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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (246473)	8/18/2005 4:56:09 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572382

"Scientifically, I don't know what is the defining distinction that separates human intelligence from the rest of the animals" Ted, you need to get out more. Humans don't have anything that other animals don't also express. The difference is more of degree than of kind. Take abstraction for example. My Rottweiler abstracts just fine. Tell him 'ball' and he will come back with a spherical object, he evens considers deflated balls as a ball. Tell him 'rope' and he will return with something very ropelike. Ditto with 'stick'. While I suppose he could be some sort of canine Einstein, it is a lot more likely that most dogs can do something like this, but because nobody expects them the be capable, no one has actually explored how well mammals can abstract. Yes......last year there is a German dog who did a similar feat and it surprised scientists. They didn't know that dogs had that kind of reasoning power. But all that says is dogs are smarter than we thought. That doesn't make them as smart as we are. Afer all, most human children can discern between objects by the end of their first year.........before they even start talking. So why the intelligence gap? What is the quality that makes us different.......smarter? Is it simply because we have opposable thumbs? I have never assumed that animals are dumb but most of them don't show the level of intelligence of even a small child IMO. Or look at bonobos. They have a complex society that shows many elements found in human ones. I personally think Elroy was a bonobo in an earlier incarnation... Now that's just plain mean. If bonobos have feelings, you've just hurt them badly. Frans de Waal has written several very readable books on bonobos and other primates. Frans is great, my wife and I sat down with him and talked for several hours about intelligence in animals. 2think.org; How did you get to meet him? ted