of perceptions and images), and appetite. Nonhuman animals have a mental capacity to perceive and respond to particulars, which are specific material objects such as other animals, food, obstacles, and predators. Human beings have mental powers that include the material mental powers of animals but in addition entail a profoundly different kind of thinking. Human beings think abstractly, and nonhuman animals do not. Human beings have the power to contemplate universals, which are concepts that have no material instantiation. Human beings think about mathematics, literature, art, language, justice, mercy, and an endless library of abstract concepts. Human beings are rational animals. Human rationality is not merely a highly evolved kind of animal perception. Human rationality is qualitatively different — ontologically different — from animal perception. Human rationality is different because it is immaterial. Contemplation of universals cannot have material instantiation, because universals themselves are not material and cannot be instantiated in matter. I stress here the difference between representation and instantiation. Representation is the map of a thing. Instantiation is the thing itself. Universals can be represented in matter — the words I am writing in this post are representations of concepts — but universals cannot be instantiated in matter. I cannot put the concepts themselves on a computer screen or on a piece of paper, nor can the concepts exist physically in my brain. Concepts, which are universals, are immaterial. Nonhuman animals are purely material beings. They have no concepts. They experience hunger and pain. They don’t contemplate the injustice of suffering. A human being is material and immaterial — a composite being. We have material bodies, and our perceptions and imaginations and appetites are material powers, instantiated in our brains. But our intellect — our ability to think abstractly — is a wholly immaterial power, and our will that acts in accordance with our intellect is an immaterial power. Our intellect and our will depend on matter for their ordinary function, in the sense that they depend upon perception and imagination and memory, but they are not themselves made of matter. It is in our ability to think abstractly that we differ from apes. It is a radical difference — an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference. We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses. Our difference is a metaphysical chasm. It is obvious and manifest in our biological nature. We are rational animals, and our rationality is all the difference. Systems of taxonomy that emphasize physical and genetic similarities and ignore the fact that human beings are partly immaterial beings who are capable of abstract thought and contemplation of moral law and eternity are pitifully inadequate to describe man. The assertion that man is an ape is self-refuting. We could not express such a concept, misguided as it is, if we were apes and not men. https://evolutionnews.org/2015/11/the_fundamental_2/
Dr. Egnor does not claim that animals can not be very clever about physical things… Egnor’s claim is that “Only man thinks abstractly”.
CAN ANIMALS “REASON”? MY CHALLENGE TO JEFFREY SHALLIT He believes that animals can engage in abstract thinking. What abstractions do they reason about? MICHAEL EGNOR MAY 30, 2019 Excerpt: "Only man thinks abstractly; that is the ability to reason. No animal, no matter how clever, can think abstractly or reason. Animals can be very clever but their cleverness is always about concrete things—about the bone they are playing with, or about the stranger they are barking at. They don’t think about “play” or “threat” as abstract concepts.,,, So I have a challenge for Dr. Shallit, who claims that animals have the ability to reason and to think abstractly, without thinking about particular things. When an animal is “reasoning” about an abstract concept—number theory say, or financial markets—just what is in the animal’s mind, if not a thought of a physical object or a word? What do these animals who can “reason” reason about?" – Michael Egnor https://mindmatters.ai/2019/05/an-atheist-argues-against-reason/ The Representation Problem and the Immateriality of the Mind - Michael Egnor - February 5, 2018 Excerpt: Thoughts may be divided into thoughts about particulars and thoughts about universals. Thoughts about particulars are thoughts, including perceptions, imagination, memory, etc., about particular objects in our environments. Thoughts about my coffee, or my car, or my family would be thoughts about particulars. Thoughts about universals are abstract thoughts, and are thoughts about concepts. Justice, mercy, logic, mathematics, etc., are abstract thoughts. For a materialist, all thoughts are generated by the brain. All that exists is matter, as understood by physics and chemistry. Thus, all thoughts, for the materialist, are generated purely physically, by neurons, neurotransmitters, action potentials, etc. So when we think about a particular object, that thought must somehow actually be a physical thing — a molecule or a relationship between molecules, etc. But of course, if I think about a particular thing — my cat Tabby, for example — my actual cat Tabby isn’t in my brain, so the materialist would say that my cat Tabby is somehow “represented” in my brain, and that representation constitutes the thought, without (immaterial) remainder. In the materialist view, all thought is, boiled down, matter of some sort, or is at least wholly represented in matter. For thoughts about particular objects, this materialist scheme is not entirely implausible. For some aspects of visual perception, for example, there is a mapping of the visual field from the retina to the cortex, so that an image (of sorts) is represented in the brain as a field of neurons that are activated in a pattern. One might say that the pattern is the representation of the visual image. This still leaves much to be explained, but at least it is not utterly implausible to say that a thought about a particular thing — for example, a perception of my cat Tabby — is a representation in my brain. We still have no scientific (or metaphysical) explanation as to how this neuronal pattern actually becomes the thought, of course. But mental representation may provide a real level of explanation for thought about particulars. But abstract thought is different. Consider a thought about justice. Justice is a concept, not a particular thing existing in the physical world. The materialist must ask: how can a thought about justice be represented in the brain? It certainly can’t merely be a mapped field in the cortex — justice has no shape or physical pattern, unlike my cat Tabby. A materialist would no doubt say that, like perception of particulars, thought about justice is represented in the cortex. But note carefully what representation means: a representation is a map of a thing. It presumes the existence, in the physical world, of that which it maps. A representation of a city — a map — presumes the city. A representation of my cat presumes my cat. And here’s the problem: a representation of my thought about justice presumes my thought about justice. So representation cannot provide any final explanation for abstract thought, because the representation of an abstract thought, even if it exists, presupposes the abstract thought itself. As an example, let us suppose that a certain pattern of neuronal activation in my cortex were shown to represent my thought about justice. Obviously that pattern is not my thought about justice itself — justice is a concept, not a bunch of neurons. And if that pattern of neuronal activation represented my thought about justice, it must map to my thought of justice, which presupposes my thought about justice and thus cannot explain it. Succinctly, mental representation of abstract thought presupposes abstract thought, and cannot explain it. It is on abstract thought that materialism, as a theory of mind, flounders. Abstract thought, classically understood as intellect and will, are inherently immaterial. Any representation in the brain of abstract thought (while it may exist) necessarily presupposes abstract thought itself, which must, by its nature, be an immaterial power of the mind. The human mind is a composite of material particular thought and immaterial abstract thought. Interestingly, modern neuroscience supports this view. Perception of particulars maps with precision to brain anatomy, but abstract thought is not mapped in the same way. Material powers of the brain are ordinarily necessary for exercise of abstract thought (e.g., you have to be awake to think about justice), but matter is not sufficient for abstract thought. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/02/the-representation-problem-and-the-immateriality-of-the-mind/
The challenge from Dr Egnor to Dr. Shallit is not so easily brushed off by merely pointing to clever crows manipulating ‘tools’ or by pointing to some other ‘clever’ animal behavior. Case in point, as was mentioned in post 7, abstract human language itself is now established to be ‘species specific’ to humans. Here a few more references to further drive this point home.
The Siege of Paris – Robert Berwick & Noam Chomsky – March 2019 Excerpt: Linguists told themselves many stories about the evolution of language, and so did evolutionary biologists; but stories, as Richard Lewontin rightly notes, are not hypotheses, a term that should be “reserved for assertions that can be tested.”4 The human language faculty is a species-specific property, with no known group differences and little variation. There are no significant analogues or homologues to the human language faculty in other species.5,,, How far back does language go? There is no evidence of significant symbolic activity before the appearance of anatomically modern humans 200 thousand years ago (kya).22,,, There is no evidence that great apes, however sophisticated, have any of the crucial distinguishing features of language and ample evidence that they do not.48 Claims made in favor of their semantic powers, we might observe, are wrong. Recent research reveals that the semantic properties of even the simplest words are radically different from anything in animal symbolic systems.49,,, Why only us?,,, We were not, of course, the first to ask them. We echo in modern terms the Cartesian philosophers Antoine Arnauld and Claude Lancelot, seventeenth-century authors of the Port-Royal Grammar, for whom language with its infinite combinatorial capacity wrought from a finite inventory of sounds was uniquely human and the very foundation of thought. It is subtle enough to express all that we can conceive, down to the innermost and “diverse movements of our souls.” https://inference-review.com/article/the-siege-of-paris Robert Berwick is a Professor in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems at MIT. Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at MIT. Kept in Mind – Juan Uriagereka – March 2019 Review of: Language in Our Brain: The Origins of a Uniquely Human Capacity by Angela Friederici Excerpt: Which part of our brain carries information forward in time? No one knows. For that matter, no one knows what a symbol is, or where symbolic interactions take place. The formal structures of linguistics and neurophysiology are disjoint, a point emphasized by Poeppel and David Embick in a widely cited study.2,,, No one has distinguished one thought from another by dissecting brains. Neuroimaging tells us only when some areas of the brain light up selectively. Brain wave frequencies may suggest that different kinds of thinking are occurring, but a suggestion is not an inference—even if there is a connection between certain areas of the brain and seeing, hearing, or processing words. Connections of this sort are not nothing, of course, but neither are they very much.,,, Some considerable distance remains between the observation that the brain is doing something and the claim that it is manipulating various linguistic representations. Friederici notes the lapse. “How information content is encoded and decoded,” she remarks, “in the sending and receiving brain areas is still an open issue—not only with respect to language, but also with respect to the neurophysiology of information processing in general.”5,,, Cognitive scientists cannot say how the mass or energy of the brain is related to the information it carries. Everyone expects that more activity in a given area means more information processing. No one has a clue whether it is more information or more articulated information, or more interconnected information, or whether, for that matter, the increased neuro-connectivity signifies something else entirely.,,, ,,, present-day observational technology does not seem capable of teasing apart these different components of syntax at work,,,, https://inference-review.com/article/kept-in-mind Juan Uriagereka is a linguist at the University of Maryland.
Of course, it is the immaterial nature of information itself that forever stymies any materialistic hope of ever explaining how man ever acquired his unique ability to manipulate, and reason abstractly about, immaterial information. On the other hand, for the Christian Theist, and as was already pointed out in post 8, this line of evidence is very strong evidence that we are indeed made in the image of God. Thus, while there are certainly many examples of animals being very clever with material things, there simply is ZERO evidence that animals are able to think and reason abstractly about immaterial information. Of supplemental note, although atheists often pride themselves on being 'rational', logic and reasoning themselves are based in Theism, not atheistic materialism:
Naturalism and Self-Refutation – Michael Egnor – January 31, 2018 Excerpt: For Clark, thoughts merely appear out of matter, which has no properties, by the laws of physics, for generating thought. For Clark to assert that naturalistic matter as described by physics gives rise to the mind, without immateriality of any sort, is merely to assert magic. Furthermore, the very framework of Clark’s argument — logic — is neither material nor natural. Logic, after all, doesn’t exist “in the space-time continuum” and isn’t described by physics. What is the location of modus ponens? How much does Gödel’s incompleteness theorem weigh? What is the physics of non-contradiction? How many millimeters long is Clark’s argument for naturalism? Ironically the very logic that Clark employs to argue for naturalism is outside of any naturalistic frame. The strength of Clark’s defense of naturalism is that it is an attempt to present naturalism’s tenets clearly and logically. That is its weakness as well, because it exposes naturalism to scrutiny, and naturalism cannot withstand even minimal scrutiny. Even to define naturalism is to refute it. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/01/naturalism-and-self-refutation/ "Think of the irony: a professor of philosophy, who is paid only to reason, uses reason to argue against reason. Welcome to the bowels of atheist metaphysics. It would be funny if it were not so dangerous to our culture and to our souls" - AN ATHEIST ARGUES AGAINST REASON And thinks it is the reasonable thing to do MICHAEL EGNOR MAY 24, 2019 https://mindmatters.ai/2019/05/an-atheist-argues-against-reason/ “One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the popular scientific philosophy]. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears… unless Reason is an absolute, all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.” —C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry (aka the Argument from Reason) “Atheists can give no reason why they should value reason, and Christians can show how anyone who believes in reason must also believe in God.” Cogito; Ergo Deus Est by Charles Edward White Philosophy Still Lives Because God Isn't Dead Sam Harris’s Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It – Martin Cothran – November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html (1) rationality implies a thinker in control of thoughts. (2) under materialism a thinker is an effect caused by processes in the brain (determinism). (3) in order for materialism to ground rationality a thinker (an effect) must control processes in the brain (a cause). (1)&(2) (4) no effect can control its cause. Therefore materialism cannot ground rationality. per Box UD
Verse and quote:
John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” What is the Logos? Logos is a Greek word literally translated as “word, speech, or utterance.” However, in Greek philosophy, Logos refers to divine reason or the power that puts sense into the world making order instead of chaos.,,, In the Gospel of John, John writes “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). John appealed to his readers by saying in essence, “You’ve been thinking, talking, and writing about the Word (divine reason) for centuries and now I will tell you who He is.” https://www.compellingtruth.org/what-is-the-Logos.html
bornagain77_{July 18, 2019
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Can animals reason?
The evidence says that they can and do reason.ET_{July 18, 2019
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Brother Brian:
It is this bias that leads us to believe that ET is more intelligent that Tarzan’s Cheetah, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
All the evidence says that I am smarter than you will ever be. And that same evidence says that all primates are smarter than Brother Brian is.ET_{July 18, 2019
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Perhaps BB, and atheistic academics in general who teach at American universities, may claim that this 'species specific' capacity for language does not really make humans all that exceptional. On that point I would have to wholeheartedly disagree with them. Best Selling author Tom Wolfe was so taken aback by the honest confession by leading Darwinists that language is 'species specific' to humans that he wrote a book on the subject.,,,
“Speech is 95 percent plus of what lifts man above animal! Physically, man is a sad case. His teeth, including his incisors, which he calls eyeteeth, are baby-size and can barely penetrate the skin of a too-green apple. His claws can’t do anything but scratch him where he itches. His stringy-ligament body makes him a weakling compared to all the animals his size. Animals his size? In hand-to-paw, hand-to-claw, or hand-to-incisor combat, any animal his size would have him for lunch. Yet man owns or controls them all, every animal that exists, thanks to his superpower: speech.” —Tom Wolfe, in the introduction to his book, The Kingdom of Speech
In other words, although humans are fairly defenseless creatures in the wild compared to other creatures, such as lions, bears, and sharks, etc.., nonetheless, humans have, completely contrary to Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ thinking, managed to become masters of the planet, not by brute force, but simply by our unique ability to communicate information and, more specifically, infuse information into material substrates in order to create, i.e. intelligently design, objects that are extremely useful for our defense, shelter, in procuring food, furtherance of our knowledge, and also for our pleasure. And although the ‘top-down’ infusion of immaterial information into material substrates, that allowed humans to become ‘masters of the planet’, was rather crude to begin with, (i.e. spears, arrows, and plows etc..), this top down infusion of immaterial information into material substrates has become much more impressive over the last half century or so. Specifically, the ‘top-down’ infusion of mathematical and/or logical information into material substrates lies at the very basis of many, if not all, of man’s most stunning, almost miraculous, technological advances in recent decades. Here are a couple of articles which clearly get this ‘top-down’ infusion of immaterial information point across:
Describing Nature With Math By Peter Tyson – Nov. 2011 Excerpt: Mathematics underlies virtually all of our technology today. James Maxwell’s four equations summarizing electromagnetism led directly to radio and all other forms of telecommunication. E = mc2 led directly to nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The equations of quantum mechanics made possible everything from transistors and semiconductors to electron microscopy and magnetic resonance imaging. Indeed, many of the technologies you and I enjoy every day simply would not work without mathematics. When you do a Google search, you’re relying on 19th-century algebra, on which the search engine’s algorithms are based. When you watch a movie, you may well be seeing mountains and other natural features that, while appearing as real as rock, arise entirely from mathematical models. When you play your iPod, you’re hearing a mathematical recreation of music that is stored digitally; your cell phone does the same in real time. “When you listen to a mobile phone, you’re not actually hearing the voice of the person speaking,” Devlin told me. “You’re hearing a mathematical recreation of that voice. That voice is reduced to mathematics.” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/describing-nature-math.html Recognising Top-Down Causation – George Ellis Excerpt: page 5: A: Causal Efficacy of Non Physical entities: Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored. The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts. Excerpt page 7: The assumption that causation is bottom up only is wrong in biology, in computers, and even in many cases in physics, ,,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Ellis_FQXI_Essay_Ellis_2012.pdf
What is more interesting still about the fact that humans have a unique ability to understand and create information, and have come to dominate the world through the ‘top-down’ infusion of information into material substrates, is the fact that, due to advances in science, both the universe and life itself, are now found to be ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis. In the following video at the 48:24 mark Zeilinger states that “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information” and he goes on to note at the 49:45 mark the Theological significance of “In the Beginning was the Word” John 1:1
48:24 mark: “It is operationally impossible to separate Reality and Information” 49:45 mark: “In the Beginning was the Word” John 1:1 Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ZPWW5NOrw
Vlatko Vedral, who is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and is also a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics, states
"The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena." Vlatko Vedral - Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, and CQT (Centre for Quantum Technologies) at the National University of Singapore, and a Fellow of Wolfson College - a recognized leader in the field of quantum mechanics.
Moreover, "The ‘grammar’ of the human genetic code is more complex than that of even the most intricately constructed spoken languages in the world."
Complex grammar of the genomic language – November 9, 2015 Excerpt: The ‘grammar’ of the human genetic code is more complex than that of even the most intricately constructed spoken languages in the world. The findings explain why the human genome is so difficult to decipher –,,, ,,, in their recent study in Nature, the Taipale team examines the binding preferences of pairs of transcription factors, and systematically maps the compound DNA words they bind to. Their analysis reveals that the grammar of the genetic code is much more complex than that of even the most complex human languages. Instead of simply joining two words together by deleting a space, the individual words that are joined together in compound DNA words are altered, leading to a large number of completely new words. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/11/151109140252.htm
It is hard to imagine a more convincing proof that we are made ‘in the image of God’, than finding that both the universe and life itself are ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information, and have come to ‘master the planet’ precisely because of our ability infuse information into material substrates. I guess a more convincing proof that we are made in the image of God could be if God Himself became a man, defeated death on a cross, and then rose from the dead to prove that He was God. And that is precisely the proof claimed within Christianity.
Turin Shroud Hologram Reveals The Words 'The Lamb' on a Solid Oval Object Under The Beard - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Tmka1l8GAQ Genesis 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and that life was the Light of men.
bornagain77_{July 18, 2019
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BB claims that, "When we study other species from the bias of human exceptionalism, we are bound to arrive at the wrong conclusion." BB is not just some Atheistic crank on UD but BB is actually echoing a mainstream position that is held in academia today:
IN DEFENSE OF HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM by Wesley J. Smith - 7 . 5 . 07 Excerpt: Tearing humans off the pedestal of exceptionalism is all the rage today among academics, philosophers, and other assorted members of the intelligentsia. The war against unique human worth¯of which many remain unaware¯is being mounted on many fronts: • "Personhood Theory" in bioethics claims that granting humans unique moral status based simply on being human is "speciesism," and hence membership in the moral community should be based on being a "person"¯for example, possessing certain cognitive capacities (whether animal, human, space alien, or machine), such as being self-aware over time. • The animal rights/liberation movement also seeks to knock us off the pedestal in the cause of elevating animals to equal moral worth with people. Thus, many liberationists urge that we base a being’s value on "painience," that is, the capacity to experience pain. Since cows feels pain just as humans do, bovines are people too, and hence ranching cattle is as evil as slavery. • Radical environmentalists and deep ecologists claim humans are a vermin species afflicting the living Gaia and that our population should be cut drastically so that earth can return to an Eden-like state. • Meanwhile, the philosophical materialists proclaim that humans are merely so much meat on the hoof and, indeed, that species distinctions are fictional given our many shared genes with animals and all life having evolved out of the same primordial soup. This means, as novelist and journalist John Darnton put it in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2005, "We are all of us, dogs and barnacles, pigeons and crabgrass, the same in the eyes of nature, equally remarkable and equally dispensable." https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2007/07/a-call-to-arms-in-defense-of-h
And although atheists apparently, as the OP, BB, and the above article, made clear, desperately want to claim that humans are not really all that different from apes, and that it is our own bias that gives us the false impression that we are profoundly different from apes, might I suggest that we have good reason to believe we are profoundly different from apes? After all humans have built rockets to send other humans to the moon and back:
"They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun? …" - Wernher von Braun - Was the main scientist responsible for developing the rockets that landed men on the moon 50 years ago this month https://crev.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/VonBraun-final-clean-JBG-web-683x1024.jpg WHY A SCIENTIST BELIEVES IN GOD - 06/16/2019 https://www.wnd.com/2019/06/why-a-scientist-believes-in-god/ ,,, "it was von Braun who, in the morning hours of that fateful 16 July 1969, had to give the final answer to the question: "Are we ready to launch?",,,, A week later, when the astronauts were safely back on Earth, a reporter wanted to know: "Dr. von Braun, what did you think after you had given your final 'yes' a week ago?"--"I quietly said the Lord's prayer," was his answer." - The Religious Affiliation of Rocket Engineer and Inventor - Wernher von Braun http://www.adherents.com/people/pv/Wernher_von_Braun.html So much for the claim from atheists that devout Christians are anti-science.
Whereas monkeys, the last time I checked, are no where close to sending another monkey to the moon, much less appreciating Shakespeare
Give six monkeys a computer, and what do you get? Certainly not the Bard Excerpt: It is a favourite question of pub philosophers everywhere. If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, would they eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare? The answer to this, mathematicians assure us, is yes. But now someone has attempted to put the theory to the test. Admittedly the British academics involved in this unusual project did not have an infinite number of typewriters, nor monkeys, nor time, but they did have six Sulawesi crested macaque monkeys, and one computer, and four weeks for them to get creative. The results of this trial at Paignton zoo in Devon were more Mothercare than Macbeth. The macaques - Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan - produced just five pages of text between them, primarily filled with the letter S. There were greater signs of creativity towards the end, with the letters A, J, L and M making fleeting appearances, but they wrote nothing even close to a word of human language. "It was a hopeless failure in terms of science but that's not really the point," said Geoff Cox ,of Plymouth University's MediaLab, who designed the test. So what were the academics trying to achieve? "It wasn't actually an experiment as such, it was more like a little performance," said Mr Cox. The project - which was paid for with £2,000 of Arts Council money - was intended to emphasise differences between animals and machines, he went on. "The monkeys aren't reducible to a random process. They get bored and they shit on the keyboard rather than type." The computer was protected with a perspex box, with holes for the monkeys to poke fingers through to hit the keys. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/may/09/science.arts "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio - Shakespeare
Perhaps BB will claim that the preceding 'experiment' with monkeys was also biased? Yet more detailed analysis reveals that, "this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture alone can explain,,,"
Darwin's mistake: explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. - 2008 Excerpt: Over the last quarter century, the dominant tendency in comparative cognitive psychology has been to emphasize the similarities between human and nonhuman minds and to downplay the differences as "one of degree and not of kind" (Darwin 1871).,,, To wit, there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and nonhuman animals are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (PSS) (Newell 1980). We show that this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture alone can explain,,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18479531
There is simply no evidence whatsoever that apes have any grasp of the basic rules of grammar:
A scientist looks again at Project Nim - Trying to teach Chimps to talk fails Excerpt: "The language didn't materialize. A human baby starts out mostly imitating, then begins to string words together. Nim didn't learn. His three-sign combinations - such as 'eat me eat' or 'play me Nim' - were redundant. He imitated signs to get rewards. I published the negative results in 1979 in the journal Science, which had a chilling effect on the field." https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-truth-about-%E2%80%9Cchimp-language-capabilities Leading Evolutionary Scientists Admit We Have No Evolutionary Explanation of Human Language - December 19, 2014 Excerpt: Understanding the evolution of language requires evidence regarding origins and processes that led to change. In the last 40 years, there has been an explosion of research on this problem as well as a sense that considerable progress has been made. We argue instead that the richness of ideas is accompanied by a poverty of evidence, with essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,, (Marc Hauser, Charles Yang, Robert Berwick, Ian Tattersall, Michael J. Ryan, Jeffrey Watumull, Noam Chomsky and Richard C. Lewontin, "The mystery of language evolution," Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 5:401 (May 7, 2014).) Casey Luskin added: “It's difficult to imagine much stronger words from a more prestigious collection of experts.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/12/leading_evoluti092141.html The Galilean Challenge - Noam Chomsky – April 2017 Excerpt: The capacity for language is species specific, something shared by humans and unique to them. It is the most striking feature of this curious organism, and a foundation for its remarkable achievement,,, There is little evidence of anything like human language, or symbolic behavior altogether, before the emergence of modern humans.,,, Our intricate knowledge of what even the simplest words mean is acquired virtually without experience. At peak periods of language acquisition, children acquire about a word an hour, often on one presentation.26 The rich meaning of even the most elementary words must be substantially innate. The evolutionary origin of such concepts is a complete mystery.,,, --- Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at MIT. http://inference-review.com/article/the-galilean-challenge
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BB Again human Exceptionalism if they’re not human they can’t pass the test that simple....................................................... Yep, now that’s probably one of the most awful things I’ve ever said that is definitely a joke by the way, and I have never Disagreed more with the fallacious use of IQ test to try to prove that African-Americans were dumber than Europeans. And I despise and truly detest the fact that we did rank those tests and rig those tests the show that African-Americans were dumber than Europeans Fact that there are people still today that sit there and say yes there is an intelligence difference and theses tests prove it is despicableAaronS1978_{July 17, 2019
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Obviously we have been giving them the wrong tests. From now on, we needs tests that are customized to them, their environment, their culture:
For decades our IQ and aptitude tests were ranking African Americans lower than European Americans.Brother Brian_{July 17, 2019
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