Human Intelligence

Observe what? See, this is the part where I've been expecting you to enumerate some behaviors that can only be explained by the presence in humans of a spirit or soul, but all you keep telling me is "you know what I'm talking about." No, I don't. That's why I keep asking. Unsupported assertion. And you're not my friend. My friends support their claims with evidence. Unsupported. There's no evidence that such a figure exists. Since I wasn't talking about Christians, how could that be?

I wouldn't know, since I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I certainly don't know what "superatoms" are, or what you think they have to do with the topic, which, as you'll recall, was currently "what behaviors can only be explained by the existence of a soul or a spirit?"Can I assume that you've conceded the debate, then? That you agree that there's no behavior that requires the actual existence of a soul or spirit to explain?

Maybe you could substantiate this claim with data. I've read Hawking, Greene, and a few other books on cosmological models, and you're the first person to mention it. I can only conclude that you're making this up out of whole cloth. You know, unless we're both wrong, and the Zoroastrians are right - we're both bound for Zoroastrian hell. That's the problem with Pascal's Wager - if you're really going to hedge your bets, you need to follow all religions.

By pointing out that natural selection - "survival of the fittest" - isn't a call to action, it's an observed trend. Fitness isn't based on any criteria but reproductive success.If the population data is any clue, the "negroes", who are having more children than the "Aryans", are the fitter race.Hitler's eugenics are based not on the science of evolution, but on his lust for power and the observation that people will support somebody who helps them blame their problems on the easy victims.Call me crazy but when something is misused, I don't tend to blame the results on anything but those doing the misusing. Folks get kneecapped with baseball bats all the time, but we don't blame the World Series as a result.

Yes. Much as it's difficult to view Shakespeare as anything but anti-Semitic, it's difficult to view Darwin as anything but racist. Unfortunately that was the universal view of his time.However the Origin of Species is not used as a biological textbook, so I fail to see the relevance.

No, but his sociological conclusions may very well have been. Anyway I'm not sure that Darwin himself had made any specific observation of indigenous peoples - it's been a while since I've read the OoS.

For aliens?Tin-foil hat: $10
Pliers to pull out bugged teeth: $5
Homebrew diesel fuel/fertilizer bomb: $400Foiling alien conspiracy: Priceless

No, I meant observations that he himself had made, with his own eyes. This is stuff that it sounds like he heard from other people. That's speculation, not observation. Off-topic, but you ought to pick up Gould's "The Mismeasure of Man" for a look at the history of the pseudoscience of craniometry and IQ determinism. It's a great read.

Well, I suppose there was somebody in 1859 who wasn't a racist... can we agree that it was the prevalent view, at least? No more embarassed than I am that Shakespeare writes about Jews the way he does. No more embarassed than I imagine you are that Paul says in 1st Timothy "I suffer not a woman to teach, or usurp authority over a man, but to be in silence." Does race even exist? That's debatable, though off-topic.Populations in Africa, however, posess greater diversity than populations in Europe or Asia, suggesting that the peoples of Europe and Asia are the decendants of populations that migrated out of Africa.So, yes. We evolved together. The common ancestor is a population of humans in Africa.[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 02-12-2004]

No. Europeans may have evolved from an original population of African peoples, but so did modern Africans. I thought I was very clear about that.It's incorrect to say that modern Europeans are "more evolved" than Africans, because the Africans have had just as much time to evolve as Europeans. You think time is maybe slower in Africa or something? Or that the modern Africans are decended through less generations from the original africans than the Europeans?

That's the opposite of what I said. Conciousness developed from langauge, not the other way around. In exactly the same process that living populations became diverse and fragmented - isolation. When two populations split, and stop speaking to each other (as a result of culture or geographical distance) their languages naturally diverge. consider how British and American English have diverged in 200 years. Not separate languages, but definately different dialects.For that matter, languages aren't all that different. While they all have different rules, they seem to follow the same rules for picking rules. Meta-rules, if you will. Chomsky called them "deep grammars."Linguistics is fascinating.

What are the features of consciousness? That's sort of the question, isn't it?Plenty of animals communicate complex symbolic information without having consciousness, like bees. There's also the phenomenon of "wild children" - human children raised (sometimes by animals, sometimes by abusive parents) without exposure to language. After a certain age they are rarely able to absorb complex language and generally display a certain lack of temporality - they seem to have no concept of the future or the past, only the present.How does language create consciousness? I can only speculate that it is language that provides the symbolic mental framework that consciousness requires. But without a clear idea of what consciousness is supposed to be, I can only go by behavior - otherwise normal humans who lack exposure to language don't act fully conscious.

Actually, what my question clearly asked you was how you managed to interpret what I said in the exactly opposite way that I intended it.How did you manage to conclude that Europeans are more evolved than Africans from a statement that said that Europeans and Africans share a common ancestor, and as such are equally evolved?Your thoughts on God, Satan, etc. are noted but off-topic. (And I notice that you never joined the thread that I directed you to after you specifically asked me to. Changed your mind?) Instead of talking about what we think, why don't we talk about what is?

We covered this.Are we talking about Darwin's writings now, or the modern Theory of Evolution? You don't seem to be able to tell the difference. Good thing we don't teach evolution out of the Origin of Species anymore.

Are you? First you asked me if Darwin was racist, and then you queried me about the modern evolutionary model of human evolution. When I answered you, you substituted my meaning for what you gleaned from Darwin's book.So what are we talking about, here? Darwin's writings, or the modern theory of evolution? For the second or third time, do you understand the difference?