RE: The Mechanics of Understanding | Chapter #3 - The Man Explanation
Great post again! Just some thoughts on the topic of animals learning, hope you don't mind me sharing!: I think we as humans, having the ability to form relatively complex ideas into words to transmit information, may not fully understand the degree of complexity to animal body language. Like a blind person who cannot see and so they develop keen sense of hearing, so too would an animal who cannot speak develop an ability for communication through body language. To me, we are all equal--meaning, every living thing that exists has positive attributes that counterbalance their negative, and vice versa depending on which attribute we are looking at. Like the financially rich person who is poor in other aspects of life, or the financially poor person who finds contentment through their circumstances; there is always a balance in some way, somehow, even across species.
It is hard for us to understand that which is far outside our perceived reality. Like the worm brain with 300 neurons of your previous post, this is a function of our understanding of the brain--they may also function using smaller components that ultimately lead to the same brain power in a way. In a way, there is wisdom and understanding that can be found through thoughtful consideration of the actions of anything in the universe. It is easiest for us to see that through humans because we are most able to understand those things closest to us, but the more we branch out into the infinite other experiences of the universe and try to gain understanding of simple wisdom from things around us, the better :D For example, watching children not as authoritative adults but as students is a great way to learn from the wisdom of an unadulterated, timeless mind! I don't have much experience interacting with worms but I'm sure they offer their own range of understandings. A dog may be a better example to glean information from, as they are extremely loving and affectionate and don't tend to hold grudges easily. They can be protective and caring.
I'm just ranting a bit but just sharing some things I thought were related and pertinent to what you are sharing. :D Thanks for your posts, they are great! :)
In a way I think you understood an important message I was trying to convey with this post. Taking the example of the dog you just mentioned, we might be the stupidest and weakest animals on the planet to its eyes. Humans need clothes to cover, houses as shelter, cars to move around, cooked food to eat... The prospective changes with the eyes of the observer, but it is undeniable that speaking a language is an enormous advantage when talking about learning. As a software engineer, today I know how to write a program not because I invented the processor, the hard drive, the DC, the binary language, the programming language(s) and so on, but because I learned from the knowledge humans acquired before me. This is something animals can't do and this limits their knowledge to what they can can learn by themselves in their own lifetime. But of course, as this is improvement for us it may be madness for the animal observer.