Ben Long
Well-known member
I'm feeling cerebral today. So I'll pose a question, taken from Make Prayers to the Raven: True or false? Every animal knows way more than you do. Yes or no, and why you think that.
Philosophy Friday
- Thread starter Ben Long
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Irrelevant
Well-known member
No. Whether useful or not, we pack way more knowledge into our grey matter.
My first thought was that I agree with you.
Then I started trying to figure out how a duck or butterfly can migrate thousands of miles back and forth to an exact same spot. How a squirrel can hide hundreds of acorns and find almost all of them. How a salmon can roam the ocean and figure out how to get back to the same tiny tributary it was born in.
Our brains are pretty amazing, but there are a whole lot of things animals can do that we could only dream of being able to.
Whoa.
No. Not that they are unitelligent but all they know is survival. Eat and not get eaten, simply stated. They are experts at that or they simply don't make it. As humans we don't have to focus all of our attention on those two things. Actually not much attention at all if we chose not too. Most readers of this site expend much more effort on eating (and in some cases not getting eaten) due to our hunting nature. However, in general getting food for most people is a simple task. That allows us to gain knowledge in other more liesurely or technical subjects. My ability to read and type this post is one example. Art is another. Etc, etc. We have the time and resouces available to know "more". Not sure if there is a right answer but these are my brief thoughts. The only other thing required of animals is to propagate the species. That seems genetically built into their system so I'm not sure how much "knowledge" that requires.
No. Not that they are unitelligent but all they know is survival. Eat and not get eaten, simply stated. They are experts at that or they simply don't make it. As humans we don't have to focus all of our attention on those two things. Actually not much attention at all if we chose not too. Most readers of this site expend much more effort on eating (and in some cases not getting eaten) due to our hunting nature. However, in general getting food for most people is a simple task. That allows us to gain knowledge in other more liesurely or technical subjects. My ability to read and type this post is one example. Art is another. Etc, etc. We have the time and resouces available to know "more". Not sure if there is a right answer but these are my brief thoughts. The only other thing required of animals is to propagate the species. That seems genetically built into their system so I'm not sure how much "knowledge" that requires.
BigHornRam
Well-known member
Can any other animal make beer? I think not!
MinnesotaHunter
Well-known member
Relatively speaking; animals are specialists, we are generalists. We spread our brain power over way to wide a spectrum to know anyone thing as well as animals know a narrow one.
noharleyyet
Well-known member
Aristotle
Zach
Well-known member
Genesis 1:27-31
Simple. Our brains are bigger, so we humans have more information stored in our brains. Are we wiser? Not all the time. Occasionally instinct may be truer than reason. Are animals as capable of conscious joy as we humans? Not a chance.
Irrelevant
Well-known member
Just try to imagine the amount of knowledge (individual units, whatever they may be) that is takes to go from baby to building an iphone. Recently at work we tried to figure out how long it would take to learn all human knowledge. 10,000 to 10,000,000 years was our range of estimates.
DRAFTSTUD
Well-known member
You have to think of what is available today to kick start the building of that I-Phone, what about that guy centuries ago that built the first wheel? Where did he get that knowledge? John
Southern Elk
Well-known member
Read this then decide...
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18710759/kyrie-irving-cleveland-cavaliers-believes-earth-flat
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18710759/kyrie-irving-cleveland-cavaliers-believes-earth-flat
noharleyyet
Well-known member
...and Guam is gonna capsize.
Tkaldahl2000
New member
They don't have to. They just wait till after the first frost and eat the mountain ash berries. Very intoxicating to the birds.
Ben Long
Well-known member
OK. Nice discussion, folks. Let me posit you this. If we were so smart, if someone plunked you naked with an empty pack in the northern Rockies, how long would you survive? Yet an elk calf is born naked in the same hillside and thrives almost automatically. How is that? Yeah, we can build an F-16 or space shuttle, which is cool, but can you smell a human being at a mile, or hear him whisper at a half mile? Can the best stalker among us take his boots off and sneak up on a bull elk and kill it with its teeth, cougar-style? They've been at it a lot longer than us. Even with our theology and our whiz-bang technology, I find that humbling.
Schaaf
Well-known member
I have a mountain ash tree in my front yard. Must be why I have an abnormal amount of birds fly into my house each fall.
DRAFTSTUD
Well-known member
I would, but it's not legal in most states.......................John
Doublecluck
Well-known member
"Knows" is only ones perception of a given reality, an ant on your sidewalk surely knows more about it than you.
Yep. Knowing "stuff" isn't the same as being intelligent. Is it? mtmuley
katqanna
Well-known member
Ben, when I was 17, I was in a leather shop for some supplies, was looking at the books and saw this self publication by Rodent Press on Basic Survival Skills, Vol. 1. He opened with a story, the Trials of Nakedman. A man totally equipped, way out in the boonies, hunting, who while crossing a creek finds that he misjudged the strength, gets swept up in the current, looses all his gear and clothes, washes downstream on the other side, naked. What does he do? The book was humbling. I was intrigued and began a love affair with primitive skills. Still have the book, sits with all my abundant archaeology/anthropology, skills books.
I feel one of our strengths is to mimic, copy what we see in the animal kingdom -biomimicry. A man could be inspired to make a wheel by watching a dung beetle, or a woman to weave by watching a bird with a nest or a spider with a web. Archimedes's screw could have been inspired from the helical shells around Siciliy or a hypodermic from a bee sting or a diving bell from the diving bell spider.
Even concerning cooperation, with trail cams being able to cover areas of the wild, observing without our physical intrusion, we are still learning about the animal kingdom and wild inter species dynamics. I loved the photo documentary a couple years ago of the male bear and the female wolf that were traveling/hunting together for quite a while, with the female wolf being accepted/tolerated by the bear gathering that occurred.
As modern human beings, I feel most have lost touch with their instinctual and biological knowledge, trading it for modern conveniences. Even though most people use modern conveniences, the majority do not know how to reproduce those items, they are just users, not knowers/perceivers. Hell, most barely know how their own bodies work.
My aussie has a larger vocabulary than our tweeting president (sad); she can find specific toys in a heartbeat better than my first husband could remember his frickin keys; she hears the outside vehicles better than I and can distinguish if they are are repeat friends or delivery trucks; she knows all the neighbor dogs, I know two neighbors. If she doesn't like someone, I trust her. It is a good thing for me she doesn't have opposable thumbs. I am always intrigued and humbled by nature/animals.
I feel one of our strengths is to mimic, copy what we see in the animal kingdom -biomimicry. A man could be inspired to make a wheel by watching a dung beetle, or a woman to weave by watching a bird with a nest or a spider with a web. Archimedes's screw could have been inspired from the helical shells around Siciliy or a hypodermic from a bee sting or a diving bell from the diving bell spider.
Even concerning cooperation, with trail cams being able to cover areas of the wild, observing without our physical intrusion, we are still learning about the animal kingdom and wild inter species dynamics. I loved the photo documentary a couple years ago of the male bear and the female wolf that were traveling/hunting together for quite a while, with the female wolf being accepted/tolerated by the bear gathering that occurred.
As modern human beings, I feel most have lost touch with their instinctual and biological knowledge, trading it for modern conveniences. Even though most people use modern conveniences, the majority do not know how to reproduce those items, they are just users, not knowers/perceivers. Hell, most barely know how their own bodies work.
My aussie has a larger vocabulary than our tweeting president (sad); she can find specific toys in a heartbeat better than my first husband could remember his frickin keys; she hears the outside vehicles better than I and can distinguish if they are are repeat friends or delivery trucks; she knows all the neighbor dogs, I know two neighbors. If she doesn't like someone, I trust her. It is a good thing for me she doesn't have opposable thumbs. I am always intrigued and humbled by nature/animals.
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