Is it contradictory to work in a spa for improving the fertility of people and then consider that it is better to have a dog than a kid? — javi2541997

Individual freedom; individual choice. Not wanting children for yourself doesn't mean you disapprove of other people's desire to have them. I like both dogs and children and had both, but chose to adopt, rather than make them from scratch. I didn't think any less of my friends who had babies.

I understand animal warning cries to be signaling, not symbolizing, danger. I have acknowledged that I believe animals sense danger. I'm not sure what you think we are disagreeing about. — Janus

You seem to consider symbols important. I don't think it makes any difference to the concept whether there is a call, a word or a pictogram signifying 'danger', so long as the message is transmitted and received - i.e. the concept is shared within a species or a tribe: everybody ducks for cover to escape the danger, or flies up in dive-bombing formation to combat it.

Its a generalization and I doubt animals have a generalized conceptual notion we could refer as 'danger'. — Janus

Then what do the sentries outside meerkat burrows, groundhog colonies, wild goose nesting grounds and rookeries shout when a hawk or kestrel or coyote or fox or cheetah or snapping turtle is spotted?

So we are merely working with what seems most plausible, and plausibility is in the final analysis in the eye of the beholder. — Janus

As in all learning, yes, until a more complete answer, one that fits more criteria, becomes available.

One charter told another that she could remember much greater detail if she tried to walk through it slowly, step by step. — Patterner

I recently saw a documentary about Australian natives constructing mental maps in that way. The person who doesn't know the way is escorted along the route and told at certain intervals to make note of some feature of the landscape. Then they would walk the route in their head, recalling the sequence of features.
When I lose things - more often every week, it seems - I do the same thing: try to retrace my steps internally, and then see if I can follow the same sequence of things I noticed when i was carrying the flashlight or eyeglasses (the two most AWOL-prone objects in my household).

What if you're all alone on a desert island, building a shelter, foraging for food, making tool and working on an effective SOS signal, and there is nobody to demand an explanation of why you're doing these things? Are you irrational then?

Sorry I wasn't clear. I think that's implicit in what I said - indeed it is the justification for what I said. I should have said so upfront. — Ludwig V

Not disagreeing; amplifying. People can be seen to act rationally even when they don't explain their motivations and sources of information. When you see someone doing the very same thing you would do in their circumstances, it's reasonable to assume they're thinking the same way. Sometimes we may be wrong, and alternate explanations might be given (Like Dortmunder telling the judge when he was caught with a television in his arms that he wasn't stealing it; he had interrupted the real thief and was putting it back.) but it would still be reasonable to start with the most obvious explanation until we know more facts.

When we see animals displaying those behaviour patterns, there should be no problem whatever in applying those concepts to them.
When we come to the question which exact concepts apply in specific cases, it is not an at all unusual to find that there is a range of possibilities. — Ludwig V

Would this not also be true of observed human behaviours?

I think we can observe animals avoiding danger—things they presumably feel to be threatening. I am not suggesting that animals think precisely in terms of 'avoidance' or 'threat' or 'danger' as those are linguistically generated concepts. — Janus

How is danger a linguistically generated concept? Dangers have been around as long as living organisms have been around, but human language is only about 200,000 years old. We ran from predators and went around swamps millions of years before we were human. If danger were not a real thing in the world, why would we have made a word (actually, many words) for it. Where would we ever have got the linguistic idea in the first place? You can do something sensible without talking about it.

I am unsure at several points in your communication whether you are expressing your own view or attempting to paraphrase Sartre. — Jedothek

Invariably expressing my view and paraphrasing nobody - except occasionally in jest or irony and that's more likely to be poets or scriptwriters than philosophers.

When you refer to material, environment and evolution, you may be thinking of the human condition. — Jedothek

Nope. The human body, without which there is no human essence, spirit, nature, character, circumstance or condition.

But, surely, there is some kind of thinking involved in the experience itself. And particularly with the painting and concerto, since very specific thinking is involved during the creation. — Patterner

I believe we think on several levels and several ways at the same time. The multi-chambered mind allows us to process input, store it in short-term memory, translate it into numbers, words, musical notation, symbols and picto- or videograms and cross-reference it, for storage in various compartments of long-term memory archive, whence it can be retrieved using any of several reference keys (voluntary) or automatic flags (involuntary).
Synesthetics may be able to access a musical score through the weave of a Harris tweed (note-colour association is fairly common) or an equation by locating the terms in space .
We also mix memory, emotion, prejudice and involuntary associations in with our conscious thinking.
It's never simple and pure; and it's - I hesitate to say never, so will settle for seldom - wholly rational.

I was thinking there are people who claim they never think in words. If there are such people, I would like to know how they have conversations. — Patterner

I'm skeptical myself. I suspect it's a combination, like an illustrated narrative.

That claim reminds me of an absurd STNG episode, wherein Picard had to communicate with an alien whose entire language was made up of analogies and references to legend. Yet they had space travel. How the hell did anyone say "Hand me that spanner, will you?"

Yes, I understand that. But Patterner seems to be suggesting that we can't attribute the concept "evil" to them because we created it. — Ludwig V

And I agree. I don't imagine that other species view anything as 'evil' in the way that humans do. But they do appear to have a strong notion of things that 'may harm me' and things that 'endanger my pack' my herd, my colony or my flock. If a hawk-shaped kite hovers above a groundhog burrow, the guards give the danger call, exactly as if it were an actual hawk. Many dogs are afraid of or outright hostile toward vacuum cleaners, which they perceive as a threat; it's enough to see one turned off, or hear one from another room, to set the dog to snarling and barking to warn off its perceived enemy. (Canine vocalizations are very well documented.)
I don't imagine other animals are capable of performing evil acts the same way humans do, either. They can be angry, resentful, suspicious, spiteful; they can take a dislike to a person or other animal when we see no obvious reason for it; the long-lived ones can hold both affection and grudges for many years. Dogs, monkeys, elephants, parrots, cats and even horses* can devise unpleasant acts of revenge on those who have wronged them. That's bordering on the outer fringes of badness, but doesn't approach anywhere close to evil.
I think it's a long, long, jagged spectrum.

*This is anecdotal among horse-handlers; I don't know whether it has scientific backing.
I personally only know of one example: a thoroughbred who always managed to step on a particular rider's foot. That groom was known to be rough with the horses; our trainer warned him several times before he was finally let go. And that horse - Francolin, a calm 8-year-old - never stepped on my foot, or any other stable-hand's that I'm aware of.

Instincts don't lead to genocide. It's the extra special faculties, the facility for narrative, that creates the evil that we do - and the very concept of evil. — Vera Mont

Yes, I do accept that narratives are crucial to the way that things work for us. That does seem to be a product of language. It's hard to imagine what might convince us that creatures without human-style languages could develop them. — Ludwig V

Why should they? They already have concepts and strategies that work for them.
The lost point there was that the sophistication of language, narrative and high level of abstraction which sometimes work for us are also what backfire[/quote] on us - not the animal drives.

Otoh, they allow us to do some amazing things. It's difficult to say the amazing outweighs the genocide, but we're stuck with both edges of the sword — Patterner

Increasingly, the edges are lost; we're looking at the tip. We've passed the deadline for choice. And who knows where the nuclear situation stands at the moment - you get conflicting reports every day. The good ideas and bad ones have converged to pose an existential threat to all advanced life on the planet, and I see no signs of global resolve to mitigate the unavoidable consequences.

So do we create the concept of a threat? Or a llama? — Ludwig V

Every entity with a brain understands threat. In between the dumbest and smartest are intellences that assess the threat level as degrees of bad, and categorize the sources of threat accordingly.
Only one species has elevated both the ability to pose threats to others and itself and to characterize threats to itself, its institutions and narratives to the level of evil, in both concept and deed.

There can be ambiguity in both llinghistic and non-linguistic behaviour. But many of them (maybe all) can, in principle, be cleared up on further investigation. — Ludwig V

I'm not sure about that. Have you tried getting clarity from a religious or political fanatic? If you listen to interviews with MAGA supporters or jihadists, you'll hear them use the most extreme language and yet they seem not to have any idea what they believe or why.

You seem to be wanting to get inside the heads of the llamas. — Ludwig V

That was just my facile example of a generalization, of conceptual thinking. I loosely translated the llama's aggressive approach to any random wolf as analogous to a human categorizing his perceived enemies as evil. If I'd known so much would be made of it, I'd have been more circumspect in my choice of words.

I don't blame animal instincts for the super-damage that we have done. There's nothing wrong with them. I thought that was obvious. — Ludwig V

A couple of other people have just recently told me that llamas can't generalize something that threatens them as being evil or even bad. I didn't say you blamed animals for anything. It's not even you, specifically, that I should have aimed that remark at. It's the double-think we humans do so well.

We're special because we have all these extra capabilities that raise us above the other animals, but when we dig ourselves into trouble, it's because the special capabilities are unequal to the animal instincts. I'm saying neither the animal instincts nor yet our helplessness to control them, are responsible for our messes. We do control them. We make laws, practice monogamy, have celibate monastic orders, teetotalers and anorexic teenaged girls.
Instincts don't lead to genocide. It's the extra special faculties, the facility for narrative, that creates the evil that we do - and the very concept of evil.

No, certainly not 'evil.' But I think even 'bad' is a stretch. I wouldn't think we are safe with anything more than 'threat' and 'not threat.' — Patterner

Okay. Humans have hyperbole that other species probably don't. I don't know the language of alpacas or zebras. I can't even picture the symbology in their heads. But generalization is generalization. Threat, non-threat, benefit and detriment are categorizations and generalizations: i.e. abstract thought.

I don't think it is reasonable to expect the level of accuracy and detail we can get from creatures that can talk to us. — Ludwig V

Or course not. But since we ourselves were languageless creatures early in our lives, and our large brain has an extensive archive of memories, we can recall and describe some of our pre-verbal experiences, feelings and sensations. Not everyone has the same retrieval capability, and we can't always be sure that another person's - or even our - recollection is accurate. Still, we are able to translate non-verbal events into language. When you stand at a scenic lookout, are you really describing the vista to yourself in sentences - or do your eyes and mind take it in and transcribe it later - maybe only a few seconds later? Do you look at a painting or hear a concerto in words?

The trouble is that human capacities have not eliminated the things we share with animals — Ludwig V

Oh, sure, don't give our ancestors credit for acting with common sense, but then blame them for the evil narratives that intelligence and imagination - all that vaunted unique cogitation - have wrought. Somehow, bison and whales and hares can cope with lust, anger, fear, territorialism and aggression, without causing their own extinction. It's not the primal instincts that invent slavery, espionage, thumbscrews, supertankers, mustard gas and corrupt supreme courts.

When we walk along the river enjoying the beauty, we are escaping from our man-made reality. — Athena

Even when the river has cement banks... Yes. There have always been movements in civilized societies, of a small number of people who lived, or attempted to live, a more genuine, nature-grounded lifestyle.
I wouldn't call the fugitive subsistence of the Mashco Piro Eden, exactly, though they look pretty healthy. I see no reason we couldn't strike a compromise between the destruction of nature and our own needs. But humans tend to run at everything at full tilt.

I don't see how this, or anything else, makes them evil. I also don't know how we know what llamas believe about them. — Patterner

To herbivores, predators are the greatest threat. Many herbivores simply accept that they will be chased and possibly killed by wolves or other predators, but a few species, such as llamas, don't: they regard the predator as an enemy, and fight one if it comes near, even when it doesn't attack first. They may not conceive of 'evil' in human monster terms, but they do classify entire other species as 'bad'. That's a generalization.
A herbivore that always runs when it sees its major predator would also be generalizing: "All lions are a threat." But, in fact, most of the grazing herds are watchful but relaxed around lions that are not actively hunting, so I imagine their concept of 'lion' is more specific: 'lion at rest over there' and 'lion moving toward us' are two different categories. I don't know whether that's a generalization.

Llamas believe all wolves are evil? — Patterner

They make excellent guards for sheep, I've heard and will spit and kick at predators. But they can become accustomed to dogs in a domestic setting.

The angles of triangles add up to 360 degrees? (Just bustin' on your for this one. — Patterner

Deservedly so! My mind's eye was looking at a square, but my fingers only got half the message. :sad:

It seems to me that abstract thought, thought about generalities may be impossible without langauge. — Janus

What sort of generalities? Like : "All wolves are evil." or "If the angles of one triangle add up to 360 degrees, the angles of all triangles must also."? Because lamas do believe the former and crows know that a stick skinny enough to go into a one hole in a tree will go into the hole in another tree. Or do you mean something more like : "Events in the universe are sequential, so there must have been a prime mover to get it started."? I don't think other animals think like that.

I'd say the most significant thing is that it enables collective learning. History and art and literature and music and science and so on. — Janus

Human history does not indicate - at least to this observer - that all that science and culture have contributed significantly to our collective ability to make rational decisions.

Oh, you mean because some species can't be assumed to have thoughts? The ones that have no brains, I admit to not having allowed for them. The ones who do, whatever passes through those brains is very probably different from what passes through the brains of any other species. If you don't choose to call it thinking, that's your prerogative... with maybe just a smidgen of anthropocentrism.

Is there anything we think that no other species thinks? Or do we think nothing that is uniquely human, but we're the only ones who have the language to express it all? — Patterner

I assume every species has thoughts that no other species share, since the equipment with which we perceive, experience and interact with the world, and the capabilities we bring to life are so varied. I assume every individual also thinks thoughts that are unique to itself alone.

We can get some notion - sometimes a pretty clear one - of what another species is thinking by its actions, to the degree those actions are similar to what we would do in their place. But as long as we are individual, the precise content of each mind must remain a mystery to all others.

But I find it hard to imagine how they could be reflectively or narratively self-aware given that they don't possess symbolic language. — Janus

Does it matter whether you can tell stories about your thinking? I mean, it obviously matters to the storyteller. I happen to be a teller of fictional stories and it matters greatly to me. I suppose it matters even more to the tellers of stories that liberate or subjugate or eradicate entire peoples. In that sense, it raises humans above species that can't or don't need to tell stories.
(I imagine the dog's record of his internal life as a reel of virtual reality - like a 6D movie. Is it story-telling? Without grammar and syntax, it's hard to tell - in fact, at the time, it's impossible to communicate - but that's the way children with limited verbal skills view their own life.)
But how does it alter rational thought, problem-solving or navigating the physical world?

Biology is still beyond our ken. Neuroscience is well behind. Physics and cosmology are ranging off into neverlands of speculation. But we know all about metaphysics.
I have not heard of this experiment. Thanks! Don't quite know what to do with it, or where to file it, but it's fascinating.

Yep. It's hard to imagine an organism that does not interact with the world - if only to anchor on something and feed itself. With blythe disregard to potential philosophical pitfalls, I kind of presupposed being alive means being in the world. As I noted earlier, in the absence of outside sources of information - i.e. memory, experience, input from other organisms - one has only one's imperfect, unaided senses upon which to base understanding of anything. One would form concept s (a functioning mind cannot help forming concepts, even if it has no name for them) and thus make decisions that were only as accurate as the available data.

The animals will not be ruled by our modern cultural understanding of time. — Athena

Our pets and service animals are ruled by whatever schedule society set for their owners/handlers. Farm animals are,too, to a lesser degree, as their needs influence - though do not determine - the farmer's routine.

Our rational notions of life are pretty disconnected from nature. :lol: That is to say we do not experience the tree, but what we think about the tree. Does that make sense? — Athena

It does to me. When sequestered from the elements, the environment and denizens of nature, we let ourselves make up fanciful theories about those things, for a variety of reasons. One of these, as I said before, is exploitation. A major one has been to bolster theologies and thereby, the lifting of Man half-way to Heaven. There are strong vestiges of that mindset in the secular realm. Another reason is nostalgia: an ache for the loss of a dimension of our selves. A pervasive one has been art; the appreciation of natural beauty. Yet another is entertainment and profit through entertaining humans.

As long as we have theories and centuries-old Eurocentric philosophical maxims regarding the nature of nature, we can deny the less adamantine evidence of direct observation, direct interaction.

It doesn't. The preponderance of evidence does.
The teeny-tiny, microscopic point I attempted to make in this context was in support of the previous argument by Ludwig V was that conceptual thought depends on concepts, which are formed from sensory input.

If my data is wrong, despite my assessing it rationally, then my rationality is not in question. It would be if I became better informed and failed to change my assessment. — Ludwig V

Rational thinking and reasoning takes place in conceptual level, not physical or biological level. — Corvus

Just that, nothing more. Any entity, of any species that thinks rationally can, nevertheless, draw false conclusions if they are working with inaccurate data.
If there ever was such a point worth making, its moment has long passed.

identifiable — Hallucinogen

by what means?

Pythagoras' theorem — Hallucinogen

would rather presuppose the existence of Pythagoras, who also wasn't the first

because it blowing itself up, as you put it, depends on a pre-existing law of physics that entails that it behaves that way. — Hallucinogen

or else blowing itself up that way and turning into the universe was the beginning of physics, after which everything thus created had to behave according its rules
So there's your first/last/all entities.

How is the dog informed about the time? — Athena

The same way you are. The biological clock that came with our brain, plus changes in the environment, plus experience, plus memory. People and other animals kept daily and seasonal routines long before anybody built a stone circle and very long before we let ourselves be ruled by mechanical horologes. I have no idea why other people think this is remarkable, when we all not only have a sense of time, but can witness every living thing around us respond to the passage of time.

Normally, we do indeed believe what we see, etc and that is unproblematic. But sometimes we find ourselves with incompatible beliefs, or simply confused. Then we start asking questions, making diagnoses; very often, but not always we can resolve the situation and then we turn on the perceiver and conclude that there is something wrong or at least different going on - colour-blindness, astigmatism, etc. — Ludwig V

Only if you have some external source of information that contradicts your defective senses. without that contradiction, you would ask no questions.

What is new or interesting? — Corvus

Nothing at all. One old, uninteresting point is that concepts are formed from sensory input, not independently.

Rational thinking and reasoning takes place in conceptual level, not physical or biological level. — Corvus

But the subject matter one thinks about has to be collected through sensory data processing before one can formulate any concepts. (Hence the poverty of cognitive function in children who have been deprived of stimulation in their formative years.) If one's own data-collecting equipment is compromised, no amount of conceptual thinking can correct it. In the absence of an external source of sound data, one is forced to draw conclusions and make decisions on incorrect premises.
If you are missing the L cones in your retina and nobody tells you that red exists, it's quite reasonable for you to conceive of everything in the world as shades of green and yellow. You could respond correctly to a green STOP sign because of the word, but a green flag would mean nothing special.

I could maybe go that way... I've been toying with the notion of luck. Charms and hexes, touchstones and talismans? Hmmm

Only, I really do. It started forming last month, on Friday the 13th. Haven't written it down yet, because there isn't a plot in which to ground the idea.

I have concepts of a story....

Think whatever you like, but if you think animals are rational, then we are not talking in the same category of reason. — Corvus

That works. You want to hog a faculty all to yourself, just categorize it as the thing only you have.

Me, I like saffron. Better yet, the bead-work and fringes of North American native shamans. Their work may have a dark side, but they don't have a Cristian disdain for life.

. A few moments of google research suggests that the choice of color is based on the inclination to express austerity and the rejection of material life, favoring of spiritual. — praxis

Then why are witches dressed in black? Why are ravens and crows associated with foretelling death, or doom, rather than something spiritual about souls and eternal life and all that? I suspect it's no contradiction at all. Religious turn away from life, love, joy and procreation; they entomb themselves in a celebration of human sacrifice. The rituals of medieval monastic orders attest to this: renunciation of worldly pleasure, mortification of the flesh, a life-long penance for having been born into original sin.

Yes, I get the light/dark thing (including its spurious association with skin colour). It's the religious garb I find anomalous. Does any other belief system dress its shamans in the colour they most fear?

What can you be yourself without?
Lose your possessions, relationships, status, occupation - you're still yourself, though a less effective self.
Lose a leg or an arm, your hearing, sight, health - you're still yourself, though in need of support.
Lose the power of locomotion, continence, memories - you're still yourself, only much reduced.
Lose your consciousness; suffer a traumatic enough injury to your brain - you're nobody.
Self as you identify it at the height of your powers is all those things: body, physical and mental faculties, accomplishments and acclaim.
Self as identified at the beginning and end of life is something very much smaller and more primitive, but still wholly dependent on a functional brain.
Put that brain in a vat of saline solution, hooked up to pumps for blood and oxygen, you'd still be a self, though probably insane in short order.

There is a great danger in infantilizing our young, and in idealizing ignorance as a state of bliss.
Children are capable of understanding, learning and doing far more than we allow them to.

They, as well as crows, also teach their young life skills and how to get by in the human world.
The 'murder' is a gathering of crows. They're just families nesting in trees of a proximity to provide mutual protection.
But then, Europeans have a long-standing problem with the colour black: they associate it with death and evil - except, somehow, priests and nuns in their flowing black garb.

I've always been a proponent of homeschooling, which is something popular in the US. — Shawn

Yeah. It's largely uncontrolled, so that no authorities know which parents are beating their kids, or making them kneel on cement floors as penance. I've seen a number of home-schooling textbooks. The basic arithmetic and spelling are fine, but when you get into science, it's often sadly deficient and the history/social studies courses reek of exceptional nationalism. I have seen no materials at all - none - on sex education or general health and hygiene. If innocence means ignorance, you're on the right track.

I'm sure there are parents who are qualified to teach a range of subjects properly, make sure their children have enough exercise and learn manual skills and arts and also co-ordinate peer group encounters so that their children don't grow up isolated and socially inept. I can't help but suppose they're a minority.

In the field of law there's a dictum or principle that one must be assumed innocent until proven guilty. — Shawn

In that instance, 'innocence' simply means that the accused has not committed the particular crime of which he stands accused. It does not mean a general innocence, as of a newborn babe.

In the instance where one refers to the innocence of a child, that is a relative term. It means that the child is ignorant enough of right and wrong not to be held fully responsible for his actions. In this usage, the term is flexible both as to the age of the child and as to what kinds of action is considered beyond his capacity to appreciate the gravity of performing them.

In the far narrower context of

violates the innocence of a young child, — Shawn

, it usually refers to activities of a sexual nature, to which the child is physically and/or emotionally too immature to consent.

I think that by having children one is not only implicitly; but, explicitly responsible for maintaining the innocence of the child. — Shawn

So long as the child is a minor, the parent is required to protect it both from premature sexual contacts and from criminal involvement. However, the degree of childhood innocence in all areas of human experience steadily diminishes from age 0 to adulthood. Some adults continue long after the age of majority to maintain a degree of childlike innocence; some people carry vestiges of it through life.

So, how do parents view this topic? — Shawn

As a challenge. By the time a child acquires language, her innocence has already begun to erode. Typically, a child begins to lie - verbally, deliberately - around the age of four. Before that, there are moments of guile, subterfuge, duplicity, but they are usually opportunistic crimes, not premeditated ones.
By age six, children are quite aware that adults also lie, and they've begun to understand which lies are motivated by kindness and which are self-serving; which are defensive and which aggressive; which have the best chance of being forgiven and which are most likely to be punished.

By age six, the child has been disillusioned of many fictions adults had invented to shelter and preserve her in innocence. She will have seen at least one adult naked, become aware that Santa Claus is a story, realized that parents are fallible, self-contradictory, sometimes unfair and not always reliable. She has learned that promises are provisional and rules are elastic.
When he enters the school system, the child is no longer wrapped in a cocoon of innocence - nor should he be. He must learn to navigate a society in which deceit and chicanery play prominent roles.
It is the parents' assigned task to prepare them as well as possible.