tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post5205230086433814897..comments2024-02-29T03:57:00.088-05:00Comments on The Mermaid's Tale: Do ants think?Anne Buchananhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09212151396672651221noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-63856720321401020852009-09-01T12:05:24.741-04:002009-09-01T12:05:24.741-04:00I think the issue here is perhaps what one means b...I think the issue here is perhaps what one means by the word 'think'. I don't know how ants perceive the world, but they are far more capable than a view of them as highly hardwired in their behavior (or else we are more hardwired than is usually thought). Ants solve nontrivial problems. That they use neurotransmitters and other chemicals, signals, and so on to do it does not take away from their abilities. We use such things, too.<br /><br />Of course our type of thinking defines what we usually mean by 'think' and mainly involves our conscious lives. But we do much cognition and problem solving without, or before, cognition occurs. But we tend to equate 'think' with consciousness.<br /><br />We are obviously different from ants, though we share neural signaling mechanisms etc. Of course, we should not 'behave like ants'! We should and must behave like people. Our divergence from ants is so ancient that our perceived worlds must be very different and so must our sense of awareness be.<br /><br />I don't understand your comments about relics or neodarwinism etc. We are, from everything known, related evolutionarily to ants. That doesn't make our thought only a recurrence of what they have, if that is what you were suggesting. But it did build on what our common ancestor had, and did that in each lineage in its own way.Ken Weisshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02049713123559138421noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-85458660034757981892009-09-01T12:05:06.674-04:002009-09-01T12:05:06.674-04:00Thanks for your comment, Mong. Our point is not t...Thanks for your comment, Mong. Our point is not to diminish human consciousness or thought, but that complex traits like these don't spring from nowhere. Like our limbs, immune system, teeth, and all our other complex traits, the human mind evolved from earlier forms. To us at least, there's no reason to assume that the ant brain doesn't share some of that complexity.Anne Buchananhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09212151396672651221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1812431336777691886.post-14603957145096138822009-09-01T11:39:06.209-04:002009-09-01T11:39:06.209-04:00RE: Do or can ants think? -- Hardly!
It's eas...RE: <b>Do or can ants think? -- Hardly!</b><br /><br /><i>It's easy to dismiss the rescue behaviors described in this PLoS paper as 'only' biochemical. But cognition and sophisticated decision-making are evolutionarily ancient. And, what are they, really, but the interaction of complex surface molecules and their receptors? We tend to privilege human thought capabilities, but in fact our brains are just signals, ligands and surface receptors, too.</i><br /><br />I think your conclusion above has committed a common and persistent fallacy of the neo-Darwinist reductionism of “sociobiology” and of “consciousness” and of “evolutionism” (since the 1970s) that I recently commented <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090527/full/news.2009.516.html?q=2#last-comment" rel="nofollow">here:</a> “The nail in the coffin for group selection? -- RE: Not yet!” (NatureUK; May 29) and <a href="http://www.philosophypress.co.uk/?p=485&cpage=1#comment-1006" rel="nofollow">here:</a> “The unnatural selection of consciousness -- RE: Commentary on Tallis' understanding of consciousness!?” (PhilosophyPressUK; August 14).<br /><br />Briefly, our human cognition, memory, and sophisticated thought capabilities are not evolutionary relics, that could be defined by the classical Darwinism; nor predicted by the neo-Darwinist reductionism: the modern geneticism or selectionism which essentially and selectively denies or ignores “consciousness” mechanisms in humans at all, by simply reducing all that of “our brains [that] are [composed of] signals, ligands and surface receptors, [etc]” to those of “nothingness” or of mindless “meme” -- or of ant’s as Darwin had also exaggerated it in1871, by comparing it to “the brain of an ant [that] is one of the most marvelous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of man”!?<br /><br />Whereas unbeknownst to Darwin of the time and especially to the self-denial reductionism of the neo-Darwinists of the 20th century, modern neurosciences have shown that our brain and neurochemistry are (in fact) evolutionarily -- both physiologically and biologically -- far more complex and complicated than those of an ant’s; as ants are definitely devoid of those complicated cognitive and memory and thought mechanisms (like ours) at all; and ant behaviorisms are purely reactionary (or instinctive) and ants will respond only to their each species-specific pheromones, that only ants produce in nature, and in living, for their own survival and communications!?<br /><br />Furthermore, only humans will survive and respond to the world by our both subconscious reactions (or intuitions) and conscious actions: the unique human capabilities of inventiveness and creativity that have had all spawn out of and from our existential memories and forethoughts of visions, or of imaginations, or of experiences and consequences, etc; and all these are the consciousness and conscience and the analytical traits and mental inheritances, that have had so distinguished, and separated us humans (or civilizations that we built) from ants (or colonies that they built) and other organisms (with their each own respective behaviorisms) since over 50 thousand years ago on this unique planet Earth!?<br /><br />Thus, in your conclusion above: Are you implying that humans should behave like ants!? Or ants could think (and empathize) like humans!?<br /><br />Best wishes, Mong 9/1/9usct10:39a; practical science-philosophy critic; author "Decoding Scientism" and "Consciousness & the Subconscious" (works in progress since July 2007), "Gods, Genes, Conscience" (2006: http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0595379907 ) and "Gods, Genes, Conscience: Global Dialogues Now" (blogging avidly since 2006: http://www2.blogger.com/profile/18303146609950569778 ).Mong H Tan, PhDhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18303146609950569778noreply@blogger.com