Free will an absurdity
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All animals are conscious. Their consciousness suits their needs. A lioness, co-operating with her sisters on the hunt, knows enough of the laws of nature to channel the flight of a gazelle into their trap.
Elephants and other animals grieve and also play. They are all conscious and all intelligent. They all have language. But you will only apply the term to the word formation-based language of humans. Your knowledge and awareness suits your function as an ape, their knowledge and awareness suits their needs.No doubt you deny them free will. I agree with you. You don’t have it either.
I live with two cats. I am aware that i am of a different species to them. I’m not SUPERIOR or HIGHER, just different. I do what I do, they do what they do.
Stephen Jay Gould:
“We have generally tried to unite our intellectual duty to accept the established fact of evolutionary continuity with our continuing psychological need to see ourselves as separate and superior, by invoking one of our worst and oldest mental habits: dichotomization, or division into two opposite categories, usually with attributions of value expressed as good and bad or higher and lower.
” we considered distinctive mental attributes — the existence of a moral sense, or the ability to form abstractions. All have failed as absolutes of human uniqueness.
“The development of ”culture” — defined as distinct and complex behavior originating in local populations and clearly passed by learning, rather than genetic predisposition — has persisted as a favored candidate for a ”golden barrier” to separate humans from animals, but must now be rejected as well.
” the basic formulation of them vs. us, and the resulting search for a ”golden barrier,” represents a deep fallacy of human thought. “
TM – You do talk the most absolute nonsense. From whence does your straw man of hierarchy emerge in anything I have said? Presumably you are a socialist because, among other things, you wish to protect the environment for your beloved animals as well as ourselves – does this make you a believer in hierarchy? Surely it is just a recognition that our species can be in a position to help other species that do not have our level of consciousness. I will not repeat again that I am a determinist and do not believe in ‘free will’ but your need to believe that I do blinds you to this fact. Indeed you are trapped so deeply within your own preconceptions and prejudices about your me and your fellow species that further discourse seems superfluous. I wish you adieu.
LEVEL of consciousness. Plus, you have already said you think we are HIGHER than other animals, not just in some ways different. You must also believe, since most of my messages are quotes, that Gould talks nonsense, since there is nothing i have said about animals that he would have disagreed with.
You indicate too that you have a dilemma regarding your determinism since you cannot reconcile it with moral agency. I have no such dilemma.
So i, likewise, say sayōnara* to you.
*Sayōnara is what the Japanese say when they no longer wish to have further dealings with someone.
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