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have they found anything?

arthwollipot said:
I think amb is reiterating an argument from Stephen Jay Gould, who said that if time were somehow "rewound" back to life's origin, and allowed to play itself out again, it would be extremely unlikely that we would get the same mix and distribution that we have today. It's about divergence from initial conditions.

Gould, as far as I know, did not postulate that if life replayed like this, intelligence would probably not appear.
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Physicist Paul Davies also stated the same thing with a slightly different viewpoint. Davies claims that either we are an improbable quirk of the laws of nature, or there are trillions of Earths and intelligences out there at one time or another in the history of the universe.
Both agree that consciousness is not a given while life of the animal kind and lower may well be widespread and the norm.
Carbon, the essential ingredient of life was not produced until at least the end of the first or second generation of stars lifetimes. Our sun is only around 4-5 billion years old having been formed from the wreckage of these first stars.
a whopping 9-10 billion years since the B/B. Assuming that the first and second generation of stars had a lifespan of say, 2-3 billion years, it doesn't give all that much time for consciousness to evolve does it? The carbon has to be created in the core of these first stars, then they need to go supernova and spew the carbon into empty space taking billions of years before it is finally used to make our bodies, or the DNA that produced our bodies
 
amb said:
Davies claims that either we are an improbable quirk of the laws of nature, or there are trillions of Earths and intelligences out there at one time or another in the history of the universe.
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Everything in nature is an improbable quirk of the laws of nature. If you re-ran evolution on Earth, is there any evidence that ants would evolve again?
There are some 11,800 species of ants, yet they too can be seen as "an improbably quirk of nature" if you talk about re-running the history of life on Earth.

At any rate, the observations that we wouldn't evolve twice is completely beside the point. In SETI, we're not looking for extra terrestrial homo sapiens.
 
MG1962 said:
For one small branch of hominoids to develope intelligence as an adaptive suvival process, seems quiet extraodinary and point to some event rather unique in their developement. He considered this (unknown) event to be so rare, there was no promise, replaying the story of life on the planet would yield the same result
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If that's an accurate description of what he said, I'd have to disagree.

First, "one small branch of hominoids" aren't the only organisms on Earth to have developed intelligence. As mentioned repeatedly, intelligence exists on a broad continuum. If we're going to speculate on how things might be different, it could be that the first advanced technological civilization to arise puts a damper on others. (See above, my "There can be only one" speculation.)

Second, those of us arguing against amb's Rare Earth position aren't saying intelligence is inevitable. That would be like us making the claim that on every planet that can support life, there is an intelligent civilization. I for one have said repeatedly that we don't know is the best answer we can give to the question of ET intelligence. However, there's no reason to think it can't happen elsewhere. The materials for life are abundant in the universe, the laws of physics (and therefore chemistry) are the same throughout the universe, and the amount of time that has passed since the Big Bang is the same throughout the universe. (amb has argued on a couple of occasions that there hasn't been enough time for intelligence to arise elsewhere in the galaxy except on the Earth.)

I think I may have mentioned the mirror test for self awareness on this thread before. If not, it's described here. Here are the animals that have passed this test (from the same Wiki article):
Animals that have passed the mirror test are all of the great apes (bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, humans), bottlenose dolphins, Orcas, elephants, and European Magpies.
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JoeTheJuggler said:
I think I may have mentioned the mirror test for self awareness on this thread before. If not, it's described here. Here are the animals that have passed this test (from the same Wiki article):
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That has absolutely nothing to do with homo sapiens level of self consciousness which is far beyond a level required for it's survival as is in the animal kingdom.
I take great credence on people like Gould who are geniuses compared to my feeble mind.
I repeat for the umpteenth time, conciousness is NOT a given in the scheme of things. But lower lifeforms may be so.
 
amb said:
That has absolutely nothing to do with homo sapiens level of self consciousness which is far beyond a level required for it's [sic] survival as is in the animal kingdom.
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So? I thought your Rare Earth theory said that microbial life was common, but not intelligence. And part of this is your continued assertion that humans are unique in the history of the Earth.
I take great credence on people like Gould who are geniuses compared to my feeble mind.
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I like Gould as well, though I utterly reject his notion of NOMA.

I repeat for the umpteenth time, conciousness is NOT a given in the scheme of things. But lower lifeforms may be so.
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Yes, and you're arguing against a straw man, as has been pointed out to you umpteen times.

For me to refute the assertion that humans are unique in the galaxy*, I don't have to prove that consciousness is "a given".

Also, as I've said repeatedly, nothing is "a given". Not ants, or even any given microbe.

*I know whenever I say that you maintain that you're only saying that humans may be unique. I told you that I'm happy to cede that we may be unique (though there's no evidence one way or the other), but if you're not willing to admit that there may be dozens or hundreds or even thousands of ET intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, then your position is in fact that humans are unique. As far as I know, no one is arguing that there must be dozens or hundreds or thousands of ET intelligences in the galaxy.
 
Have you answered my question of why only homo sapiens out of the billions of lifeforms that have ever lived on this planet has evolved consciousness?
 
amb said:
Have you answered my question of why only homo sapiens out of the billions of lifeforms that have ever lived on this planet has evolved consciousness?
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Yes I did. It's a false statement. Homo sapiens is not the only species on the Earth to have evolved consciousness.
 
Re: the mirror test of self-awareness:
amb said:
That has absolutely nothing to do with homo sapiens level of self consciousness which is far beyond a level required for it's survival as is in the animal kingdom.
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Self-awareness is a subset of consciousness. That several non-human species have been proven to have self-awareness refutes your statement that Homo sapiens is the only species on Earth to have developed consciousness.
 
I think AMB suffers from the misconception that just because we managed to build something in a relative eyeblink, that makes us special. He's a human chauvinist! :p (Just taking the piss outta ya mate!)
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Self-awareness is a subset of consciousness.
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I don't know if I worded that quite right. What I mean is, that all animals that are self-aware are conscious, but not all animals that are conscious are self-aware. Self-awareness or consciousness of self is just one possible application of consciousness.
 
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The mirror test proves nothing. I have done this test with my two dogs. All they see is other dogs, not themselves. They lack the self awareness to be able to see themselves.
Same tests done with primates has produced the same result.
Sometimes mirrors are placed in a parrots cage to keep the bird quite. The reflection It sees are other birds in the cage with it. Nowhere is there proof that the lower animals show they posses consciousness.
 
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"Lower" animals...? :rolleyes:

Chimps pass the mirror test. If they see a chalk mark on the nose of the chimp in the mirror, they will wipe their own nose to get rid of it.

Humans are not the only animals to recognise themselves in a mirror. I believe that dolphins do too.

Anyway, the mirror test is merely one arbitrary milestone on the scale of consciousness. Is your dog happy to see you when you come home from work? Is that an emotion your dog is feeling? Can non-humans ("lower" animals) even feel emotion?
 
amb said:
The mirror test proves nothing. I have done this test with my two dogs. All they see is other dogs, not themselves. They lack the self awareness to be able to see themselves.
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You obviously didn't look at the Wiki link I provided. Dogs, cats, and so on fail the mirror test. Only the great apes, some cetaceans, elephants and one bird species pass the mirror test.

My point is that self-awareness is just one type of consciousness. General "consciousness" is far more widespread in the animal kingdom.

Dogs, for example, have nociceptors (neural receptors for pain). Their behavior demonstrates that they are aware of painful stimuli--that they feel and are conscious of painful stimuli.

This refutes your contention that humans are the only "conscious" animal to have evolved on Earth.

I think maybe you're trying to substitute "consciousness" for "intelligence"?

Nowhere is there proof that the lower animals show they posses consciousness.
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You're wrong. Here's a simple thought experiment: compare neutering a dog without anaesthesia compared to doing it with anaesthesia. What would you say is the difference?

Even putting all this talk of "consciousness" aside, and going back to the question of intelligent civilizations with at least radio technology: observing that we are the only species on Earth to have gotten that far still does nothing to support your argument that we are unique in the galaxy. (And again, don't pretend you're only claim we "may be" unique--not unless you're willing to admit the we also "may be" one of thousands of such intelligences in the galaxy.)

We've gone over this before too. If you're not going to say that the Earth is 1 for 1, but instead say humans are 1 in the number of species that have evolved on the Earth, then you're just changing the ratio you're looking at from the number of intelligent civilizations per planet to the number per total number of species in the galaxy.
 
arthwollipot said:
Humans are not the only animals to recognise themselves in a mirror. I believe that dolphins do too.
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From the Wiki article:

Animals that have passed the mirror test are all of the great apes (bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, humans), bottlenose dolphins, Orcas, elephants, and European Magpies.[3]
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Humans, by the way, fail the test up until about 18 months of age. Dogs fail the test.
 
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