ego vs intelligence

[crafth]

Here's some thoughts i had today. It's a bit hard to explain so bear with me, but i like to hear some opinions and thoughts.

I read that an orang outang uses leaves as an umbrella against the rain.
Then i thought about the intelligence of animals. We are often surprised over the intelligence of animals, and it often seems that they are at least as intelligent as humans, but they don't seem to use that intellect. We are genetically almost completely similar as some apes and perhaps other animals.
I think that it's not intelligence that separate us from animals, but ego. Humans possess an ego, a self image, an awareness about ourselves. We think we are separate beings, that we stand alone. That is why we want to be better than someone else, that's why we think we need all sorts of things we actually don't need. And we make those things, we invent, we build and 'evolve'. Actually, we're a part of everything, of the whole planet, of nature itself. While animals just are, they live in harmony with nature because they are a part of it. They are not less intelligent, but they don't have that ego, that self awareness.
If you think about it, all those things that come from our intelligence, like our inventions, aren't intelligent at all because they only destroy ourselves and make us miserable. I think that is because they come from our ego, not intelligence. The world is ruled by ego's, not intelligence. If animals would have the urge to possess, to be better than the others, to rule, we wouldn't survive a single day.
We have to reconsider what we are, what separates us. It's ego that separates us. If we would loose the ego, we wouldn't be less intelligent, but we would come closer to nature, live in harmony, be more happy and the whole planet would be better off.

[soleclip]

Crafth,

I know a lady who has 5 dogs, and she has in the past explained to me that all 5 dogs have different personalities.

Animals do think and do have ego, like the male lion of a pride of females has a huge ego. The male lion will fight off any male that comes near.

I going to get my self into trouble here, but I don't think humans are any better than animals. I see how humans are cruel and kill one another.

Animals only kill to eat, man kills for pleasure.

In hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, gangs took over the city in a matter of hours.

I just read a terrible article a few minutes ago on AOL, that gangs in Haiti have taken over looting the dead, and even stacking the dead bodies to make walls out of dead people. Two hundred thousand people coild have died.

I have to say to myself we no better than animals.

Where is GOD in all of this ? Does GOD exist ?

Is GOD just something humans have made up ?

Survival is what drives man and not ego !

[crafth]

You're not getting yourself in trouble, Soleclip (that would be unfair anyway in the phylosophy forum).

I think animals are in many ways much better than humans, i don't think animals have self-awareness like humans do and that's the reason i think they do a much better job living on this planet than we do, with all the intelligence we supposedly have. That's what i mean by ego vs intelligence.

[Ben]

Interesting point Craft and one which is being hotly debated in scientific circles even as we speak - This is a Wiki on self awareness in Dolphins -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is seen, by some, to be a sign of highly-developed, abstract thinking. Self-awareness, though not well-defined scientifically, is believed to be the precursor to more advanced processes like meta-cognitive reasoning (thinking about thinking) that are typical of humans. Scientific research into self-awareness has suggested that bottlenose dolphins possess self-awareness. To say "dolphins are self-aware" is not correct because dolphins differ markedly, so an assessment cannot be made for all species, some of which have much smaller brain sizes and presumably different structures.

The most widely used test for self-awareness in animals is the mirror test, developed by Gordon Gallup in the 1970s, in which a temporary dye is placed on an animal's body, and the animal is then presented with a mirror. Some scientists still disagree with these findings, arguing that the results of these tests are open to human interpretation and susceptible to the Clever Hans effect. This test is far less definitive than when used for primates, because primates can touch the mark or the mirror, while dolphins cannot, making their alleged self-recognition behaviour less clear. Critics argue that behaviours that are said to identify self-awareness resemble existing social behaviours, and so researchers could be mislabelling social responses to another dolphin. The researchers counter-argue that the behaviours shown to evidence self-awareness are very different from normal responses to another dolphin, including paying significantly more attention to another dolphin than towards their mirror image. Dr. Gallup called the results "the most suggestive evidence to date" of mirror self-recognition in dolphins, but "not definitive" because he was not entirely clear that the dolphins were not interpreting the image in the mirror as another animal. Whereas apes can merely touch the mark on themselves with their fingers, dolphins show less definitive behavior of self-awareness, twisting and turning themselves to observe the mark.

As a further response to these criticisms, in 1995, Marten and Psarakos used television to test dolphin self-awareness [28]. They showed dolphins real-time footage of themselves, recorded footage, and another dolphin. They concluded that their evidence suggested self-awareness rather than social behaviour. However, this study has not been repeated since then, the results remain thus uncorroborated.

Ben

[Ben]

Interesting point Craft and one which is being hotly debated in scientific circles even as we speak - This is a Wiki on self awareness in Dolphins -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cetacean_intelligence

Self-awareness

Self-awareness is seen, by some, to be a sign of highly-developed, abstract thinking. Self-awareness, though not well-defined scientifically, is believed to be the precursor to more advanced processes like meta-cognitive reasoning (thinking about thinking) that are typical of humans. Scientific research into self-awareness has suggested that bottlenose dolphins possess self-awareness. To say "dolphins are self-aware" is not correct because dolphins differ markedly, so an assessment cannot be made for all species, some of which have much smaller brain sizes and presumably different structures.

The most widely used test for self-awareness in animals is the mirror test, developed by Gordon Gallup in the 1970s, in which a temporary dye is placed on an animal's body, and the animal is then presented with a mirror. Some scientists still disagree with these findings, arguing that the results of these tests are open to human interpretation and susceptible to the Clever Hans effect. This test is far less definitive than when used for primates, because primates can touch the mark or the mirror, while dolphins cannot, making their alleged self-recognition behaviour less clear. Critics argue that behaviours that are said to identify self-awareness resemble existing social behaviours, and so researchers could be mislabelling social responses to another dolphin. The researchers counter-argue that the behaviours shown to evidence self-awareness are very different from normal responses to another dolphin, including paying significantly more attention to another dolphin than towards their mirror image. Dr. Gallup called the results "the most suggestive evidence to date" of mirror self-recognition in dolphins, but "not definitive" because he was not entirely clear that the dolphins were not interpreting the image in the mirror as another animal. Whereas apes can merely touch the mark on themselves with their fingers, dolphins show less definitive behavior of self-awareness, twisting and turning themselves to observe the mark.

As a further response to these criticisms, in 1995, Marten and Psarakos used television to test dolphin self-awareness [28]. They showed dolphins real-time footage of themselves, recorded footage, and another dolphin. They concluded that their evidence suggested self-awareness rather than social behaviour. However, this study has not been repeated since then, the results remain thus uncorroborated.

Ben

[crafth]

I remember now seeing a documantary about those test on Dolphins. Thanks for bringing it up, Ben, because, even the tests are not conclusive, they would explain something about the relation to intelligence and self-awareness, which is interesting because i was thinking about those two as seperate things. It's always said that Dolphins are very intelligent, so it could mean that self awareness is a result of high intelligence, instead of something seperate that only humans have.

Self-awareness is seen, by some, to be a sign of highly-developed, abstract thinking. Self-awareness, though not well-defined scientifically, is believed to be the precursor to more advanced processes like meta-cognitive reasoning (thinking about thinking) that are typical of humans.

It is interesting that, if high intelligence leads to self awareness, self awareness can disrupt intelligence. Or have a negative effect on it.

[soleclip]

In 1996 a female gorilla rescued a 3 year child that fell into the gorilla cage.

That female gorilla sounds really human to me !

What do you think ?

Looks like this animal could think "out side of the box".

http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/17/us...l?pagewanted=1

[minx]

i love this discussion

Crafth, your initial points are similar to my view on the human race - i think mankind has ruined what was the ultimate gift - the earth, and intelligence to make life wonderful. we ruined it with greed mostly, in my opinion, and from that came crime, war, etc..

i think animals do have a power drive, certain ones anyway, like a pecking order, and this is instinctive.. and they will fight to prove their place - but it's different somehow than what humans do, understandable not mindless.

and regarding animal intelligence - they amaze me sometimes. i've witnessed first hand with my own pets, things that prove they have as much, if not more, intelligence than us, but again it's different. for example, i truly believe that pets which are close to their owners have a telepathic understanding... only 2 nights ago something happened to reinforce my belief in this.. my cat had jumped onto the tv stand, and started to paw at one of my little china buddhas which is on the bookshelf nearby.. with each little swipe, the buddha inched nearer the edge of the shelf... i said "oi! put that back". the cat looked at me, glared into my eyes.. i glared back.. and then he swapped paws and pushed the buddha back into place. of course i thought it was funny, and laughed at him... but did he read the message in my eyes? did he understand what i said, or was it coincidence??

last year there was a tv series on the study of elephant life - again i was in awe of what i was learning, watching the series. elephants are so like us, but innocent of the premeditaded crime that humans are capable of. they protect their young, aunts or grandmothers will adopt a calf if the mother dies.. they mourn if one of theirs dies, and i think we all remember those videos on youtube of elephants painting beautiful pictures..

the human race could learn a lot from our fellow inhabitants.. sadly, i think it's too late - we've ruined this earth, and everything that lives on it is suffering the consequences..

[crafth]

Soleclip: (lol minx, we posted simultaniously, going to read you post now)
About the gorilla.
It would seem human, but i don't think it's a result of the human aspect of self awareness or 'ego'. I think the Gorilla somehow instinctively restored a failure. If a human rescues a child, it's not because of the ego, but more a result of a natural instinct to make live continue.

[crafth]

Those are great examples of what i suddenly thought earlier tody, minx! I think it's something else than intelligence that seperates us from the animals. You hit the nail!
The strange thing is that ego could be a result of intelligence, which doesn't make sense if animals indeed have a higher intelligence than we think.

The fact that we think that animals are less intelligent than humans could as well be the result of that what separates us, our ego.

[minx]

Originally Posted by crafth

The fact that we think that animals are less intelligent than humans could as well be the result of that what separates us, our ego.

i've never thought of it that way before, Crafth, but i think you may well be onto something there....

thinking about dogs which are trained, such as police sniffer dogs, mountain rescue dogs, dogs which help the blind and deaf... 'we' think we've taught them how to follow the rules, and behave in a certain way - but have we really? maybe all we have done is scratch the surface of what they're really capable of, initially by instilling a routine reaction in their minds, but maybe they really know what they're doing, and why we need them to do these things....?

[crafth]

Self awareness:

Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else would you remember it?

But here is the bombshell: you weren't there. Not a single atom that is your body today was there when that event took place....Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that doesn't make the hair stand at the back of you neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.

Steve Grand

[Ben]

More and more I'm becoming convinced of the argument that originally we were no different from the animals in our level of consciousness - but that somehwere along the line there has been intervention - intervention that made us different - made us what we are. I watched something, or read something the other day there which was interesting - it's claimed all living things are made up of DNA - and sure that appears to be the case - but it's possible that if alien life exists right here and right now on Earth - it may not be composed of DNA - of course we're talking about low level microbes here but it's a fascinating point - no one really looks at these tiny life forms for DNA as we just 'suppose' they must have it - but what if it was only the ones with DNA that evolved in the manner they did? The ones made of other stuff may well have drifted here from the Cosmos....

Ben

[Lucy]

Originally Posted by crafth

Self awareness:

Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren't you? How else would you remember it?

But here is the bombshell: you weren't there. Not a single atom that is your body today was there when that event took place....Matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you. Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are made. If that doesn't make the hair stand at the back of you neck, read it again until it does, because it is important.

Steve Grand

My brain just about collapses trying to think about this.

[melissa77]

I have to say, I'm with ben on this one. In school, I've studied a lot of human history and it always amazes me how people were only a bunch of "empty space" in our brains and then suddenly, all over the world, at almost the same time, we became so intelligent and innovative. I find it fascinating how similar architecture that served the purpose of worship and astronomy all seemed to develop across the world at roughly the same time. I mean, these places are all so similar, but the people in the world weren't in contact with each other (i.e. peruvians and europeans, etc.). I think the surge in abstract thinking and mathematically and astonomically precise building is just an incredible example of how people suddenly came to be as we know them to be today, maybe even better than we are today.

I've always thought there was a missing part of history that we simply aren't aware of. Man's evolution, mental and physical, was relatively slow throughout the ages, but in a relatively short matter of time, became something much more incredible than he was before.

[Mary]

came to be as we know them to be today, maybe even better than we are today.

I like this, Melissa

Animals, I think are as intelligent as we are, just driven by their different species' needs and approach to life and they're without thumb dexterity. And thanks to us, they're without money power.