Do Animals Believe In Supernatural Beings?

The legitimacy of these inferences is yet to be determined, as we've still no way to verify our conclusions regarding mental motivations for various behaviors in critters with whom we cannot communicate at least rudimentarily.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Almost correct. There. Better. You're welcome.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

An example of this would be most helpful.

LOLExcept that you yourself have already agreed that we can and (legitimately) do this with regard to basics. Is self awareness a basic?
Are all societal relationships basic or are you making a rather broad and meaningless statement by conflating purely instinctive behaviours such as displaying hunger with potentially much more complex behaviours indicating greater levels of sentience and intellect?What specifically do you mean by this pointlessly ambiguous term of "basics" in this context?

Self awareness.Can we legitimately infer that in some species based on observational evidence or do you (as jar does) insist that we cannot make such inferences in the absence of linguistic communication?

Can we infer motivations in other homo-sapiens based on evidenced behaviour rather than direct communication?Of course we can.So once again we face the same questions I asked of jar - Where exactly is the speciestic cutoff point, on what basis is the cutoff point made and why treat religiosity differently to any other psychological or sociological phenomenon that can be studied?

We can test for self-awareness.What is the test for supernatural beliefs?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Okay, I'm with you so far. Self awareness is a motivation we've infered from direct and detailed observation of interactions with various non-homo-sapien behaviors. I'm aware of the "Self Awareness Test".How do we test for religious beliefs?How do we determine motivations from archaelogical findings?I'm aware of Neandertal burial sites and the religious motivations inferred from those. But what about non-homos? We got anything there?

"Test for" is probably a bit too definitive given the speculative nature of this topic. As AdminMod put it this topic poses the question: "What evidence might look like and try to resolve one way or another what we can say we know about this topic." Through comparison with known human behaviours I guess. If we found Australopithecus shrines or suchlike that would surely qualify as legitimate evidence (albeit highly open to interpretation) - No? I think it is fair to say that our inferences regarding non-homo species and their motivations have been made primarily on direct observation of living creatures rather than archaeological evidence.But surely direct observation is preferable in most cases? My complaint with jar's position is that he denies that there even can be evidence for such things pertaining to any other non-homo-sapien species such as Neanderthals, Australopithecus etc. purely because we cannot linguistically communicate with them. Too definite, too simplistic and too requiring that we treat religiosity as different from other social and psychological phenomena.

Oh good. So now you accept that even in the absence of linguistic communication we can determine aspects of thinking in non-homo-sapiens that are beyond the "basics".Progress?Or are you calling self awareness "basic". As (again) AdminMod put it this thread poses the question: "What evidence might look like and try to resolve one way or another what we can say we know about this topic." If that remains your answer then why continue?If however you now accept both that your initial criteria of linguistic communication and homo-sapien-species-only are overly simplistic then I guess we can move on.

I continue only because you keep replying, more as a courtesy than anything else.I have asked you for specifics many times and said that when they are presented I will gladly look at the evidence.So far I have seen nothing that you have presented that might indicate a way we might be able to speculate on beliefs of the supernatural in anything other than relatively modern humans.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Not really, no. At least not legitimately.Jon

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Check out No webpage found at provided URL: Apollo's Temple!
Ignorance is temporary; you should be able to overcome it. - nwr

Then should you be calling it a legitimate inferrance? I think the burial rituals of the Neandertals are good evidence for religious beliefs.As I said, I think religious beleifs require higher cognitive functions. Evidence of things like culture and art would show higher cognitive functions. Irrational and/or totally pointless stuff would suggest it too. Like your monkey rain dance, or dolphins making those bubble rings.But to infer religious beliefs we need to know what they are thinking. For other homos, its safe to assume they'd think something along the lines of how we think. The further we get from us, the less we can guess as to what they might be thinking.Obviously, direct linguistic communication would be the best way for that. Without it, we can't really get a clue as to what they'd be thinking so were not really gonna be able to have much evidence for the religious beliefs. Looks like its all semantic misunderstandings to me...

Jon I don't think I can legitimately conclude that you are self-aware or in possession or capable of related behaviours. In fact I have been of the opinion for some time now that you are just be an algorithm in the EvC board software inserted by Percy to stress test the patience of regular participants.

As (again) AdminMod put it this thread poses the question: "What evidence might look like and try to resolve one way or another what we can say we know about this topic." If your overly simplistic position remains that no evidence is even possible in the absence of linguistic communication then please just stop participating.