Wollysaurus writes:
The intent is not "evolution versus design", at least in terms of the organisms or their behaviors. For the purposes of this thread, I accept evolution. I am not asking whether or not a sky god taught the spider how to make its web. My question is specifically in regards to how we can determine whether what an organism does (its actions, whether we are talking about building a spiderweb or a sky scraper) are the product of unconsciously directed physical actions compelled by evolutionary processes (in my opinion building a spiderweb or beaver dam would fall into this category) or the result of a deliberate, conscious decision making process (such as building a sky scraper).
As you have already noted, drawing a definitive line between instinctive behavior vs decision-making behavior may be problematic; for all we know, some such borderline-behaviors blur the distinction, being a mixture of both.
Even so, we can make a first approximation. Do all (or the vast majority) of a given species engage in one set of specific behaviors irrespective of past experience or contact with other members of that species? Can those differing sets of such behaviors by different species be put into a pattern which corresponds to the nested hierarchy of common descent? In that case, such behaviors would be the product of evolutionarily processes.
On the other hand, if a specific behavior pattern is exhibited in only a small subset of that species, or many different behavior patterns exist within that species directed to the same general goal AND those behaviors were influenced by contact with the various behaviors of other species members and past experiences within the lifetime of the individual, then you could infer some measure of independent cognition.
It is possible that base-line cognitive ability itself is a result of evolutionary processes, but the individual acts of cognition are not.
DWIII
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