This is patently wrong. Intelligence requires such an enormous amount of energy that for most species we can safely assume it would be extremely detrimental. Noting evolutionary reduction in brain size is not uncommon.

In a human the brain accounts for 2% of average mass and 20% of average energy consumption, and we're not even close to dominating insects whose reliance on the brain is so low they can often even function without it.

No, I have almost no clue what your position here is. I thought I did, but then the following post seems so blatantly ridiculous and contradictory with your earlier statements. I have gone from thinking you were rejecting Nagel's criticism of Plantinga to thinking you are accepting it back to thinking you are rejecting it. Perhaps you should try to clearly and consistently characterize your own position.
This seems completely false. I will let Nagel identify the "intimate connection" where you seem to think there is no particular reason.
I thought we had agreed on this. I thought we had agreed how blatantly obvious it was that the ability to have advanced mental processes could give an evolutionary advantage.



Wat. No, it is the exact same kind of correspondence truth as has been consistent throughout this entire thread. Namely, it is a true fact about the universe that certain methods of hunting are indeed superior. If one predicts that a method is superior, that belief is true if it corresponds to a method that actually is superior. Namely, the ability to come up with these true predictions about the universe gives an advantage and so this ability is selected for.

that elephant, as cool as it is, is not anywhere near as cool as it might initially seem, in that it has been trained to draw this one painting and it can reproduce this painting pretty well over and over again, but it couldn't paint something it sees in its environment.

That is true, however it is still pretty impressive that it has the capacity to repeat such a complex task even if the task itself fails to imply creativity.

It seems to me that there is every reason to believe that certain animals are capable of a variety of different mental functions from mimicry and recollection to basic problem solving and (from asdfg's link) basic addition. I believe there is also evidence for certain animals having a capacity for self awareness.

Addition is extended counting. But this is whatever.

You've defined arithmetic as being somehow necessary or meaningful in the discussion of the comprehension of abstract mental content. Here we have people who can't do arithmetic, but we believe they have the capacity of abstract mental content. Therefore, the arithmetic test does not capture the relevant concept.

Context: Comparing two "essentially equivalent" creatures.

We're talking about the move to mental content. The flies buzzing away as a better survival method is not the same as the mental content of "If I fly away, I won't die."

See the dragon/fungus cave example. If all you are doing is looking at behavioral outcomes, then truth value is not correspondence (of mental content to reality) but mere behavior.

Then it's no wonder why you're not making any sense. Take the time to figure it out and quit rambling about stuff that doesn't matter. Pay attention to my conversation with Original Position.

These are people who DON'T do arithmetic, not CANT do arithmetic, at least not in the strong sense that they lack mental faculties that, if properly trained, would allow them to do it the way a fly actually can't do arithmetic no matter what.

Or, ya know, you could actually coherently and consistently explain it. In particular, I identified a quote of yours that seems to be obviously wrong and inconsistent with what I thought you have been saying before. Responding with "lolololol you don't understand what I am saying this is all your fault" is hardly helpful. Perhaps the problem here is your lack, when directly asked for a specific one sentence quote, of explaining what you mean.

Original Positions comments make sense. Nagel's comments make sense. I agree with both of them. But I have yet to see a clear understanding form you whether you do or do not except Nagel's criticism all the way back in post 61.

If we gave them the monkey-counting test (since it requires memory) they would fail. If you knew nothing other than the results of that test and you use this type of a test as a measure for abstract mental content, you would conclude that the tribal people do not exhibit abstract mental content, just as if you had a ferret take the test and fail. (I'm assuming a ferret will fail.)

What you're merely demonstrating here is the *assumption* that humans automatically have the *capacity* for certain types of mental content.

If you're too lazy to read what's been written, it's not really my problem. If you ask questions that at least remotely appear interested in actually understanding something (and made a meaningful attempt at understanding), then maybe you'll get a different response.

Edit: Your style of posting reminds me of another poster who hasn't posted here in a while. He would never actually take the time to understand what anyone was saying, and keep trying to push his position forward despite clear and repeated criticisms from all sides. The primary difference appears to be that rather than pushing your own position forward, you're looking for ways to push back against my position.

indeed. As in, we are talking about the evolution of humans, not of flies. But some proto-human CAN have mental content. And that mental content can be a prediction about the universe around them, such as a prediction of a good method of hunting. In which case, if this actually is a good method of hunting, then it is an advantage that they have this true mental content.

Hence, it is clear that there is an advantage in having the ability to do these complex, and true, thinking.

If I grant that you're talking about a debate about hunting teachniques among proto-humans (so that it's not simply that a particular hunter happens upon a way of hunting that is superior -- like squirrels learning an obstacle course for food), then I think you're stuck in a different place regarding "intelligence."

In particular, the "smartest" people don't always have the best ideas. Insight can come from all levels on the intelligence spectrum. "Intelligence" may be more apt to recognize good ideas, but not more apt to generate them (depending on what you mean by "intelligence").

I would say that the hunter with better "instinct" ("insight"?) into hunting would be favored.

Hey Aaron, can you PLEASE find it in yourself to drop the unrelenting condescension? I have now asked you this many times in many threads. Discuss the ideas. If you think I am way too lazy and stupid and biased and rambling and just glossing over your posts without understanding them or anything else about me personally, do us all a favour and keep it to yourself. Believe me, I certainly bite my tongue on such things for you.

You may think your position here is obvious. But that doesn't mean it is obvious to everybody else, and in fact it seems very inconsistent to me. Which is why I have asked you to explain what you mean by various quotes, such as the one I have recently identified and you have refused to elaborate on. So please, please, can you try and explain what you mean by the identified quote that there is no particular reason that intelligence would be favored, in comparison to the quote from nagel, instead of trying to psychoanalyze how lazy I am.

Again, nobody is saying anything about infaliablity. The question is whether developing mental processes that accurately understand and predict our world is going to be advantageous. Yes sometimes a smarter person will thinking some wrong or a dumber person think something right by mistake. But on balance, there is very good reason to think we have developed reliably truth apt mechanisms because we live in a real world and being able to better analyze and predict that, on balance, will be advantageous.

Incidentally, for the squirrel it has the ability to have some form of special memory. This is a primitive mental function, at least compared to the ones we have, but certainly this mental faculty is an advantage. And there is a clear correspondence between the content of the squirrels brain (a mental map of where they buried nuts) and the truth of where they buried nuts. So while we are talking about situtation a for humans, it can be extended a bit.

I didn't say anything about infallibility, either.

Huh?

The conclusion does not follow from anything you've said.

We know that Pavlov's dog salivates when the bell rings. Are you calling that a truth-apt mechanism, or a stimulus-response mechanism?

You gave an example of intelligence not always giving the best ideas, as in an example of this process not being infalliable. I have no idea why you said this, if not to make a point about infaliability.

If you think that conclusion does not follow, do you think the quote in post 61 is wrong?

As for pavlov's dogs, the mental process is almost certainly truth apt, but we construct this artificial circumstance to trick that process. Namely, the ability to recollect that certain situations result in other situations is presumably a very useful skill that a dog could use in the world. It is basic conditional thinking "if A happens then B happens", and that seems useful. The salivating itself is a stimulus response, sure, but the general process is reliably truth apt. Not infalliably truth apt, however, as the experiment shows.

That's like saying you are comparing two "essentially equivelant" creatures and then noting that the stronger one is going to have an advantage... it doesn't make much sense. If I can drop a Chevy bigblock in a Fiat 500 without backdraws, it will always be better. Because you are adding the advantages of the smaller engine to the big one.

I certain a proto-human would be better at hunting than I would be, yet I'm also certain I'm smarter. Infallibility has nothing to do with anything.

<sigh> You clearly have not re-read what I wrote.

Stop saying infallibility. I'm not talking about infallibility. Nobody except you is talking about infallibility.

You have not presented something that bridges the gap between a fly buzzing away when you swat at it and a fly considering the relative probability of survival when flying away compared to staying stationary.

That was a poorly thought out argument. No one is saying you must be able to perform arithmetic if you're capable of comprehending abstract mental content. There is, of course, an additional skill component to performing rudimentary mathematics.

really? Assuming the same physical strength and speed and the like, and assuming you grew up in that culture where you actually had to learn to hunt and not the kinds of things you learned in our modern culture like advanced mathematics? Presumably our superior intelligence would allow for us to come up with smarter hunting tactics, perhaps we learn how to make a spear or a bow and arrow or set a trap or build a rifle. At worst, it just is neutral.

The point here that you don't seem to want to address is simple: we can quite easily imagine a circumstance where a more sophisticated mental process is an aid to our reproduction. This shouldn't be surprising, for it is precisely because our intelligence was such an advantage that we have evolved our intelligence. Of course, much like greater speed, there are consequences to greater intelligence like it requiring large brain size and the like so it isn't as if every species uniformly goes up in intelligence with a fixed direction on evolution.

If you thought the point of my explanation of pavlov's dogs was just something about infallibility, you must have missed it. I just added it at the end. The point that you didn't comment on is that the mental process going on in a dog that is tricked by his experiment is one that, despite this exception, is both truth apt and useful, and hence evolved. In other words, far from being a counterexample, the Pavlov dog picture is entirely consistent with what Nagel, Original Position and myself have all said.

As for flies, they only have the former mental ability. They do not have the capacity for the latter kind of analysis. Higher animals, like us, do. But that does not change the fact that this higher level analysis is also beneficial as it allows us to accurately undertand and predict the universe, doing things like come up with a better hunting strategy or how to make fire. These are very useful. And they are useful precisely because they truly reflect how the universe is.

This seems like a pretty uncharitable reading. Asdfasdf32's example is almost surely meant to be a sufficient, not necessary condition.

Notice that reducible here doesn't mean logically reducible, but biologically reducible. That is, I want to say that each stage of the evolution of the mind is explicable within the evolutionary framework (e.g. through natural selection, genetic drift, and so on).

Presumably you want to say that there are evolutionary breaks--one at the initial development of mental content, and the second with the addition of mental processes that lead to beliefs that have no survival value. The first break is significant because (I guess? You haven't really said) you don't think this transition is explainable within the evolutionary framework. I'll note that if this is your view you've provided no argument for it in this thread. You claimed that the deck was stacked against the naturalistic explanation, but I don't see why.

The second is significant, not because you think that there is a mystery about how they arose (after all, we are already assuming the existence of beliefs with survival value), but because you think under purely evolutionary grounds we would have no reason to think these mental processes were reliable.

So here are a couple questions. Do you think that beliefs about basic math--e.g. counting, basic arithmetic, Euclidean axioms, etc.have survival value? If so, would that mean that mathematical beliefs, even advanced ones about the number of primes, that are based on those simpler beliefs are also reliably-based?

Second, what are you including in this class of beliefs or mental processes that have no survival value? Presumably not perceptual beliefs. Presumably not basic reasoning. So what? Metaphysical beliefs about God, souls, etc?